Pure Water Southern California has received a second large-scale water recycling grant of $26.2 million, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced earlier this month. The new grant comes on top of $99.2 million in federal funds awarded to the project in May. The proposed regional water recycling project, which is being developed through a partnership between Metropolitan and the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, would take cleaned wastewater currently sent to the ocean and purify it using an advanced, multi-stage purification process to produce high-quality drinking water.

The federal funds will help advance planning and design work and improvements to existing infrastructure needed for the project. Metropolitan and the Sanitation Districts are in the process of drafting the project’s Environmental Impact Report, which they expect to make available for public review in 2025. If approved by Metropolitan’s board, the program at full scale will produce 150 million gallons of water each day – enough to meet the demands of 1.5 million people.

“This is a huge project – potentially one of the largest water recycling projects in the world – that will benefit not only the 19 million people of Southern California, but the entire state and Southwest,” said Metropolitan board Chair Adán Ortega, Jr. “It will help lower demands on our imported water sources from the Colorado River and on the Northern Sierra. And it will help keep the economic engine of Southern California running, regardless of the future drought conditions we may face.”

Read the press release.

Metropolitan’s 2024 Project Labor Agreement Annual Report spotlights the district’s ongoing commitment to cultivating a workforce representing the diversity of our service area and providing for greater opportunities for people from underrepresented communities to enter the construction industry. Since its authorization by Metropolitan’s Board of Directors in October 2022, the PLA has grown to incorporate 35 projects, among them the proposed full-scale implementation of Metropolitan’s Pure Water Southern California program. Together, these projects account for 90% of Metropolitan’s planned construction expenditures over the next several years – estimated at nearly $1 billion.

The report highlights success metrics met on PLA projects, showcases personal success stories made possible through the administration of the agreement and underscores the commitment by our contractors and union partners to make work opportunities available to participants of the Construction Careers Pipeline Program.

Read the report.

Members of Metropolitan’s workforce were honored with recent awards from Cyber Defense Magazine and the Riverside County-based Hispanic Coalition of Small Businesses. Jacob Margolis, Metropolitan’s director of information technology security, was named one of the magazine’s Top Global Chief Information Security Officers for 2024, while Infrastructure Reliability Team Manager Johana Clemens received HCSB’s Latinícima Rumbo a La Cima Award for her career in a traditionally male-dominated field, and for her dedicated support of small businesses through her work at Metropolitan.

L to R: Rick Duarte, construction and engineering sustainability program manager; Johana Clemens, infrastructure reliability team manager;

board Chair Adán Ortega, Jr.; board Director Brenda Dennstedt and Yvette Martinez, executive strategist, at Latinícima awards ceremony recognizing Clemens.

In the spirit of thankfulness and appreciation, Metropolitan acknowledges and thanks Southern Californians for being messengers about the importance of water. We’re truly thankful for the opportunities throughout the year to engage and connect with community members and partners in our vast service area.