LOS ANGELES — As drought and climate change ravage California’s once-reliable supply of drinking water, officials in Los Angeles are setting their sights on a relatively new, almost untapped resource for the city’s 4 million residents: the Superfund site in their own backyard.
Nearly 70% of the city’s 115 wells in the San Fernando Valley groundwater basin — the largest such basin under the purview of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — have been sitting unused for decades after dangerous contaminants seeped into the aquifer.
Now, the city is nearing the completion of a massive, $600 million plan to bring that resource back online. Centered on three treatment facilities in the San Fernando Valley, the groundwater remediation project will essentially create giant filters for the city’s toxic plume, enabling Angelenos to regain full access to up to 87,000 acre-feet of water each year, or nearly a fifth of what they consume.
