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ORANGE COUNTY WATER DISTRICT RECEIVES FOUNTAIN VALLEY APPROVAL FOR $24 MILLION WATER QUALITY LABORATORY TO TEST LOCAL GROUNDWATER

Design Rendering of Water Quality Lab

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. – Orange County Water District (OCWD) is nearly 90 percent complete with the design of a new 39,000 square-foot, $24 million water quality laboratory to be built on its Fountain Valley campus. The new highly sustainable (green) laboratory will house the equipment and personnel needed to test and ensure the groundwater quality used by approximately 20 city and other retail water agencies. Groundwater provides nearly 70 percent of the water needed for the 2.3 million water users in North and Central Orange County. Current plans are to have the laboratory completed and ready for occupancy by fall of 2008.

Approval of the laboratory building design by the City of Fountain Valley Planning Department came in late July— a month that proved to be quite successful for OCWD’s laboratory. Earlier in the month the lab received stellar results for its mandatory performance evaluation held by the State of California. The “final exam” conducted annually for laboratories is designed to test the competency of each state-certified method used by laboratory staff. The high markings solidified OCWD’s reputation for unparalleled data analysis; 2006 marked the fourth straight year the lab’s two divisions (organic and inorganic) met state requirements.

The benefits of OCWD providing water quality testing for its retail water agencies that use the groundwater includes consistency of testing, reliability of water quality tests and ease of reporting water quality data to state and other regulatory agencies.

“The new facility replaces a 32-year-old building and several add-on portable trailers that the District has outgrown. Rehabilitating the old laboratory to meet seismic and other safety requirements in addition to expanding the facility would have been more costly than building a new facility, which is needed to meet current and future water quality testing requirements.

The two-story steel framed laboratory building will house approximately 30 chemists and lab technicians, 10 water-quality monitoring personnel and all the equipment needed to do more than 350,000 analyses of approximately 18,000 water samples taken each year. Constantly striving to meet or exceed health and safety needs and improve water quality, the OCWD water quality laboratory looks and tests for new chemicals of concern and to meet ongoing regulatory requirements. The new water quality laboratory also will support the new water quality testing requirements for Orange County’s Groundwater Replenishment System – the largest water purification project of its kind in the world (www.gwrsystem.com).

OCWD WATER QUALITY LABORATORY GREEN FACTS

Designer: – RNL Design of Los Angeles

Strategy: – Build a new laboratory incorporating key strategies from LABS 21 (a federal government program to promote better laboratory design).

Overall Strategy Includes: –
- Use of passive and aggressive strategies to ensure energy, water and material conservation
- Improve indoor environmental quality
- Reduce environmental impact from construction phase throughout the life of the facility

Key Design Strategies: –
- Optimal solar orientation
- Excellent day lighting
- High performance glazing and building envelope insulation
- Locally manufactured materials with high recycled content and low emission of volatile organic compounds
- Selection of highly energy efficient HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) equipment
- High performance lighting and lighting control systems such as daylight and occupancy sensors
- Low flow plumbing fixtures
- Use of recycled water produced onsite for landscape irrigation

For more information about the Orange County Water District and water conservation, go to www.ocwd.com on the Internet. The Orange County Water District is committed to enhancing water quality and reliability.

For further information contact:
Ron Wildermuth, OCWD (714) 378-3351

Orange County Water District (OCWD) manages the large groundwater basin that underlies North-Central Orange County that provides most of the water for 2.3 million citizens. OCWD is committed to constantly improving Orange County’s groundwater quality and reliability in an environmentally friendly manner. With years of prudent planning and careful investment, OCWD has doubled the yield of the groundwater basin. Recently, the basin, larger that the largest reservoir in Southern California, sustained the County through a five-year drought. OCWD has also spent millions of dollar on studies by outside experts to ensure the quality of our groundwater. We want to be your trusted source for water quality. We will continue to plan and invest in ways to get more water into and out of the basin. OCWD is a special district, separate from the County of Orange, that supplies to residents in the cities of Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Irvine, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Newport Beach, Orange, Placentia, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Stanton, Tustin, Villa Park, Westminster and Yorba Linda.

About Orange County Sanitation District
The Orange County Sanitation District is a public agency responsible for safely collecting and treating wastewater (sewage) for 2.5 million people. OCSD beneficially reuses and recycles the treated wastewater and other resources resulting from the treatment process. It is a special district established by the California Sate legislature and governed by a 25-member board of directors. The directors are comprised of elected representatives for each of the sewer agencies or cities within OCSD’s 471 square mile service area. Go to www.ocsd.com for information.