For decades, treated wastewater from Big Bear Valley has been piped down the mountain to Lucerne Valley, where it irrigates alfalfa fields in the high desert rather than returning to the aquifer that feeds local taps. Now the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency is pushing ahead with a project that would keep much more of that water close to home, sending purified wastewater to recharge basins near Erwin Lake instead of letting it drain out of the watershed entirely.
The agency's Phase 1 Greenspot Recharge Project carries an estimated total cost of $88.5 million, including contingency, according to a funding and financing plan presentation posted by Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency. As of May 31, 2026, the agency had already spent $7.17 million, leaving $81.4 million still to be financed. That figure differs from the $88.6 million total cited in SFGATE’s reporting on the project, though both figures describe the same Greenspot plan.
Under the proposal, purified water from BBARWA’s treatment plant would be sent to recharge basins in the Erwin Lake area, where it would undergo additional natural filtration through the soil before eventually reaching municipal wells, the agency says on its project page. BBARWA purchased 20 acres for the project, with roughly seven of those acres proposed for the new recharge basins.
How Much Water Is At Stake
The project aims to return up to 500 acre-feet of purified water annually to the local aquifer, equivalent to what about 2,700 valley households use in a year, according to KBHR 93.3/102.5. BBARWA has sent more than 40 billion gallons of wastewater to Lucerne Valley since 1980, per SFGATE's reporting, water that never makes its way back into the valley's own groundwater supply.
Big Bear Valley communities depend almost entirely on local groundwater replenished by precipitation, since the area has no access to the State Water Project or another imported source, SFGATE reports, citing agency general manager David Lawrence. Once that groundwater is used for households and irrigation, it isn't replenished the way surface supplies elsewhere might be — a dynamic that has shaped the valley's wastewater reuse debate for more than two decades, per the same reporting.
Board Approval and the Fate of a Bigger Plan
The BBARWA board voted on April 27, 2026, to move forward with a modified Greenspot alternative, according to the agency's board meeting packet. Under that revised plan, Greenspot would serve as the Phase I discharge location, while a separate site known as Stanfield Marsh was preserved as a potential Phase II option down the road, the board packet shows.
The current Greenspot proposal is a scaled-back version of an earlier plan known as Replenish Big Bear, which the agency began discussing in 2017, per SFGATE. That original version would have routed treated wastewater through Stanfield Marsh and into Big Bear Lake itself for storage before later groundwater recharge, adding about 2,200 acre-feet of treated wastewater to the lake annually while removing 500 acre-feet per year for recharge. SFGATE reports the plan faced opposition from local environmental groups and community members over cost and expected effects on lake levels, and that evaporation, according to Lawrence, would have exceeded the roughly 4.5 inches per year the lake was projected to rise, prompting agency board members to halt that version of the work before it was revived in its current, less ambitious form.
Final funding and construction for the Greenspot project had not yet been approved by BBARWA's governing board as of October 2, 2026, KBHR reported. The station also noted that field testing planned for the Erwin Lake site — geophysical surveys, shallow excavations and exploratory drilling at up to 13 locations — is part of the early design phase and does not constitute construction activity.
Paying For It: Loans, Grants and Rate Hikes
BBARWA's financing plan relies on a mix of funding sources for the remaining project costs: a 55% WIFIA loan, 25% federal grants, 13% future bonds, 6% state grants and 1% cash and reserves, according to the agency's presentation. The agency's WIFIA loan has been on pause since August 2025, with the current estimated loan size at $48.999 million, subject to change. Before BBARWA can draw on that loan for capital costs, a construction contract would require approval by a four-fifths vote of the governing board, per the financing plan.
The plan calls for two 18% rate increases in fiscal years 2028 and 2029, followed by smaller projected increases of 6% in 2030 and 4% in 2031, the financing presentation shows. Annual debt service is expected to climb to roughly $4.2 million by fiscal year 2031 as the agency takes on new borrowing for the project.
Permits, Public Questions and a Broader Trend
The Greenspot project will still require a range of permits, and the agency board must sign off on construction plans and a final project cost before work can begin, per SFGATE. At an April board meeting, some board members debated whether the project disproportionately serves Big Bear Lake, which contains much of the region's new development, while some members of the public questioned whether surrounding unincorporated communities stand to benefit as much, SFGATE reports.
Big Bear's push toward water recycling mirrors efforts elsewhere in California, where communities are increasingly turning to wastewater reuse to stretch supplies, according to SFGATE. In Orange County, the Irvine Ranch Water District says recycled water meets about a quarter of its service-area demand, producing almost 10 billion gallons a year that's delivered to more than 6,000 metered customer connections for uses like landscape irrigation, toilet flushing in dual-plumbed buildings and industrial processes, per Irvine Ranch Water District. The Orange County Water District separately pipes purified wastewater directly into groundwater aquifers, while Los Angeles and San Diego are developing their own projects to purify wastewater for drinking water and cut reliance on imported supplies, SFGATE notes.
