Facilities

About Our Facilities

The CDA produces 35,200 acre-feet per year of high-quality water that is delivered to the municipal water supply systems for the Member Agencies: Cities of Chino, Chino Hills, Norco and Ontario; Jurupa Community Services District; Western Municipal Water District, and Santa Ana River Water Company. The CDA facilities include two desalters, supply wells for each desalter, two reservoirs, raw water pipelines, potable water pipelines, potable water pumping facilities, and pipelines for brine disposal.

The treatment processes at the Chino I and Chino II Desalters both include Reverse Osmosis (RO) and Ion-Exchange (IX) for removal of nitrate and total dissolved solids (TDS). The Chino I Desalter also includes granular activated carbon for removal of other organic chemicals. The Chino II Desalter includes air stripping for removal of volatile organic chemicals (VOC) and the Concentrate Reduction Facility (CRF) for brine recovery.

Chino I Desalter

The Chino I Desalter is located in the City of Chino and began operation in 2000. Chino I is designed to produce up to 14 million gallons per day of drinking water utilizing reverse osmosis, ion exchange, air stripping, and granular activated carbon treatment processes. The brine produced by these processes is transported by the Inland Empire Brine Line (IEBL) to Orange County and is subsequently discharged to the ocean.

Chino II Desalter

The Chino II Desalter is located in the City of Jurupa Valley and began operation in 2006. Chino II is designed to produce up to 23 million gallons per day of drinking water utilizing reverse osmosis, ion exchange, and air stripping treatment processes. The brine that Chino II produces is further treated by the Concentrate Reduction Facility and then is transported by the Inland Empire Brine Line (IEBL) to Orange County and is subsequently discharged to the ocean.

Concentrate Reduction Facility

The Concentrate Reduction Facility (CRF) at the Chino II Desalter is a one-of-a-kind innovative brine treatment and recovery facility constructed by CDA to recover saline reject water from the primary reverse osmosis process at Chino II. Operation started in 2017. The process utilizes chemical softening to remove the limiting foulants (specifically, calcium and silica) from the RO concentrate. Softened water is then passed through granular media filters to provide particulate removal upstream of a secondary RO (SRO) process. Treated water (SRO permeate) is blended with the primary RO permeate, and SRO concentrate is disposed of into the Inland Empire Brine Line (IEBL) that conveys the concentrate to Orange County Sanitation District. Using this approach, total water recovery at the Chino II Desalter is increased to as high as 95 percent, substantially reducing the volume of brine disposed into the IEBL and simultaneously increasing drinking water production. The quantity of brine is reduced from 2.42 to under 1 million gallons per day of brine.