Curious where your water comes from or how it is managed?

IRWD hosts tours each year for those who live or work within IRWD boundaries. Tours are hosted by an IRWD board member and are designed to give residents an opportunity to learn more about IRWD, encourage an open dialogue, and to answer questions regarding the District. Now is the time to sign up - IRWD tours offer customers a chance to view our facilities from behind the scenes to learn how our water systems work, meet and greet your IRWD Board Representative, understand your water supply, and become a more efficient water user.

Resident tours are not open to those who have participated in an IRWD resident tour in the last three years.

Light breakfast and lunch provided. Must be 16 or older. More details below.

Fall Resident Tours

Friday, Oct. 12, and Saturday, Oct. 13

9 a.m. – 2 p.m.

IRWD Operations Center and San Joaquin Marsh

3512 Michelson Dr., Irvine

Sign-up required: irwd.com/learning/request-a-resident-tour

Let’s be honest. We love our treelined streets, verdant medians and common areas that define the Irvine Ranch Water District. And while other communities are cutting back on their landscaping, ours continues to flourish.

Since 1963, IRWD has been implementing a vision to integrate recycled water and purple pipes into the design of our community—and it shows. In 1990, 14% of all water used in the District was recycled. Today, recycled water makes up about 25% of our portfolio. And that’s what we use to water 80% of the public and commercial irrigated landscape in our service area—including parks, medians, golf courses, and community association property.

More Than Just Irrigation

In addition to landscaping, IRWD promotes commercial uses of recycled water. It is used for toilet flushing in more than 90 buildings, in cooling towers, and for industrial applications such as concrete production and composting. Every gallon of recycled water used for these purposes saves a gallon of drinking water.

A National Leader

IRWD owns and operates one of the most robust recycled water systems in the nation, with two water recycling plants, 550 miles of recycled water pipelines, and more than 5,500 metered recycled water connections. Four seasonal-storage reservoirs—Rattlesnake, San Joaquin, Sand Canyon and Syphon—allow the District to store recycled water in the cooler and wetter winter months for use in the summer when demand is highest.

Recycled Water Quality Report

Learn more about the treatment and testing of IRWD recycled water in the 2018 Recycled Water Quality Report. Visit irwd.com/services/recycled-water.

UC Irvine and Irvine Ranch Water District officials toss ceremonial buckets of water into the cooling towers to kick off the new project. (Shown here, right to left, are UCI Associate Chancellor for Sustainability Wendell Brase, IRWD Board President Douglas J. Reinhart, UCI CFO and Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Ron Cortez, IRWD Board Vice President Steven E. LaMar and IRWD Board of Directors members Mary Aileen Matheis and Peer Swan.)

Irvine Ranch Water District and the University of California, Irvine, have dedicated UCI’s renovated Central Plant — retrofitted to use recycled water for cooling campus buildings.

The most significant conservation accomplishment in UCI’s 50-year collaboration with IRWD, the Central Plant conversion will save more than 80 million gallons of drinking water annually – roughly what 3,300 households use in a year.

For more than half a century, IRWD has been a national leader in the production and use of recycled water. IRWD worked with UCI on the planning, design and construction of the project, engineered to meet IRWD and UCI standards.

“IRWD continues to be in the forefront of recycled water,” said Douglas J. Reinhart, president of the IRWD Board of Directors. “And we are proud of our partnership with UCI.” He was among IRWD and UCI officials who launched the renovated Central Plant with a dedication ceremony Aug. 15.

The renovation was a collaborative effort. Working at night for almost a year to avoid interrupting campus traffic by day, IRWD constructed 3,000 feet of pipeline to transport recycled water from its Michelson Water Recycling Plant to the UCI Central Plant – which cools 65 buildings throughout campus. UCI retrofitted the on-campus plant and installed additional filtration systems to further treat the water.

As a result, UCI will achieve its stretch goal to reduce per-capita drinking water use 50% by 2025 – and it puts the campus well ahead of the statewide University of California goal to cut water usage 36% by 2025.

In addition to saving 80 million gallons with the cooling plant conversion, UCI saves 70 million gallons of drinking water per year from previous recycled water irrigation projects completed in collaboration with IRWD.

“UCI is one of the nation’s greenest universities, and we like to set the bar high for environmental stewardship,” said Wendell Brase, associate chancellor of sustainability at UCI. “This would not be possible without our partnership with IRWD.”

Jerry Nearhoof, UCI’s assistant director of utilities operations and facilities management, directs a tour of the university’s Central Plant, which now cools 65 buildings across campus using recycled water.

IRWD recently helped UCI convert the university's Central Plant cooling towers (shown here) to recycled water, saving 80 million gallons of drinking water annually.

A recycled water storage tank, shown in the background, provides the water capacity needed to operate the cooling towers at right.

A view of the internal operations of the university's Central Plant, which provides chilled air to 65 buildings on campus.

A household's outdoor water use can be as high as 60% for irrigation and watering – save money and water use with one of our outdoor rebates.

• Receive $4 per nozzle when you replace at least 30 of your conventional spray heads with high-efficiency nozzles. These types of nozzles apply water slowly and uniformly to your landscape, encouraging healthy plant growth.
• Receive $90 per eligible drip irrigation kit and $0.20 per square foot when you replace your spray head sprinklers with a drip irrigation system. Drip systems avoid the inefficiencies caused by spray head irrigation, like misting and evaporation, by delivering water to the roots of the plants and minimizing weed growth.
• Receive up to $2 per square foot by replacing your water thirsty grass with a drought friendly landscape. To be eligible for the Turf Removal Program, the landscape transformation plan must include a rainwater capture or filtration system to reduce rainwater onto sidewalks and streets and capture rainwater for reuse. Some eligible methods to meet this participation requirement includes rain gardens, rock gardens, dry river beds, swales, berms, grades and rain barrels/cisterns.

Learn more about rebate program requirements at rightscapenow.com/rebates.