Recycling Stormwater to Protect our Beaches

Working to divert, treat, and recycle stormwater to protect the beaches of Santa Monica, California
Apr 24, 2017 9:00 AM ET

Tetra Tech is using advanced water quality modeling tools to help increase drought resiliency in Santa Monica.

The Santa Monica Pier and Pico-Kenter project aims to protect the coastal beaches and ocean water quality in Santa Monica, California. Stormwater and urban runoff that flows into the 106-acre pier watershed contains pollutants, such as metal and bacteria that can affect the overall quality of the ocean water, as well as lead to potential health and environmental risks in the future.

To address these concerns, Tetra Tech has designed a wet weather diversion system for storm events that will redirect the collected stormwater, divert it to a pretreatment unit, and then transfer it to underground storage tanks. These storage tanks, which are located beneath the Deauville parking lot, have a storage capacity of 1.6 million gallons. Water from the tanks will be pumped to the City of Santa Monica’s Urban Runoff Recycling Facility (SMURRF). After being treated at SMURRF, the water is then used for other purposes such as irrigation of the local landscape and toilet flushing.