SANTEE, Calif — Construction on the new East County Advanced Water Purification facility is well underway. When completed, it will turn 15 million gallons of wastewater into purified water for people in Lakeside, Santee, El Cajon and the surrounding areas.
The $950 million facility is being built with 10 million pounds of reinforcing steel, enough concrete to fill 16 Olympic-sized swimming pools, and tanks and basins big enough to hold 3 million cubic feet of water. Eventually, it will pump out 11.5 million gallons of purified water a day.
“This project will create a new, local, and sustainable drinking water supply that is uninterruptible and available to us both dry and wet seasons,” said Rebecca Abbott, Engineering Manager for Advanced Water Purification.
Used water from East County homes and businesses, a lot of which currently goes to the ocean, will now end up at the East County Advanced water purification facility. There it will undergo four water purification steps: Membrane filtration, reverse osmosis, UV/Advanced oxidation, and free chlorine disinfection.
“By the time the water reaches the final step, only hydrogen and oxygen and water molecules remain,” Abbott said.
“In fact, it's so pure that minerals need to be added back into the water before it's transported to Lake Jennings reservoir.”
The water will get to Lake Jennings by travelling 10 miles through pipes. Lake Jennings holds water for around 400,000 East County homes.
“It will mix with the surface water in that reservoir. It'll be treated again and helix water district's Levy Treatment Plant and then distributed as drinking water,” Abbott said.
If you're worried about wastewater being turned into drinking water, you should know this isn't the first facility to do it. Orange County already has one up and running.
“That program serves over a million customer including Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm,” Abbott added.
The facility will also put out another two million gallons of water a day that are not pure enough to drink, but can be used for landscaping. The whole thing is expected to be up and running in early 2027.
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