Engineering Students From Mexico Look To Yucaipa Valley Water District For Solutions To Water Problems South Of The Border

From the Yucaipa Valley Water District: Yucaipa Valley Water District recently hosted engineering students and a professor from La Paz, Mexico who wanted to see how the district is using advanced filtration technologies such as reverse osmosis to treat and recycle water.

“It was a very good tour,” said Victor Sevilla Unda, a professor of water science from the Autonomous University of Southern Baja California in La Paz, Mexico, who accompanied six engineering students on the Yucaipa tour.

Located in an arid desert area near the southern tip of Baja California, La Paz has a population of 215,000 and depends on a declining groundwater basin that faces a growing threat of salt water contamination from the Gulf of California, Unda said.

Jennifer Ares, YVWD’s water resource manager, explained YVWD’s strategy of importing State Water Project water from Northern California so as to minimize the need for groundwater pumping. She and Mike Kostelecky, the operations manager for YVWD’s Regional Water Filtration Facility at Crystal Creek, also explained the district’s use of microfiltration and molecular filtration technologies, which are used to produce pure drinking water supplies.

The students also toured the Henry N. Wochholz Wastewater Treatment Facility with Ashley Gibson, YVWD’s water resource project supervisor, and learned how the district is stretching local water supplies by recycling wastewater for landscape irrigation purposes. Unda said his students want to become more familiar with the advanced water treatment technologies and strategies that are used by water agencies in Southern California,

The group also plans to visit water treatment facilities operated by Inland Empire Utilities Agency and Orange County Water District, which itself has had to contend with the threat of salt water incursion from the Pacific Ocean.

Unda said there is a shortage of engineers in Mexico with expertise in water treatment technologies and that the information the students glean from their visits to Southern California water agencies will not only help them address water problems in La Paz, but other cities in Mexico as well.

YVWD frequently hosts visitors from around the world who are interested in learning how the district uses advanced water treatment technologies to stretch limited water supplies while also protecting the local groundwater basin. Today’s tour was the second in two years involving visitors from La Paz. The district plans to host a group of visiting engineers from South Korea on Friday, June 2.

The technological achievements by Yucaipa Valley Water District provide a unique opportunity for visitors to see how highly advanced filtration processes provide ultra-pure drinking water and highly purified recycled water for a community of about 50,000 customers.

For more information about tours, please contact Jennifer Ares, water resource manager, at (909) 790-3301.

Photo caption: Ashley Gibson, water resources project supervisor, explains wastewater recycling processes used by Yucaipa Valley Water District to visiting engineering students and their professor from the Autonomous University of Southern Baja California in La Paz, Mexico.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Crider Photography