Soquel Creek Water District to Help Santa Cruz with Emergency Water Shortage

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, CA — Soquel Creek Water District officials said today that they would assist the city of Santa Cruz and the unincorporated community of Davenport with their short-term emergency water shortages caused by the rainstorm. SCWD is providing up to 1 million gallons of water per day to Santa Cruz, population about 63,000, and 50,000 gallons per day to Davenport, population about 400.

"Even though we're in a long-term water shortage, providing water to our neighbor agencies in an emergency situation is the right thing to do for our community," SCWD board president Tom LaHue said in a statement.

On Monday evening, Santa Cruz Water Department officials asked their 96,000 customers to cut back on water use by 30 percent for the next week due to a leak that appeared in the Newell Creek Pipeline early that
morning.

"We ask our customers to please cut back when using water for essential uses like bathing and cooking and to postpone any nonessential uses like laundry or automatic dishwashers for the next several days," water
director Rosemary Menard said in a statement.

Powerful storms can cause flowing sources like rivers and streams, which account for 95 percent of Santa Cruz's water supply, to become too turbid to treat.

"People may have the misconception that capturing storm water would serve as a panacea for additional water supply," SCWD general manager Ron Duncan said in a statement. "But as we see from this situation the water quality and turbidity that results from winter water is sometimes too poor for treatment facilities
to handle, and it can't be depended upon," Duncan said.

In such cases, Santa Cruz depends on the Loch Lomond reservoir, but on Monday morning, the main artery from the reservoir to the Graham Hill Water Treatment Plant sprung a leak. The Newell Creek pipeline is currently leaking about 1,500 gallons per minute and will be shut down for repairs for at least a few days. Without the pipeline, the city is only able to produce about two-thirds of its normal drinking water supply.

"Losing the Newell Creek pipeline at this time of year is a significant loss to our water supply," Menard said.
"This kind of event again underscores our community's need for infrastructure redundancy and additional supply reliability," Menard said.

Before the leak, the water department was producing between 5 million and 6 million gallons of water per day, a typical amount for the wintertime.

Department officials predict that they will produce only 4 million gallons per day for the next week, city officials said.

By Bay City News

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