Mark Dolson
The San Lorenzo Valley Water District (SLVWD) Board has met once since my last report: on February 6th. This meeting featured two useful presentations and also two relatively routine contract awards.
Presentations
Environmental Planner Chris Klier introduced a presentation by a consultant from Navigating Preparedness Associates on the District’s development of a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP). The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) and FEMA require SLVWD to have such a plan in place in order to be eligible for certain kinds of funding. An LHMP begins by assessing the risks to District staff and infrastructure posed by earthquakes, storms, fires, climate change, and cyberattacks. The next step is the development of a list of “mitigation projects.” For SLVWD, the current draft LHMP lists thirty distinct mitigation activities with associated cost estimates (below $100,000, below $1 million, above $1 million), prioritization (low, medium, high), and required time-frames for each. The District is currently in the midst of gathering public comment, and it has already received an impressive amount of public input. The crucial remaining open question is how SLVWD will translate the LHMP into action: sixteen of the thirty listed activities are rated as High Priority, and eleven of these sixteen are estimated to cost over $1 million each.
The Board received an unrelated presentation from Heidi Luckenbach who, one year ago, was appointed as the new Water Director for the City of Santa Cruz. Heidi explained that 66% of the City’s water comes from the San Lorenzo River (and the adjacent Tait Wells); 11% comes from Loch Lomond (which is filled via local runoff and also via water pumped up from the San Lorenzo River at the Felton Diversion); 15% comes from North Coast surface water; and 8% comes from the City’s Beltz Wells. Santa Cruz water customers maintain some of the lowest water usage in the state at 44 gallons per person per day. Even with 40% growth since the 1960s, the City is still using only as much water today as it did back then.
In the years ahead, the City needs new water supplies for two reasons. First, additional housing planned for Santa Cruz will increase water demand by 10%. Second, climate change is producing “weather whiplash” (cycling between floods and droughts), and a multi-year drought can decrease the water supply by 10-50%. In principle, the City can only increase its access to water in any given year via some combination of increasing storage capacity, improving the coordinated use of surface water and groundwater, using recycled water, and desalination.
Luckenbach did not specifically discuss the City’s prioritization or plans for these various options. However, she described three current major infrastructure projects that the City is pursuing:
- The Santa Cruz / Scotts Valley Intertie project is connecting the treated water systems of the City of Santa Cruz and the Scotts Valley Water District, enhancing emergency preparedness, conjunctive use, active and passive recharge in the Santa Margarita Groundwater Basin, and improved fire protection through increased fire-response flows. The intertie will run along La Madrona Drive and is projected to complete in about a year at a cost of around $9 million.
- The City is continuing to work in phases on improvements to its Newell Creek Pipeline (running from the Newell Creek dam to the City’s Graham Hill Treatment Plant). As part of this project over the next two years, 3.7 miles of pipeline running through Henry Cowell Park will be abandoned and replaced with a pipeline along Graham Hill Road at a cost of $30 million. SLV residents may find this particularly relevant for its potential impact on traffic.
- Over the next five years, the City is also spending about $140 million on improvements to its Graham Hill Treatment Plant, built in the 1960s. This is the City’s only surface water treatment plant. From 2020 to 2024, the City also spent about $100 million to replace the inlet/outlet pipe to the Loch Lomond Reservoir, also built in 1961.
Board members expressed hope that this could be the beginning of a new era of improved collaboration between the City and SLVWD. This was a reference to the City’s previous costly interference in SLVWD’s ongoing efforts to refine its water rights so that it can minimize its use of groundwater across its system.
Contract Awards
The Board unanimously approved a $50,000 contract with Dudek (the highest rated of eight bidders) for grant writing assistance. The District had previously hired a consultant to provide this assistance in 2021, and the return on this investment has been enormous. Unfortunately, the untimely resignation of the District’s former Environmental Planner in late 2023 resulted in a situation where there was insufficient staff to continue the pursuit of grants. It’s impossible to know for sure, but this may have implicitly cost the District hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost funding opportunities, even as it created the false appearance of a cost savings (due to the resulting open positions).
In a separate agenda item, the Board unanimously approved a $400,000 contract with Corcus (the lowest of three bidders) for the replacement of water mains along two aging bridges on Highway 9 in north Boulder Creek. This is a time-critical activity that is being driven by Caltrans, which is planning to replace the bridges.
Correction
My previous column inadvertently switched the public appointees to the Engineering Committee with those appointed to the Environmental Committee. I apologize for this error.
On the Water Front
The San Lorenzo Valley Water District (SLVWD) Board has met once since my last report: on February 6th. This meeting featured two useful presentations and also two relatively routine contract awards.
Presentations
Environmental Planner Chris Klier introduced a presentation by a consultant from Navigating Preparedness Associates on the District’s development of a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP). The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) and FEMA require SLVWD to have such a plan in place in order to be eligible for certain kinds of funding. An LHMP begins by assessing the risks to District staff and infrastructure posed by earthquakes, storms, fires, climate change, and cyberattacks. The next step is the development of a list of “mitigation projects.” For SLVWD, the current draft LHMP lists thirty distinct mitigation activities with associated cost estimates (below $100,000, below $1 million, above $1 million), prioritization (low, medium, high), and required time-frames for each. The District is currently in the midst of gathering public comment, and it has already received an impressive amount of public input. The crucial remaining open question is how SLVWD will translate the LHMP into action: sixteen of the thirty listed activities are rated as High Priority, and eleven of these sixteen are estimated to cost over $1 million each.
The Board received an unrelated presentation from Heidi Luckenbach who, one year ago, was appointed as the new Water Director for the City of Santa Cruz. Heidi explained that 66% of the City’s water comes from the San Lorenzo River (and the adjacent Tait Wells); 11% comes from Loch Lomond (which is filled via local runoff and also via water pumped up from the San Lorenzo River at the Felton Diversion); 15% comes from North Coast surface water; and 8% comes from the City’s Beltz Wells. Santa Cruz water customers maintain some of the lowest water usage in the state at 44 gallons per person per day. Even with 40% growth since the 1960s, the City is still using only as much water today as it did back then.
In the years ahead, the City needs new water supplies for two reasons. First, additional housing planned for Santa Cruz will increase water demand by 10%. Second, climate change is producing “weather whiplash” (cycling between floods and droughts), and a multi-year drought can decrease the water supply by 10-50%. In principle, the City can only increase its access to water in any given year via some combination of increasing storage capacity, improving the coordinated use of surface water and groundwater, using recycled water, and desalination.
Luckenbach did not specifically discuss the City’s prioritization or plans for these various options. However, she described three current major infrastructure projects that the City is pursuing:
- The Santa Cruz / Scotts Valley Intertie project is connecting the treated water systems of the City of Santa Cruz and the Scotts Valley Water District, enhancing emergency preparedness, conjunctive use, active and passive recharge in the Santa Margarita Groundwater Basin, and improved fire protection through increased fire-response flows. The intertie will run along La Madrona Drive and is projected to complete in about a year at a cost of around $9 million.
- The City is continuing to work in phases on improvements to its Newell Creek Pipeline (running from the Newell Creek dam to the City’s Graham Hill Treatment Plant). As part of this project over the next two years, 3.7 miles of pipeline running through Henry Cowell Park will be abandoned and replaced with a pipeline along Graham Hill Road at a cost of $30 million. SLV residents may find this particularly relevant for its potential impact on traffic.
- Over the next five years, the City is also spending about $140 million on improvements to its Graham Hill Treatment Plant, built in the 1960s. This is the City’s only surface water treatment plant. From 2020 to 2024, the City also spent about $100 million to replace the inlet/outlet pipe to the Loch Lomond Reservoir, also built in 1961.
Board members expressed hope that this could be the beginning of a new era of improved collaboration between the City and SLVWD. This was a reference to the City’s previous costly interference in SLVWD’s ongoing efforts to refine its water rights so that it can minimize its use of groundwater across its system.
Contract Awards
The Board unanimously approved a $50,000 contract with Dudek (the highest rated of eight bidders) for grant writing assistance. The District had previously hired a consultant to provide this assistance in 2021, and the return on this investment has been enormous. Unfortunately, the untimely resignation of the District’s former Environmental Planner in late 2023 resulted in a situation where there was insufficient staff to continue the pursuit of grants. It’s impossible to know for sure, but this may have implicitly cost the District hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost funding opportunities, even as it created the false appearance of a cost savings (due to the resulting open positions).
In a separate agenda item, the Board unanimously approved a $400,000 contract with Corcus (the lowest of three bidders) for the replacement of water mains along two aging bridges on Highway 9 in north Boulder Creek. This is a time-critical activity that is being driven by Caltrans, which is planning to replace the bridges.
Correction
My previous column inadvertently switched the public appointees to the Engineering Committee with those appointed to the Environmental Committee. I apologize for this error.