Mesa Water open education center to show students, residents what goes into getting water to taps

Until now, much of what the fifth graders at Page Academy in Costa Mesa learned about water came out of a book.

But during their visit to the new Mesa Water Education Center in Costa Mesa on Tuesday, March 25, the students could see, touch and even taste water and get an up-close look at the infrastructure connected to delivering the precious natural resource to faucets.

Situated within the Mesa Water District‘s facility on Geisler Avenue, the 2,400-square-foot education center features more than 20 visual and interactive exhibits providing an informative – and even entertaining – A-to-Z lesson on where water comes, how it arrives at the faucet, where it winds up after going down the drain and every step in between.

“It’s been very interesting and cool to see, especially the fire hydrant,” Page fifth-grader Sebastion Townley said. “I get to see what (water) looks like underground. I only see the top. I only see the water coming out of it, but now you see where it all comes from.”

The Mesa Water District provides water to 110,000 residents and businesses within an 18-square-mile area that includes most of Costa Mesa, part of Newport Beach and some unincorporated areas of the county, including John Wayne Airport.

“We’ve got stormwater, we’ve got rainwater, we’ve got well water, we’ve got Colorado River water,” said the district’s board president, Marice DePasquale, pointing to an educational exhibit listing the types of water that exist. “And a little bit of education on how the earth is two-thirds water and you can’t drain the ocean, but the ocean accounts for about 96% of the water cycle.”

Visitors can see also pipelines and a pump station.

Interactive maps show the location of each of the Mesa Water District’s 3,400 fire hydrants, 317 miles of pipeline along with every pump station, reservoir and aquifer.

While the board is holding an official ribbon cutting on March 28, the education center has been open since January, mostly hosting groups related to the water industry and citizens groups, Mesa Water District spokeswoman Kaitlyn Norris said.

This center was built with a curriculum that meets Next Generation Science Standards and STEM guidelines and is a premier destination for fifth-grade field trips and tours, district officials said.

“We’re really excited,” Norris said. “We do have some school field trips coming up. We’re trying to get a few more in before the end of the school year.”

The board of directors also expects to use the education center, a $1 million investment, as a way to promote and educate students and the public on the various careers within the water industry.

Chris Aihara, math and science teacher at Page Academy, said the fifth-grade curriculum includes lessons on the water cycle, water distribution, water’s impact on the climate, erosion, and other topics.

By visiting the education center, lessons from a textbook come to life, Aihara said.

“They make that real-world connection,” the teacher said. “They’ve seen it. They’ve touched it. They have these images that they can tap into that makes the learning just more personal and it makes it easier to learn.”

One fascinating fact:

The facility that houses the education center also serves as a state-of-the art water processing plant that pulls water from a deep aquifer located right under Costa Mesa and contains water that is 12,000 years old.

This water is sometimes referred to as “redwood tea,” because of its amber-colored tint from the remnants of the redwood trees that once grew in the coastal area of Southern California more than 30,000 years ago.

Although the water is safe to drink straight from the ground, Mesa Water uses nanofiltration technology to remove the amber tint and the clear water is added to the water supply.

This water source makes the Mesa Water District the only water district in Orange County to meet 100% of its community’s water needs with locally sourced water, officials said.