Encinitas, Calif. — Olivenhain Municipal Water District’s Board of Directors accepted at its March 15 meeting California Water Environment Association San Diego section’s 2022 Plant of the Year Award for its 4S Ranch Water Reclamation Facility.
The Plant of the Year award acknowledges OMWD’s 4S Ranch WRF accomplishments in regulatory compliance, innovative practices, cost-effectiveness, and superior plant operations.
A new recycled water pipeline is being tapped by Olivenhain Municipal Water District customers for landscape irrigation.
Olivenhain Municipal Water District has successfully converted Westmont of Encinitas to recycled water for landscape irrigation. The assisted living facility is the first of many customers along the Manchester Avenue and South El Camino Real corridor to tap into the newly installed recycled water pipeline.
Additional customers along the corridor are working to convert their irrigation systems to accommodate the new recycled water supply, which will ultimately reduce demand for imported potable water by more than 27 million gallons every year. As the impact of California’s drought continues to be challenging, projects like this that help save potable water are even more urgent.
“With the unprecedented drought situation we’re in, reducing our reliance on imported water is essential,” said OMWD Board Secretary Larry Watt. “Investing in drought-resilient supplies is a top priority and every new recycled water customer we connect to our distribution system decreases demand for imported water.”
The new pipeline is an element of the larger North San Diego County Regional Recycled Water Project — a collaborative effort among nine North County agencies that coordinate across jurisdictional boundaries. The recycled water being delivered through the new pipeline is produced at San Elijo Joint Powers Authority’s water reclamation facility in Cardiff.
OMWD has aggressively sought grant funding for the pipeline project to make it cost-effective for ratepayers. The efforts have been successful, with OMWD achieving $1,350,000 from California’s Department of Water Resources for two separate segments of the pipeline. The pipeline is part of a suite of OMWD recycled water projects included in the North San Diego County Regional Recycled Water Project that was awarded $23.9 million in funds from the US Bureau of Reclamation’s Title XVI Water Reclamation and Reuse Program.
The Olivenhain Municipal Water District is a public agency providing water, wastewater services, recycled water, hydroelectricity, and operation of Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve. Organized in 1959, OMWD currently serves approximately 87,000 customers over 48 square miles in northern San Diego County.
(Editor’s note: The Olivenhain Municipal Water District is one of the San Diego County Water Authority’s 24 member agencies that deliver water across the San Diego County region.)
Encinitas, Calif. — Olivenhain Municipal Water District has successfully converted Westmont of Encinitas to recycled water for landscape irrigation. The assisted living facility is the first of many customers along the Manchester Avenue and South El Camino Real corridor to tap into the newly installed recycled water pipeline.
Additional customers along the corridor are working to convert their irrigation systems to accommodate the new recycled water supply, which will ultimately reduce demand for imported potable water by more than 27 million gallons every year. As the impact of California’s drought continues to be challenging, projects like this that help save potable water are even more urgent.
The San Diego County Water Authority has asked for public input over the next two months as it drafts a new two-year budget and sets rates to cover the cost of water-reliability projects that keep San Diego immune from drought.
Agency staff has recommended a $1.85 billion budget for the two-year period beginning July 1, 2023, and ending June 30, 2025.
That represents a 5% increase, but the 2024 rate increase is tentatively set at 14%, though efforts are underway to lower that.
California is no stranger to big swings between wet and dry weather. The “atmospheric river” storms that have battered the state this winter are part of a system that has long interrupted periods of drought with huge bursts of rain — indeed, they provide somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of all precipitation on the West Coast.
The parade of storms that has struck California in recent months has dropped more than 30 trillion gallons of water on the state, refilling reservoirs that had sat empty for years and burying mountain towns in snow.
California’s latest atmospheric rivers are sending rainfall higher into the mountains and onto the state’s crucial snowpack. The rain alone is a problem for low-lying areas already dealing with destructive flooding, but the prospect of rain on the deep mountain snow has triggered widespread flood warnings.
When rain falls on snow, it creates complex flood risks that are hard to forecast. Those risks are also rising with climate change.
The latest in a series of atmospheric river storms soaked California on Tuesday, bringing another deluge of rain to the already-saturated state, while a Nor’easter swirling over New York and New England prompted emergency orders and closed roads.
Several inches of rain was forecast in some areas of California, while as much as 3 feet (0.9 m) of fresh snow was expected in high-mountain elevations where snowdrifts already reach rooftops, according to the National Weather Service.
Glacial temperatures, battering rainfall and historic levels of snow are complicating conditions at ski resorts around Lake Tahoe, leaving crews to work around the clock to dig out chairlifts — usually suspended high above the slopes — that are now buried in snow.
As yet another atmospheric river descends on Southern California this week, Santa Monica is prepared. Since November, the city has been using a first-of-its-kind water recycling facility to capture rain and store it underground for future use.
“Instead of this water flowing into the ocean, we’re taking that back and keeping it locally to replenish water supplies,” Santa Monica water resources manager Sunny Wang told Spectrum News 1, as he stood atop the stealthy infrastructure that makes it possible: a parking lot.
The latest atmospheric river surging into California probably won’t result in worst-case flooding, state water officials and scientists said Monday. But as global warming shifts the range of possibilities, this winter’s often record levels of snow and rain could set the stage for deluges in spring if there are more strong storms or an early heatwave, they warned.
The series of intense storms started on the last day of 2022, resulting in early January floods that killed 22 people and a federal emergency declaration in 17 counties.
