In July 2017, Water. Desalination + reuse (Faversham House) reported that the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California had approved a USD 13.9 million construction contract on 11 July 2017 for an advanced water treatment demonstration plant. Rated at about 1,900 m³/day (500,000 US gallons daily), the unit was to run for at least a year and provide data for a possible full-scale facility. The plan was to treat effluent from a wastewater plant in Carson further with reverse osmosis to recharge groundwater.
The report showed that reverse osmosis was increasingly being planned for wastewater reuse in Southern California at the time, as a drought-resistant addition to imported water.