By 2035, city of San Diego wants one-third of its drinking water to be recycled water.
To do that, city officials are moving ahead with a $1 billion project that would turn wastewater into drinking water.
The project, known as Pure Water, advanced last week when the City Council approved the project’s environmental impact report. If everything goes as planned and the city gets all the funding it’s looking for, the project should be up and running by 2021, producing millions of gallons of recycled water a day.
But while officials have been busy laying out the benefits of the new project, it might be unsettling for some customers, who already lack trust with the water department after a rise in billing complaints this year.
On this week’s San Diego Explained, Voice of San Diego’s Ry Rivard and NBC 7’s Monica Dean unravel the billion-dollar project to treat wastewater.