The Rising Cost of Using Delta Water In Santa Clara Valley Water District

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Santa Teresa Water Treatment Plant Sedimentation Basin in Almaden Valley

Photo Note: That green tint in the water is actually the algae that grows due to the high-nutrient discharge of farm runoff into the Delta and then concentrated in San Luis Reservoir. When the depth gets low enough, as it is now, the light penetration causes the reservoir to bloom. In order to avoid objectionable taste and odors in our drinking water, we must remove the algae at our local treatment plants, using expensive carbon filters. Think a 100 million gallon per day Brita filter.

Our first taste of imported water in Santa Clara County was almost free to the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Since investor-owned water companies, like San Jose Water Company, were blocked by federal legislation from purchasing water from San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct, cities along the South Bay's shore formed municipal water departments and contracted directly with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commision to buy water. Today, those contracts supply 15% of the county's water, although the cost of that supply will rise 400% to pay for the $4 Billion in bonds sold by SF to rebuild most of the 90-year-old system. 

This situation would present a problem for the Santa Clara Valley Water District if those municipal water departments began pumping cheaper groundwater into their service areas to avoid paying the higher costs for Hetch Hetchy supply. However, the price gap will be short-lived as the price for the Water District's supply will be increasing at a similar rate over the next decade or two, and billions of dollars are expended both inside and outside the county to continue to obtain another 40% of our water supply from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. 

While Proposition 1 was passed last November by the State's voters, allowing sale of $7.5 billion of bonds to pay for adding more storage and building local options for water to address future water needs, other infrastructure projects in the Delta were not included in the recent bond measure. These facilities will be part of a fifty-year permit issued as part of a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for Delta ecosystem restoration and water supply reliability. The Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) recently released a 30,000-page environmental impact document detailing the baseline as it exists today and plans for fixing this broken ecosystem and mitigating the interwoven stressors, which have caused a half dozen native fish species to be listed on the Endangered Species Act. Biological opinions filed by State and Federal Fish and Wildlife agencies caused the pumping by the State and Federal water projects in the southern Delta to be severely curtailed.

The present value estimates for the BDCP program, including new conveyance facilities is $15.4 billion plus $2.3 billion in operating and maintenance costs over 50 years. Santa Clara County will be responsible for about 4% of those costs as their proportional share of the contract entitlements for the water pumped by the State Water Project and the Federal Central Valley Project, as Santa Clara Valley Water District is the only water agency in the state to have contracts with both systems. The Water District estimates that we will spend $228 million locally over the next 10 years to increase reliability of our Delta water supplies.

Santa Clara Valley Water District contracts for water deliveries through both major water diversion projects exporting water from the southern Delta, near Tracy. The South Bay Aqueduct pumps water over the Diablo Range, through Livermore and Pleasanton and terminates near Alum Rock Park in San Jose.

The other aqueduct is called the San Felipe Aqueduct and is a recent (1987) addition to the Federal Central Valley project. Delta water is conveyed to the jointly-owned State-Federal San Luis Reservoir through both the California Aqueduct and the Delta-Mendota Canal and pumped into the 2 million ac-ft off-stream storage facility.

Once Delta water arrives in Santa Clara County, it requires treatment in state-of-the-art treatment plants to remove a broad array of chemical contaminants to bring the quality up to State and Federal drinking water standards. The Santa Clara Valley Water District owns three such plants: a 40-million-gallons per day (MGD) plant named Penetencia in the east foothills near Alum Rock Park, an 80-MGD plant named Rinconada, adjacent to the Los Gatos Golf Club of the same name, and the newest Santa Teresa Water Treatment Plant in Almaden Valley capable of treating 100 MGD.

The combined costs of importing and treating Delta water, delivered by two aqueducts, is currently over $100 million per year. Capital improvement projects planned by the SCVWD will add considerably to this annual cost. 

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Source: SCVWD 2012 Water Supply and Infrastructure Master Plan 

The expansion of the Rinconada Water Treatment plant to 100 MGD

is currently under environmental review and is expected to cost around $200 million. 

                        

                Existing Rinconada Water Treatment Facility 

                       

Recently the twelve 2000 hp pumps at the Pacheco Pumping Plant on the west end of San Luis Reservoir had to be replaced after 25 years of service at a cost of $13 million. 

The Water District's surplus Delta water stored in Kern County's groundwater basin will be recovered at an additional cost of $12 million to reverse the flow of the California Aqueduct for about 100 miles, more than tripling the cost of remote water banking from $165/acre-ft. to $565/ac.-ft. That's in addition to the $40 million per year contract costs of the two aqueducts that were suppose to deliver water directly to SCVWD. 

Depending on the amount of water delivered annually, the unit costs for using these two conveyance systems ranges from $160 for 250,000 ac-ft to $1,000 if and when only 40,000 ac-ft were available. In 2014, 70,000 ac-ft of Delta water plus 35,000 ac-ft of recovered Semitropic Bank water withdrawal were conveyed through the two aqueducts, for a unit cost of $380 per ac-ft. 

With the reverse flow project added to the contract costs, Delta water from the Semitropic Water Bank will cost the SCVWD over $945 per ac-ft. or more if imported water deliveries fall below 100,000 ac-ft.

As the cost of the Water District’s imported water continues to rise, local reliability projects like water use efficiency and water recycling become the obviously preferable alternative. However, due to what I call "asset inertia" projects intended to increase the reliability of Delta water continue to be funded by the Board of Directors, who seem oblivious to the response to both State and other local agencies who realize it's time to rely less, not more, on Delta water deliveries. After sixty years of a growing reliance on water from remote watersheds, a sensible revision of our local water policy would be to shift immediately to increasing locally controlled supplies.

Water and Power

San Francisco may be among the best water delivered from a municipal water system on the entire planet.

Snow melt, captured in a glorious glacier-carved granite valley in Yosemite National Park, flows, unadulterated, through pipelines and hydroelectric turbines, directly to home and businesses in 28 cities adjacent to south San Francisco Bay.

At one time in the 1970's, an entrepreneur began bottling and selling water that came directly out of the tap from somewhere in San Francisco.

But great tasting water is not all that this water system delivers. The hydroelectric turbines that were designed and built into this water system produce carbon-free electricity, which will only increase in value as carbon taxes are added to fossil fuel-based electrical generation.

Los Angeles and Oakland also built aqueducts that produced power and water supplies which made their investments in infrastructure help pay for itself over the next century of operation. (for a great account of the LA water grab starting in the early 1900's, read Water & Power by William L. Kahrl.) Even major agricultural districts like Modesto Irrigation District have a power division that makes money from power sales to offset some of the cost of the irrigation infrastructure built for the farmers they serve.

The one water agency that stands below all these other major water agencies, when it comes to producing producing both water and power for its operational use and community benefit, is the Santa Clara Valley Water District. While it proudly boasts that it is the only water agency in the state to have water contracts with both the State Water Project and the Federal Central Valley Project, it has mostly ignored its 30 year-old authority to be a power producer as well as a water management agency. The Water District, however, honestly states that they are the single largest user of power in the entire Silicon (Server-Heavy) Valley.

In 1978, the Santa Clara Valley Water District was granted the authority by special State statute to produce power, both for its own use and the betterment of the community. The Water District immediately initiated many feasibility studies for "low head" hydroelectric generating stations in many locales around the County. Nothing was built until Governor Jerry Brown's leadership required that utilities pay for new power at a determined "avoided costs" as the base line rate.

The District installed a one megawatt hydroelectric generator at the base of Andersen Dam in 1988. AND THEN STOPPED! As one Mercury News columnist wrote, if you don't built power plants at the reservoir sites, it was "Just water over the dam."

So why would the admittedly largest electricity user in all of Silicon Valley suddenly eliminate a program which could make their own electricity? Building self-generated power would, without question, increase the reliability of the water the Water District is expecting and expected to deliver to the residents and businesses through the County.

Part can be blamed on the sunset of the avoided costs tariffs set by the State, placed in the regulations as a concession to the power utilities. The Santa Clara Valley Water District is situated in the service area of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a very large investor-owned utility that exerts all the political power that goes with operating a monopoly service to most of the San Francisco Bay area. Getting what are called lobbyists in other government halls, what the water district got from PG&E was the External Affairs or Government Affairs Directors of the corporate headquarters.

I realized how powerful PG&E was while I was working on the 21st floor of the Bechtel Building at Mission and Beale in San Francisco in 1970. The east facing widows near my cubicle had a clear view of San Francisco Bay. During the 18 months that I worked there, I watched the Bay view slowly disappear as the new PG&E headquarters rose across Beale Street and completely blocked Steve Bechtel's view of San Francisco's famous and glorious Bay and shipping docks. Also while working at Bechtel, it was the first company I realized used the business model: "We pollute it, We clean it up, Business Couldn't Be Better!"
PG&E's representatives began showing up at many Board meetings, while hardly ever speaking publicly to the Board. Plenty of conversations took place with staff and directors during breaks in the LOBBY. Probably the two most obvious lobbying successes were getting the Board's support for the construction of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant and a District Board resolution opposing municipal preference for re-licensing of hydroelectric sites in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. That was like the District shooting itself in the foot, since their own application for these licenses could have become part of the District's own electricity portfolio.

Erin Brocavich showed us that PG&E doesn't always get their way, especially when they pollute a community's water supply with hexavalent chromium.
It's not just PG&E to blame for stopping this important aspect to the District's infrastructure. ONE electrical generating point in this massive water system is such a poor showing , it clearly demonstrates the Water District's lack of engineering ingenuity coupled with a lack of political will or vision on the Board of Directors.

In 2001, the Water District was shocked to find themselves, along with the rest of California, in the middle of an energy crisis, brought on by corrupt corporations, like ENRON, and as an unintended consequence of a State energy DE-regulation, gone terribly wrong. When the situation degraded to rolling blackouts and power rates started to skyrocket like gasoline prices did in 2008, the District staff rushed a $2 million emergency power band aid onto all their treatment plants.

At all three water treatment plants, diesel-powered standby generators were installed, adjacent to high value residences in the hilltop neighborhoods in San Jose and Los Gatos. No one at the Water District Board or staff, apparently had heard of global warming before Al Gore made his documentary. But they surely would be hearing plenty of noise complaints from their neighbors.

Having been raised in Niagara Falls, I spent my early teen years watching the New York State Power Authority divert the Niagara River under the city through two 60 ft. x 60 ft. conduits to a massive hydroelectric power plant on the lower Niagara River 10 miles below the famous falls. My advocacy for more hydro power development here was one more issue to which my Board colleagues seemed deaf.

I had left the Board of Directors in 1995 to begin serving as the Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Pollution Prevention(P2) Center. My new role was to engage my P2 Center Board in determining ways and means to prevent pollution of our water resources from any source. Since the Water District was a major funder of this NGO and also an appointing authority of the Board, it seemed a proper involvement of the P2 Center to re-examine the hydroelectric feasibility studies that had sat in the District library for 20+ years.

The District and the P2 Center Board both agreed to use our organization to conduct this review. The P2 Center hired the mechanical engineering consultants Salas O'Brien in San Jose to review the operational and economic data from the Andersen Dam hydroelectric generator and review the present day costs and payback time for three other sites, for which prior feasibility studies had been conducted.

Within four months, the engineering report was delivered with a full power point presentation of the recommendations. The highlight of the report was the 5.4 year payback of a "inline" hydroelectric generator on the Calero pipeline with power transmission directly to the Santa Teresa Water Treatment plant three miles to the north.

The report never was agendized and brought before the Water District Board for discussion and action. Despite the excellent engineering analysis and presentation made to the staff by our consultant, the managing staff of the Water District staff blocked it from District Board. It is apparently just easier for the staff to rely on outside power sources than have the bother of building, operating and maintaining additional hydroelectric plants within their system.

The staff did later build a 200 kw solar power system into the carport of their main parking lot along Almaden Expressway, enjoying the high visibility of appearing to be a "green-minded" organization. After they built a small gas turbine generator at the old administration building, they actually issued a press release that the District was going "off grid." But taking the administrative buildings off grid is an insignificant reduction in the enormous amount of power used by the Santa Clara Valley Water District's operations.

The San Felipe Aqueduct alone requires 36,000 horsepower to operate. The new ozone treatment units will greatly increase the power demand of the District's treatment plants, as this more benign disinfectant must be generated onsite using great quantities of electricity. Once the District finally gets into the water recycling business, pumping and advanced treatment like reverse osmosis will be yet another notch up for the District's electrical demand. But while all this activity surrounds the Board and staff, still no one is talking about building any more carbon-free generating capacity from either wind, solar or hydroelectric sources.

As for global warming, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.





below is San Francisco's PR for banning bottled water use in the City:

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The Importance of Municipal Water

San Francisco’s Phase Out of Bottled Water

USCMfont> Water Utility Subcommittee

May 1, 2008

2

Mission

“To serve San Francisco and its Bay Area customers with reliable, high quality water, while maximizing benefits from power operations and responsibly managing the resources entrusted to our care.”


SFPUC</font> Service Area

SFPUC</font> serves drinking water to 2.4 million people in 5 counties

SFPUC</font> Water and Power System


Major Water and Power System Facilities

• 280-plus miles of pipelines
• 60-plus miles of tunnels
• 22 reservoirs
• 2 water treatment plants
• 3 power facilities

Sustainable Wastewater System

• Low Impact Development (LID)
• Maximize Renewable Energy Opportunities
• Water Reuse
• Biosolids Reuse/Disposal
• Biofuel – SFGreasecycle a model for other cities

SF Government Bottled Water Ban

• Initiated June 2007
• Phased in over 6 months
• Exceptions for public health clinics, emergency use and labor union MOU
• Received over 50 calls from other cities requesting information

Background for Bottled Water Ban

Municipal tap water is a safe, healthy choice

San Francisco’s regional water system collects granite-filtered spring snowmelt<!-- from the Sierra Nevada at the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir for delivery to San Francisco and Bay Area taps

Water collected at the Hetcht>ont> Hetchynt>ont> Reservoir exceeds all federal and state criteria for water quality and San Francisco’s tap water is tested nearly 90,000 times a year throughout the system to ensure its safety

Why Phase out Bottled Water?

Environmental Concerns:

• Reducing Carbon Footprint:
• Pacific Institute estimates that in 2006 the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil were used to make the plastic water bottles Americans use each year.
• Water coolers and individual water bottles are extremely heavy to transport.
• Distribution of bottled water by boat, truck and train involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels.
• Burden to Waste Stream and Landfills:
• NRDC and others have estimated that Americans threw away 75-85% of non-carbonated PET bottles, which can take more than 1,000 years to biodegrade and can contribute to leaching toxics into ground water.
• Ecosystem Depletion:
• Water diverted from local aquifers for the bottled water industry can strain surrounding ecosystems.
• Water Quality:
• Bottled water is regulated by the FDA. Municipal tap water is regulated by the EPA and has more stringent requirements for testing. SF Municipal tap water is tested over 90,000 times a year.

Why Phase Out Bottled Water?

Costs:

• Bottled water is over 1000 times more expensive than San Francisco tap water

• San Francisco will save nearly $1 million annually by phasing out bottled water contract

Why Phase Out Bottled Water?

Other issues:

• Lead by Example
• SF’s government phase out has led to launch of voluntary restaurant ban
• SF mandating phase out of other products that negatively impact environment
• Styrofoam ban
• Plastic bag ban
• Promotion of bottled water decreases need for water infrastructure investment in public mind
• SF investing $4.3 billion in water infrastructure rebuild

Next Steps

Recommend that the US Conference of Mayors

encourages cities and counties to phase out

government use of bottled water and promote

importance of municipal water.


For More Information

www.sfwater.org

Laura Spanjian

Assistant General Manager, External Affairs, SFPUC

1155 Market Street, San Francisco CA 94103

415-554-1540