California’s corrections department is spending $46,000 a month to buy bottled water for inmates and staff at a prison in Tracy where it opened a state-of-the-art water treatment plant eight years ago.
News reports on the 2010 unveiling of a $32 million water treatment plant characterized the department as providing the cleanest, best water in the state to prison inmates.
I’m not a robot reCAPTCHA Privacy – Terms When it’s down, salts and metals can accumulate to such a level that the prison violates state standards for wastewater discharge.
The new state budget includes $2 million for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to begin designing a brine concentration system.
In the meantime, the department must provide bottled water to inmates and staff whenever the brine concentration system is down to comply with an order from the Central Valley Regional Water Control Board.
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Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the corrections department, said the system the state is designing to replace the brine concentrator is intended to be easier to operate and repair.
The department paid a $2.3 million penalty last year to resolve the citations, with $1.2 million going to the water board and $1.1 million going to a nonprofit organization that is carrying out some water quality improvement projects in the San Joaquin Valley.