News Details (Posted: January 18, 2006):

Recycled water an idea to plug prices

Full Description:

FONTANA - This city of roughly 160,000 generates more than 11.5 million gallons of recycled water every day.

None of it is used.

Not locally, anyway. It flows into the Santa Ana River in Orange County.

Using the recycled water for such things as park irrigation, city officials say, could mean less need for the privately owned Fontana Water Company to build new water-treatment infrastructure - and it could mean a lower water rate for customers.

The city made that case Thursday, the fourth day of hearings over whether the company will be allowed a major rate increase.

The judge wouldn't have any of it. Not now, anyway.

In what water company consultant Rick Ruiz characterized as the most dramatic portion of the hearings thus far, Administrative Law Judge Robert Barnett said testimony from the city's public works director Curtis Aaron was not relevant to the current rate case.

Customers of the Fontana Water Company - a division of the San Gabriel Valley Water Company - pay $1.54 per 100 cubic feet of water, which is among the region's highest.