KPBS Midday Edition

Drought Continues As San Diego Looks At Reusable Water

By Maureen Cavanaugh / KPBS Midday Edition Co-Host, Peggy Pico / KPBS Evening Edition Host, Patty Lane / Producer

Published March 25, 2014 at 8:30 AM PDT

This story was published more than 10 years ago.

Drought Continues As San Diego Looks At Reusable Water

GUESTS:Halla Razak, Department Director of San Diego Public Utilities Department Matt O'Malley, San Diego Coastkeeper Shawn Dewane, Board President, Orange County Water District

San Diego is standing at a crossroads about what to do with its wastewater. That's the message a San Diego City Council committee will hear from the public utilities department this week. The test project to recycle waste water, once known as "toilet-to-tap," has been renamed Pure Water San Diego.

City water officials say the tests have been a success and now the project is ready to be fully developed as a new source of water for San Diego. It's also being presented as a less costly alternative to building a secondary sewage treatment facility at Point Loma. But whether the federal government will agree is an open question.

Orange County Water District has a successful system in place to treat wastewater for potable use. We'll find out how they got the Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS) up and running. It now provides 70 million gallons of clean drinking water daily.

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Maureen Cavanaugh

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Maureen Cavanaugh has been a familiar voice for KPBS listeners for more than 15 years, serving in a variety of capacities including announcer, host, and producer. As host of KPBS Midday Edition, Maureen has interviewed a wide range of notables, such as comedienne Sandra Bernhardt, actor John Lequizamo, author Chuck Palahniuk, composer Marvin Hamlisch, artist Robert Irwin, and designer Zandra Rhodes. But of all the interviews Maureen has conducted, her most special was with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Before joining KPBS in 1997, she worked as a news anchor for KSDO and KOGO News Radio in San Diego. While working for commercial radio stations in San Diego and in Salt Lake City, Utah, Maureen reported on both hard news and lifestyle features. Maureen has received three "Golden Mike" awards from the Radio and TV News Association of Southern California for economic reporting and breaking news. She has also received a "Best of Show" and “Best Radio Newscast” awards from the San Diego Press Club and the "Flo" Award from Public Radio Program Directors Association for Best Public Radio Announcer in a large market. Maureen is a native of Queens, New York, but after more than 20 years in San Diego she feels she qualifies as a real Southern Californian.

What do you want to hear host Jade Hindmon talk about on Midday?

Peggy Pico

Peggy Pico served as the host of KPBS Evening Edition. Pico originally joined the KPBS newsroom as the science and technology reporter in 2010 after spending two years covering biotechnology and medical news in the Bay Area. Pico was raised in San Diego and has worked as a broadcast journalist in California, Arizona, and Texas. She previously reported for NBC 7/39 where she worked as a medical and science reporter for five years. Pico has won two Emmy’s and numerous awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press, and the San Diego Press Club. She also received the USC Health Reporter Fellowship and is a member of California Chicano News Media Association and the Association of Health Care Journalists.

See stories by Peggy Pico