Check out the new flag system for the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station

With the rainy season coming up, ISD has come up with an idea that will let people know if the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station will be open or closed during regular business hours. Flags will be placed on the Main Street sign at the entrance of the ISD offices. Check out the graphic below for more information.

Outside residents can now use ISD's Residential Recycled Water Fill Station

Looking for Recycled Water to water your plants, gardens and fall flowers? ISD is offering the opportunity for outside residents to receive our clean recycled water. 

Before ISD's Residential Recycled Water Fill Station was only open to Oakley and Bethel Island residents. Now that the rush has slowed down a bit, ISD is opening the Fill Station to residents outside of our boundaries.

For a small fee of $1 per load, non-residents of Oakley and Bethel Island can get up to 300 gallons of recycled water per trip to the fill station.

Those interested can purchase a $25 "Punch-It" card at ISDs Main Office at 450 Walnut Meadows Drive, Oakley. This will allow the customer 25 trips to the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station. (No money is taken at the fill station, those interested must purchase a punch-it card.)

ISD's Residential Recycled Water Fill Station hours are:
Monday through Thursday: 11 am to 6 pm
Friday: 10 am to 3 pm
Saturday: 8 am to 2 pm
Closed Sundays

For more information on recycled water and how it can be used see ISD's website.

Residential Fill Station Stats for September 2015

During the month of September nearly 4,000 trips were made to the ISD Residential Recycled Water Fill Station dispensing nearly one million gallons of water. By comparison nearly four million gallons of water was given out at ISD's Commercial Fill Station. 

ISD is planning to continue to give out recycled water throughout the fall as long as the demand for water is requested by the local residents and commercial users. 

For more information see our website.

Fill Station Photos

Below are pictures that were taken in August at ISDs 70th Anniversary Celebration by Contra Costa Television (CCTV).

ISDs recycled water helps resident bring back her dying grass

ISD received this email from one of our regular customers today after regularly using ISDs Residential Recycled Water Fill Station since opening on June 20.

Dear Ironhouse,

I wanted to share with you some pictures of my lawn before and after my husband and I started coming in every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday with our 275 gallon water tank to get your water. 

As you can see in the first picture my lawn had several brown spots because of lack of water during the dry winter and spring. When you opened your fill station we became regular visitors, sometimes several times a day. 

My husband, John, set up a motor on the big tank and then set up a sprinkler and we continued to water and fertilize. 

Now the lawn is looking great. we still have some places where it is still thin, but if we didn't take the time to keep up the water, especially during the hot days this summer, it would be completely gone by now. We couldn't have done it if Ironhouse didn't supply us with the water.

As a really nice added benefit our water bill is half what it was last summer. 

Keep up the good work.

Jenny Wainwright 

If you'd like. share your success stories with us by sending them to: isdoutreach@isd.us.com.

Residential Recycled Fill Station Extends Hours

It has taken a little time, but the new pipeline from ISDs Water Recycling Facility to the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station is now installed and is currently pumping water straight into the Fill Station storage tanks. This process will allow for quicker water distribution to tanks and be more cost effective then the previous method of filling the tanks. 

What it means to the users is an increase in hours for the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station. The District has decided to open the fill station six days a week, rather than the three days a week we are currently open. 

The new hours are:

Monday through Thursday: 12 pm to 7 pm

Friday: 10 am to 3 pm

Saturday: 8 am to 2 pm*

Remember the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station is open to Oakley and Bethel Island residents only. New sign ups are taken one-hour after opening until closing each day. Residents can take up to 300 gallons of water per trip, and make as many trips a day as they wish. 

For more information on our Residential Recycled Water Fill Station, see ISDs website at www.ISDP2.org.

*Because of staffing restrictions there may be a possibility of running out of water before 2 pm on Saturdays, so the Fill Station will stay open until water runs out on Saturdays.

KTVU report on ISD's Recycle Water Programs

ISD's Residential Fill Station gets busier by the day...

Since opening on July 20, Ironhouse Sanitary District's Residential Recycled Water Fill Station has given away more than 1 Million gallons of water to Oakley and Bethel Island residents interested in keeping their grass and plants green over the summer during the drought.

Here are the total number of gallons given away by day to the residents during the month of August:

New sign ups to receive free recycled water are taken on hour after open business hours:

Monday and Wednesday: 1 pm to 7 pm  (regular hours noon to 7 pm)

Saturday: 9 am to noon (regular hours 8 am to noon)

In the next couple of weeks the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station hours will change to be open six days per week. Keep an eye out for more information.

Update for Residential Recycled Water Fill Station

Work has started on the new pipeline that will send water directly from a storage hold at ISD Water Recycling Facility to the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station. Once the pipeline is installed it will be much easier for ISD staff to make sure water is available at the fill station all day long.

Many of you have been waiting for the pipeline to be installed in hopes of increased hours and days at the fill station and that is still being planned. Hopefully we will have more news on that front in the days to come.

In the meantime thank you for being patient with us. We are a small district and still learning all the ins and outs of keeping a program like this running with the increasing demand for the recycled water.

Here is a chart of the water usage since opening on June 20.

Busy Days at the Fill Station last week

Don't forget to stop by ISD's Residential Recycled Water Fill Station this week and get your stamp for the "Showcase Oakley" event. We're giving out information on our recycled water and you'll also receive a free grocery tote.

Here are the totals so far since we opened the facility.

Training sessions begin one hour after opening

New users of the Recycled Water Fill Station must register and take a five minute training session before getting any recycled water. The process is usually very quick but with the rush of users at first opening at the fill station, new users sometimes experience longer wait times. For this reason we are going to hold off on offering training sessions until one hour after opening the fill station each day.

This means training sessions will take place during the hours of:
Monday — 1 p.m. to 6:45 p.m.
Wednesday — 1 p.m. to 6:45 p.m.
Saturday — 9 a.m. to 11:45 p.m.

If you would like to fill out the paperwork in advanced the forms are located on ISD's website at:
http://isdp2.org/ on our Recycled Water page.

Once you are registered you are welcome to come in as many times as you like by just showing your registration card.

Remember you must be an Oakley or Bethel Island resident.

Implementing new rules at the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station

ISD staff is working on making the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station run smoother for all the residents who are taking advantage of the FREE recycled water to irrigate their lawns, plants, gardens and trees. 

Consider waiting a half hour before coming at start time

For the most part the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station line runs fairly quickly. The long wait seems to occur during opening when residents line up about an hour early to make sure they are first on line to receive water. When we open we work to make sure everyone gets in to get their water as soon as possible. Already we are seeing that some water users are waiting until about a half hour after opening to come in and with the shorter lines we are running a lot faster. We don't generally see long line during the rest of the day.

Use only one hose

We want everyone to get in and out as quick as possible. With our new pump the water comes out very fast, however when all the water hoses are on it slows down the process. Please be considerate of your neighbors and use only one hose at a time. This is proven to speed up the process for everyone. 

Big tanks use lanes 2 and 3

Those with 55 gallon tanks or more should only use the green hoses and use only lanes 2 and 3. We ran some trials and found that if the bigger tanks stay to those lanes and the 50 gallon or less users use the red hoses in lane 1 everything runs quicker. Again use only one hose at a time.

We'll be putting up some new signs in the next week to create two lanes to make everything run smoother. 

New Pipeline

Over the past few weeks we've been working to make sure that there is enough stored water so everyone gets to have their share. To that end the ISD Board of Directors approved the construction of a pipeline that would run from the Water Recycling Facility to the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station. This will help increase storage capacity of the recycled water and reduce staff time in filling the three water tanks onsite at the fill station. That line should take about two weeks to build.

Thanks for being so patient. We've learned a lot in the past month and we are working everyday to make sure this program is a success for everyone. 

Usage for Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Thanks for your patience when using the Residential Recycled Water Fill Stations. Remember this is a pilot program and we are learning as we grow. 

More and more residents are using ISD's Fill Station

Every few days we are posting our Residential Recycled Water use chart and if you take a look, you'll see that more and more residents are finding uses for ISD's recycled water. You can't image how happy that makes the Board and Staff at ISD. We've been excited about the high quality water we've been producing since opening the new Water Recycling Facility in 2011 and this is our chance to let it shine. 

As with any pilot program we are going to face growing pains, but ISD's staff is working to fix the issues as they pop up. As we are a small district we are working to keep the cost of providing water free to our residents down. We set up a method that would allow us to store our highly monitored recycled water in tanks and then placed them in an easy accessible location on our property. 

Upon opening on June 20 we had one- 21,000 gallon storage tank, but quickly noted that would not be big enough. We brought in a second tank during the first week. Now going into week four, we are adding a third storage tank. We are hoping this will allow us to store up to 58,000 gallons of recycled water. 

We are only open for four hours this Saturday so these tanks should see us through. We are continuing setting up new ways to keep the tanks full for our longer weekday hours and hopefully we will have all the kinks worked out over the next couple of weeks. Thanks for being patient with us. 

Our Saturday hours are currently 8 am to noon and we will be open again on Monday from noon to 7 pm.

Have a great weekend!

Wednesday, July 15 totals for the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station

ISD Residential Fill Station Report for Saturday, July 11, 2015

Check out how many people have been visiting our Fill Station so far

Welcome to the ISD Residential Recycled Water Fill Station News and Notes Blog

On June 20 ISD opened a Residential Recycled Water Fill Station to help Oakley and Bethel Island residents keep their lawn, trees and other landscaping green and bright throughout the coming year.

What is recycled water?

It is wastewater that has received extensive treatment so it can be used for many non-potable uses such as landscaping irrigation, surface washing, dust control, food crop irrigation, decorative fountains, toilets flushing, and much more.

Why all the purple color?

Non-potable recycled water is often distributed with a dual piping network that keeps recycled water pipes completely separate from potable water pipes. In the United States and some other countries, non-potable recycled water is distributed in lavender (light purple or the color of Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp's waistcoat, whichever Willy Wonka reference you like) pipes to distinguish it from potable water. The use of the color purple pipes is noted to be pioneered by the Irvine Ranch Water District in Southern California.  

These days when we talk about any kind of recycled water we ofter reference the color purple or purple pipe. 

Can I water my plants with recycled water? 

Yes, all plants can be watered with recycled water. This includes edible plants such as fruit trees, vegetables and herbs. Just remember to wash all fruits, vegetables, and herbs with drinking water prior to consumption. 

What do I have to do to get my own recycled water?

It is simple and just takes a few minutes. Complete a use agreement form and bring it to the residential fill station at 450 Walnut Meadows Dr., Oakley, during the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station open hours posted at www.ISDP2.com. You will also find an application on the website so you can have it ready when you come in.

 The on-duty attendant will provide required training in the proper use of recycled water and procedures for collection, issue you a wallet card, and answer any questions you may have.

Where can I find out more information?

Visit ISDs website at www.ISDP2.org or stop by the Residential Recycled Water Fill Station during business hours.