With an eye toward future water conservation and cost savings to customers, the Castaic Lake Water Agency (CLWA) and SunPower on Wednesday announced completion of the new 3.5 megawatt photovoltaic solar plant that is touted to use less water to produce electricity for tens of thousands of residents of northern Los Angeles County. In combination with the CLWA’s existing 1 megawatt SunPower solar plant, electricity costs may be reduced by as much as $20 million over the next 25 years.
The CLWA reports that Santa Clarita Valley residents use about 250 gallons of water per capita daily, which equates to moving about a ton (2,000 pounds) of water for each resident everyday year-round. The new solar plant may result in considerable reduction in the cost of transporting, treating and storing water.
“The savings we generate can be used to improve services to our rate payers, while the avoided fossil-fuel related emissions benefit the community with cleaner air,” said Dan Masnada, general manager of the CLWA. “Our goal is to provide reliable quality water at a reasonable cost to the Santa Clarita Valley.”
The CLWA is the public water wholesaler for the Santa Clarita Valley and is one of 29 State Water Project contractors, receiving water imported from northern California through the California Aqueduct. The Santa Clarita Water District services about 124,000 people with more than 28,000 connections in portions of Santa Clarita, and also provides water to unincorporated areas of northern Los Angeles County.
Groundwater levels are plummeting daily across Los Angeles County, particularly at the southern end. Two months ago, a well was checked in Pico Rivera and the water level had dropped to 102 feet representing a loss of 17 feet of drinking water compared to the same measurement taken last year. Another well in Baldwin Park is now 18 feet below its normal level. Such steep drop-offs in drinking water is putting a strain on water resources for about 4 million people. A fourth year of drought has brought the county’s water levels to historically low levels.
“The system has worked until now,” said Anthony Zampiello, executive director for the San Gabriel Watermaster, an agency which oversees the main San Gabriel water basin, a region historically replenished by runoff from the San Gabriel Mountains. “The drought is stressing all of the safeguards put into place to provide regular water. The Baldwin Park well has never been this low.” The safeguard Zampiello refers to is a court order put into place in the mid 1970s that specified an “operating range” for groundwater levels. The original source of replenishment for both the San Gabriel and Central basins was runoff from the mountains, captured in giant spreading storage facilities so the water could percolate through the soil and into capture zones. The drought has significantly slowed this process of accessing fresh water.
The Los Angeles River last week saw good water flow from the resulting mountain runoff. Esther Feldman, president of California Conservation Solutions, this week said county residents should not discount this source of water because it has always been available. This dry weather run-off typically is not used for drinking but can be, once it’s treated.
“Dry-weather runoff has been the poor, forgotten Cinderella out there,” Feldman said. On Sept. 25, Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 985 by state Sen. Fran Paveley (D-Agoura Hills) which will require water agencies to consider dry-weather water capture in future water-saving plans and water-recycling projects. “The numbers speak for themselves,” Feldman continued. “Dry-weather runoff is a huge resource we can take advantage of, especially when we’re heading into (the) fifth year of a drought. We have to make good use of this resource.”
The funding for proposed collection of dry-weather runoff is part of the voter-approved Proposition 1, which will set aside some $200 million of the $7.5 billion water bond to serve this purpose. Feldman’s group has found about 10,000 parcels countywide that could be transformed into dry-weather runoff capture spaces. All the proposed parcels are said to be within 500 feet of a storm drain.
The drought has created a black market for water. Thieves are targeting unprotected wells and reservoirs, siphoning off water and selling it to the highest bidder. One fire station in North San Juan (along State Route 49 on the San Juan Ridge in Gold Country) reported empty water tanks during a routine inspection this summer. “We were just absolutely stunned,” said Boyd Johnson, a battalion chief with the North San Juan Fire Department. “Fires are on everyone’s mind during the dry weather, so to see this happen, I think it really scared people.”
The state’s law enforcement entities have not traditionally looked at water theft, and when police do find someone stealing water, the culprit is normally issued a fine of $25. Citizens in North San Juan are installing locking mechanisms on their outside spigots, and the fire department said last week that response times may become a little slower, if they have to install combination locks on fire hydrants.
NASA, which monitors water levels through satellites, this week reported that the world’s supply of groundwater is declining rapidly, primarily because of increased agricultural use. Based on data collected by the space agency’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, regions like the North China Plain, Australia’s Canning Basin, the Northwest Sahara Acquifer System, acquifers beneath northwestern India and the Middle East, the Guarani Acquifer in South America, and the U.S.A.’s High Plains and Central Valley acquifers are running low on fresh water. The Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins have lost roughly 15 cubic kilometers (4 cubic miles) of total water per year since 2011. That’s more water than all 38 million Californians use for domestic and municipal supplies annually.
