Santa Monica Achieves Landmark Sustainability Milestone – Successfully Cleans up MTBE Pollution, Puts High Tech Water Treatment Plant on-Line and is Reaching 70% Water Self-Sufficiency

--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Media opportunity to tour inside the Santa Monica Water Treatment Plant

Date/Time:			Thursday, February 24, 2011
			Plant tours 10:30 and 11:30; Dedication ceremony at 11 a.m.

Location:			1228 South Bundy, LA (corner of Wilshire Blvd. and Bundy)

What:			Fourteen years ago, the City of Santa Monica lost a substantial portion of its drinking water supply when the Charnock water wells were contaminated with Methyl tert-Butyl Ether (MTBE), a gasoline additive leaking from gas stations in the area that is now banned. When this happened, the City of Santa Monica was forced to rely on imported water for 85% of its needs.

			The City of Santa Monica is celebrating the reopening of the Charnock water wells and the reconstruction of the state-of-the-art Santa Monica Water Treatment Plant and after a long battle to clean-up the MTBE pollution, hold the oil companies responsible, and secure a sustainable supply of locally produced water.

			The Santa Monica Water Treatment Plan treats water from three City groundwater well fields – Charnock, Olympic and Arcadia – to provide 8½ million gallons of drinking water each day to its 89,000 residents.

Visuals:			Take cameras inside the buildings to see how Reverse Osmosis filtration works; where water quality is ensured and where the final steps occur - aeration and storage.

Fast Facts:

The Charnock Well Field has been used as a drinking water source since 1924. Since the MTBE remediation, it now provides 8 million gallons each day.
Currently, the City uses an average of 12 million gallons of water per day. Water demand has dropped from prior year levels in every month but one for the past three years! Santa Monica’s water imports have decreased to their lowest levels since 2001.
$60 million in capital costs was spent on the Charnock remediation and the Treatment Plant construction, which was covered by the oil company settlement.
Santa Monica has a perfect compliance record with regard to water quality, meeting all state and federal drinking water standards. It conducts more than 10,000 water quality tests each year.