After nearly five years of hard work, the Santa Clara Valley Water District has completed the renovation of the Penitencia Water Treatment Plant. Serving the east side of the Santa Clara Valley from Milpitas in the north to the Silver Creek neighborhood in the south, the plant was originally built on this location to allow water users in the Santa Clara Valley to connect to the South Bay Aqueduct. This aqueduct is the pipeline that brings water to the South Bay from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The two main goals of the renovation project were to install equipment that would convert the plant to using the ozonation process for water filtration, and to beautify the plant so that it would blend into its surrounding community. The end result is a more attractive treatment plant with better-tasting water!

Some may wonder why we would go to all of the trouble of renovating the plant, just to use the ozonation process to purify our water. Well, here's why... ozone is now used as the primary disinfectant rather than chlorine. In fact, ozone disinfection is more effective at inactivating microbial contaminants than chlorine. Also, ozone can significantly reduce trihalomethanes, a byproduct of chlorine disinfection that may be potentially harmful at high levels.

While the district has not detected high levels of THM in our drinking water, ozone virtually eliminates the potential for unsafe levels of THMs. Another significant benefit of ozone is that it is very

effective at removing negative tastes and odors often caused by seasonal algal blooms in our source waters.

But we couldn't stop there. Something needed to be done about the outward appearance of the plant as well. Opened in 1974, Penitencia Water Treatment Plant was the second water treatment plant to be owned by valley water and it was time to transform this industrial facility into an attractive site that the community can be proud of.

To accomplish this goal, interested neighbors participated in a landscaping planning process and expressed their vision for the site. The resulting plan included nearly 20,000 plants, trees and shrubs. In addition, architectural fa ades were added to cover pipes and to soften the appearance of the concrete basins. In some areas, we installed "green screens" to support climbing vines that will add flowers and foliage while screening pumps and small buildings. And to complete the transformation, our crews added a new security gate, guard house and fence to the entrance of the plant.

Neighborhood interaction became a key component of this project, and I am proud to say that as the district representative for this region of San Jose, I did not miss a single meeting with my constituents in the past five years. With the help of the community's input and feedback, valley water made significant improvements to minimize the annoyances and inconveniences that come with a construction project of this magnitude and duration. In fact, the neighbor satisfaction survey results are in and on average 91 percent of the community members polled gave valley water a rating of good or excellent.

This May, Penitencia Water Treatment Plant will host an invitation-only open house for 1,100 immediate neighbors and community members. Although the plant has been delivering ozone treated water for more than a year, we decided to have the open house celebration after the improvements were complete.

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Richard Santos is available for questions or comments as your District Three water district representative for Sunnyvale, Alviso, Milpitas and the Berryessa/Alum Rock communities east of Highway 101 to the Evergreen community area.

He can be reached at 234-7707.