Southern California Water Research Articles

American States Water Co.

AbstractWater Utilities (MIC: 7.2 SIC: 4941 NAIC:221310)American States Water is a public utility that purchases, produces, distributes, and sells water, and distributes electricity through its primary subsidiary Southern California Water Company (SCW). SCW is organized into one electric customer service area and three water service regions operating within 75 communities in 10 counties in California and provides water service in 21 customer service areas. Through its American States Utility Services subsidiary, Co. performs non‐regulated, water related services and operations on a contract basis. Co.'s subsidiary, Chaparral City Water Company, is an Arizona public utility company serving Fountain Hills, AZ and and a portion of Scottsdale, AZ.

Economic values for conjunctive use and water banking in southern California

The potential and limitations of conjunctive use of surface and groundwater are explored for southern California's water supply system. An economic‐engineering network flow optimization model, CALVIN, is used to analyze the economic and reliability benefits from different conjunctive use alternatives. Flexible management of additional conjunctive use facilities and groundwater storage capacity under flexible water allocation can generate substantial economic benefits to the region. Conjunctive use adds operational flexibility to take better advantage of water market transfers, and transfers provide the allocation flexibility to take better advantage of conjunctive use. The value of conjunctive use programs along the Colorado River Aqueduct, in Coachella Valley, and north of the Tehachapi Mountains under economically optimized operation of the system is examined. Results reveal reductions of economic demand for increased imports into southern California, suggest changes in the system operations, and indicate significant economic benefits from expanding some conveyance and storage facilities.

Corrosion Control Aids Residuals

Unlined cast‐iron and steel pipes, abundant in the Southern California Water Company‐Southwest District distribution system, are known to have water quality problems because of higher disinfectant demands and higher biofilm density. Keeping ahead of the loss of disinfectant residual was labor intensive and costly, so the District conducted a pilot study to investigate alternatives. Several bench‐scale studies have already documented that an effective corrosion control program may increase disinfectant residuals and improve water quality because fewer corrosion products are formed. This article reports research conducted by the District over a three‐year period that studied the long‐term effect of corrosion inhibitors on disinfectant residuals, distribution system hydraulics, and water quality. The study proved that the use of polyphosphate‐blend corrosion inhibitors is effective in maintaining residuals and will help limit water lost to and labor spent on flushing. The District is in the process of implementing the program systemwide.

EDU Offers New Concept in Training

This article describes an improved education and training program, called the Employee Development University, that Southern California Water Company instituted to establish an exceptionally motivated workforce with improved standards of integrity, professionalism, and competence. To create an improved training program, a shift was made from the traditional platform to a needs‐based platform, which seeks to instill within each employee a commitment for lifelong learning. This process encourages employees to be more proactive, to learn new skills that would help them during their entire lives, and to be accountable for learning these new skills.

Southern California Water Markets: Potential and Limitations

This paper explores the potential and limitations for southern California water markets using an economic-engineering network flow optimization model, CALVIN. CALVIN is used to estimate how a market would affect overall southern California water use, to preliminarily assess the economic benefit of more flexible water allocation policies, and to explore the characteristics of an ideal market. Results from CALVIN suggest substantial economic and reliability benefits exist for implementing water market or other transfer mechanisms, and these benefits could be achieved with relatively little reallocation of agricultural water. An ideal water market in southern California would reduce more costly urban water shortages, reducing the demand for increased imports from outside of southern California. Additionally, substantial economic benefits could accrue from expanding some conveyance and storage facilities, particularly the Colorado River Aqueduct and conjunctive use storage capacity.

Operational Changes Counter Customer Complaints

This article is part two of a two‐part series. In last month's Opflow, the authors discussed how the Southern California Water Co. (SCWC) identifies and records customer complaints related to various operational activities, including flushing, construction use of water, valve maintenance, and fire flow. In this month's conclusion, the authors describe the corrective measures SCWC has taken to reduce the number of complaints and achieve customer satisfaction. Topics covered include: manganese sequestration; controlled flushing programs; and, problematic old pipes.

Operational Changes Counter Customer Complaints

This article discusses how Southern California Water Company's (SCWC) Central District discovered how to reduce water quality complaints through various operation controls. The district improved its distribution water quality and reduced complaints by up to 75% by implementing five solutions. The second part of this article, published in the November 2001 issue, goes into more detail about each solution. This first part of the article describes how the district came up with these solutions. The use of databases to track what causes the complaints is explained.

Aligning People, Vision, and Values

This article discusses how Southern California Water Company (SCWC) provides exceptional customer service by individually motivating its employees through the Service Standards Program that gathers information from employees on what they valued the most such as respect, sincerity, politeness, kindness, hard work, punctuality, fairness, and integrity. From the initial list of more than 50 standards, team members identified the standards that form their core values. Employees are held accountable to these standards and must demonstrate results through their performance expectations. One of the highest‐priority objectives of the company is for all employees, including the management team, to meet these same service standards. To make this a reality, employees are provided access to corresponding high‐quality instruction, courses, and assessments through the Employee Development University.

Dechlorination Easier, Quicker with Truck Device

Because of increasing regulatory requirements on discharged water, which requires dechlorination, the Southern California Water Co., Southwest System has experimented with different dechlorination devices through the years. This article describes a new device that shows promising results in reducing the time needed to flush and the labor required for setting up the dechlorination equipment.

MTBE in Southern California water

Motorized recreational watercraft were the predominant mode of contamination in reservoirs.Methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) is a common fuel oxygenate used in motor vehicle fuels to control emissions and boost octane. It is more water‐soluble than other fuel constituents and does not adsorb well to substrates such as soil. It can contaminate groundwater supplies through leaking underground fuel storage tanks and pipelines, and through spills, urban storm runoff, and precipitation. It can also contaminate open water reservoirs through exhaust from motorized watercraft. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California surveyed six reservoirs that supply drinking water in Southern California. Recreation on these reservoirs ranged from none at all to high activity with personal watercraft. It was found that motorized watercraft can contribute a significant amount of MTBE to the water supply.

System Flushing: Changes Improve Results

This article describes a flushing program implemented by the Southwest System of the Southern California Water Co. that coordinates several types of flushing programs to maintain water quality in the distribution system. The goals are to maintain regulatory compliance, minimize customer complaints, and maintain a minimum of 1.0 mg/L of chloramine residual throughout the system while minimizing the quantity of water used for flushing. The individual flushing programs described in the article include: emergency/reactive flushing; proactive/routine flushing; dead‐end flushing; and, maintenance flushing.

Water Quality Program Defines Operations

This article reports on the comprehensive water quality control program (WQCP) developed by Southern California Water Company (SCWC) to comply with regulations and maintain water quality in the distribution system. The WQCP is a written blueprint of system responsibilities and activities, incorporating all the operations, maintenance, and water quality programs related to system sources, treatment, distribution pipes, storage tanks, fire hydrants, valves, and other appurtenances that affect water quality.

Southern California water politics and U.S.‐Mexican relations: Lining the all‐American canal

Improving the efficiency of irrigation systems has been repeatedly identified by water policy experts as a yet untapped means to alleviate scarcity. Water conservation, it is argued, is cheaper and less environmentally destructive to still unharnessed rivers. Yet even conservation tampers with the hydrologic cycle and can have unintended or undesirable consequences. As a case in point stands a scarcity relieving endeavor being undertaken along the United States-Mexico border, that has been called timely and innovative, as well as premature and divisive. Driven by increasing demands for water in the South Coast Basin of California, two Southern Californian water districts are moving ahead with plans to recover water seeping through the earthen banks of the All-American Canal, the lifeline of the irrigated farmlands of the Imperial Valley (see Map 1). Demonstrating the cliched truism that natural environments do not recognize political boundaries, conserving the canal's waters will likely draw down and eventually dry up wells used to irrigate crops on the Mexican side of the border. Settling this brewing dispute would require a mediated agreement not only satisfying uncompromisingly thirsty domestic interests, but also transcending the long history of competition and antagonism they have shared over water resources. To clarify this situation, this article discusses the economic, political, and ecological trends that are pushing Southern Californian water agencies towards this conservation project; illuminates the canal's historical role in the binational competition over water resources; describes how antagonistic U.S. interests, as well as Mexico's, have shaped the policy making process; and implies what this project means for the role of transboundary resource management in U.S.-Mexican relations.

Pollen germination is impeded by tap water

Pollen germination in vitro is totally inhibited in tobacco ( Nicotiana tabacum) and other species if tap water is used to prepare the germination medium. This effect is already fully present if tap water accounts for only 25% of the medium. Furthermore, the pollen grains deteriorate rapidly and the culture medium turns yellowish-brown. The water toxicity is not caused by one or several compounds regularly monitored by the water authorities but can be removed by ion exchange purification. Although the factor(s) responsible for the inhibition were not identified, the study clearly shows the presence of such a contaminant in three different Orange County (Southern California) water wells. The fact that a fundamental botanical process like pollen germination is inhibited by a factor in drinking water not included in water quality control causes some general health concern. In addition, crop yield might be largely reduced if overhead spray irrigation with this water is utilized. The experiments also suggest that pollen germination in vitro could serve as a sensitive and simple bioassay for water quality.

Maintaining Scientific Integrity under Pressure: The Experience of the Southern California Water Research Authority

The experience of of the city of Los Angeles demonstrates that if political pressures are combined with ignorance of both economics science on the part of active participents in a democracy a city can be forced into unnecessary and expensive ‘anti-pollution' measures. The author has been for 14 years, since 1972 the representative of the city of Los Angeles on the governing board for the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRA) formed in 1969 by five southern California sewage discharging agencies, to obtain a date base on on the ecology of the near-shore ocean watesr and the effect of sewage on those waters, in order to ensure that legislation and regulations concerning that discharge would be rationally based, It is a small research laboratory with capabilities in physics, chemistry, biology and engineering. Because the only source of available founding was the agencies themselves, two mechanisms were put into place, in order to ensure the scientific credibility of the research (1) a commissior of five elected representatives, one from each of the sponsoring agencies would be responsible to the public, and (2) a consulting board of eminent scientists, with no political connection to any of the agencies,would guide the research and lend the weights of their reputations to the rasults, The commission selects both the consulting board and the project manager. In actuality, the commission is not seen as a presence which bestows reliability on the research; for the scientific communty, the integrity of the research done has depended, as it always does, on publication of reports and review of the procedures by fellow scientists, The commission, although powerful, is invisible. For the public, the research results are made to speak for themselves, and they are interpreted in the light of the demand for 100% purity of both seafood and bathing waters.

Man-Made Disaster: The Story of St. Francis Dam, Its Place in Southern California's Water System, Its Failure and the Tragedy in the Santa Clara River Valley, March 12 and 13, 1928

Journal Article Man-Made Disaster: The Story of St. Francis Dam, Its Place in Southern California's Water System, Its Failure and the Tragedy in the Santa Clara River Valley, March 12 and 13, 1928 Get access Man-Made Disaster: The Story of St. Francis Dam, Its Place in Southern California's Water System, Its Failure and the Tragedy in the Santa Clara River Valley, March 12 and 13, 1928. By Outland Charles F.. (Glendale, California: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1977. 275 p. Illustrations, maps, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. $15.75.) F. Ross Peterson F. Ross Peterson Utah State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 10, Issue 1, January 1979, Pages 82–83, https://doi.org/10.2307/967145 Published: 01 January 1979

Ultrasonic Cleaning of Water Meters

This article discusses an ultrasonic meter cleaning process instituted at the Southern California Water Company. The ultrasonic unit selected has a 1,200‐w, fully transistorized generator in combination with a lO‐gal, stainless‐steel, multipower transducerized tank with an automatic recirculator, and it cost approximately $2,000. Cleaning and test procedures are discussed in the article, along with equipment performance.

Public Relations for a Modern Utility

public relations ; it can only decide how good it wants its public relations to be. Really good public relations cannot be easily realized, because it is not an easy job. It takes determination, thought, and a lot of work on the part of a lot of people to achieve good public relations. Everyone in the public utility field can do much to determine at what point in the wide range between bad and good public relations his own operation will fall. The author remembers a remark made at a meeting of the California Section several years ago by Philip F. Walsh, vice-president of the Southern California Water Co., Los Angeles; it was, in effect, Good public relations can be achieved primarily by rendering good There is no doubt about the truth of this statement. Certainly, a good public relations program for any business, particularly a public utility, must be based upon rendering good service. The best public relations program would probably fail if the service of a utility were inadequate. Even with a high level of service, however, because of the many complicatio s and ramifications of running a modern, up-to-date business, there are many ways in which the effect of good service can be implemented in order to achieve the highest level of public relations. This is probably just another way of saying that good service in itself will not receive all of the recognition that it deserves. The author agrees with Philip F. Walsh when he said that good service is essential to good public relations, but wishes to add to this that ma agement can profit greatly by a full exploration of the entire problem of making good service really pay off.

Colorado River Aqueduct System of Southern California

where more people have come to live and work, in a region farther removed from adequate water supplies, than has been true of any other part of the earth. More than 50 years ago, Southern California began to change from a grazing and agricultural area to a horticultural territory with growing urban centers. In order to meet this change it became increasingly evident that water supplies would have to be imported from distant sources. Today, in Southern California water is being brought from outside sources through two aqueducts extending 250 and 360 mi to the north and east. The city of Los Angeles completed the Owens River Aqueduct in 1913, with a capacity to import about 320,000 acre-ft of water per year. The longest, and largest, domestic water supply line thus far planned, constructed, and placed successfully into operation is the Colorado River Aqueduct of The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. It was completed in its initial development in 1941, using $180,000,000 from the proceeds of a $220,000,000 bond issue authorized

The Southern California Water Problem in the Oxnard Area

The Southern California Water Problem in the Oxnard Area