When residents of French Valley are enjoying their community’s parks, schools, and well-manicured streetscapes, they will do so in part thanks to an award-winning project spearheaded by Eastern Municipal Water District.
EMWD, along with its project partners, was honored this week with the WateReuse Association’s Award for Excellence for its French Valley Recycled Water Project, which significantly expanded recycled water use in the fast-growing French Valley community near Murrieta.
The Award for Excellence is presented annually to agencies that develop forward-thinking projects and programs to advance recycled water use, policy, education, and innovation. EMWD is the first agency to earn the honor for four consecutive years.
For many years, the French Valley area has been unable to fully maximize recycled water use for its public landscaping. Portions of the community were built with recycled water infrastructure, but other areas lacked the distribution system necessary for the widespread use of recycled water in schools, parks, and streetscapes.
To address this issue, EMWD developed a program that would expand infrastructure and maximize water use efficiency through its partnerships with The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Metropolitan), Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD), Valley-Wide Recreation and Park District (Valley-Wide), and the development community.
EMWD proactively constructed a new recycled water pump station, storage tank, and 8,400 linear feet of pipeline as part of its Recycled Water Stabilization Program. The development community installed another 12,000 feet of recycled water pipeline when newer areas of the community were under construction.
TVUSD and Valley-Wide requested assistance with the up-front capital investment needed to construct an additional 14,000 feet of pipeline and retrofit existing sites from potable to recycled water. EMWD provided the funding through its Recycled Water Accelerated Retrofit Program, which is reimbursed through a specialized rate that is above the normal price for recycled water but below the cost of potable water.
Lastly, Metropolitan provided significant funding to help transform 114,000 square feet of nonfunctional turf into climate appropriate landscaping, and for the installation of modernized irrigation controllers.
The result was that recycled water was brought to four TVUSD schools, multiple parks and streetscapes maintained by Valley-Wide, and several landscapes maintained by homeowners’ associations. Had any of the agencies not participated, the project would not have advanced, but the collaborative approach resulted in a more cost-effective and sustainable water source for the community, offsetting the potable water use equivalent of more than 1,700 residences.
“This project was successful because of the collaboration between our private and public agency partners, and the joint commitment to the benefits that recycled water brings to a community,” EMWD Board President Stephen Corona said. “EMWD is incredibly proud of the industry-leading work it has accomplished with recycled water, and we are grateful for this incredible recognition from the WateReuse Association.”
EMWD has previously earned the Award for Excellence five other times, including the previous three years:
- 2024 (Outreach and Education) for its broad approach to creating acceptance of recycled water use in the community.
- 2023 (Excellence in Action) for its successful recycled water and a landscape transformation project at The Lakes at Hemet West.
- 2022 (Transformational Innovation) for helping pilot test a new technology to reduce salts in recycled water.
- 2019 (Community Water Champion), for its Recycled Water Accelerated Retrofit Program.
- 2012 (Large Agency Project of the Year) for its recycled water system operations and expansion.