Health

San Diego Awards Contract For Water Recyling Demonstration Project

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published January 26, 2010 at 12:07 PM PST

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

San Diego City Council will vote this evening on a $3 million contract to manage a water recycling demonstration project.

City residents' water rates went up a year ago, and part of that increase is now being put to use to get the demonstration project up and running. RMC Water and Environment is one of three contractors being considered for the job of project management.

Marcie Steirer of the Water Department says the demonstration project should begin operating next year.

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She says the focus this year is on working with regulators and educating the public about using recycled water as part of the drinking water supply.

"Public opinion has changed" she says. "In 2004, 10 percent strongly favored that, and in 2009 that changed to 35 percent.”

Steirer says the water from the demonstration project will be added to the existing recycled water system that’s used for landscaping, not to the city’s drinking water supply.

But the ultimate goal is to use recycled water to supplement the San Vicente reservoir. Orange County already integrates recycled water into its potable water supplies.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.