Prado Wetland

the prado well in the northwest corner of riverside county a gush of water flows into one of several bombs filled with cat tales and bull right while you might not guess it from looking at the placid seeing these ponds are filtering pollution out of the santa ana river the orange county water district has expanded the natural lens and hear added some manmade features and diverted more water from the river into it the water district that tenet says the santa ana is a major drinking water source for orange county and in the early nineties it was struggling with high levels of nitrate which is a health concern for babies actually can get into an intense live stream it basically doesn't give the baby enough oxygen to breathe on too much nitrate in the water can also cause large blooms of algae the nitrate in the santa ana comes from discharges of treated waste water runoff from nearby theories and gold farms tenet says the cat tales and bull rush absorbed some of them lightly but most of it is removed by a process called dean education the education actually occurs

in the roots of all russian that felled by little my partner so the microorganisms take nitrate and they break it down into a usable form of magical lands but also the primary byproduct of that process is nitrogen gas in nitrogen gas makes up the vast majority of the air you breathe tenet says in the summer months the about four hundred and fifty acres of wetland here and remove up to a ton of nitrate a day and says water district assistant general manager craig miller this natural treatment is relatively inexpensive we'll treat water add about one thirtieth the cost of putting in a treatment unless there's no energy requirement there's no chemical requirement by product that harms the environment and fact it's a huge benefit to the environment by also providing not only recreational opportunities but a huge wild the water district has removed invasive plants and introduce more native plants it's been a boon to some of the nearly three

hundred species of birds that live here including several rare birds like the endangered geese bells aereo had ten it heads into the woods in search of one it makes riding founded with the question who are these tiny gray bird with long bobbing tales live in the wooded area surrounding the marsh and they'll be releasing from a shrug near the trail but it's a bit hard to hear because many other birds are singing is beads bishops tenet says the syrians have declined steeply inside habitat they lived in has basically is in the mid eighties they were down there today but because of the restoration of the prado area there are now more than three hundred fifty years here it's the second largest the real population in the state many municipalities and

developers are hoping to expand on the success of weapons like prado and use them to help treat pollution that runs off city streets for example orange county is planning to use a series of manmade marshes to remove nitrate phosphorus and bacteria from runoff flowing into san diego creek in irvine but ecologists caution it's not easy to build weapons to both clean water and provide quality habitat eric stein is with the southern california coast a water research project part of that they get caught different parts of the fifth them are functioning from a primarily for more equality perspective and other parts of the system are functioning primarily for habitat stein says it's mostly the marsh that cleans the water that much of the wildlife uses the landscape surrounding it smaller urban wetlands built to clean water may not be able to provide as much habitat as prado does meantime the orange county water district is building on its success it has received a million dollar grant from the state to expand the

prado wetland and it's looking at three other places where wetlands might be used to clean drinking water in narco bosses at yale at nine point three kpcc