Reliability by Design: Integrated Resources Planning at the Alameda County Water District 2014 General Manager’S Message
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ALAMEDA C OUNTY WATER DIS TRIC T Reliability by Design: Integrated Resources Planning at the Alameda County Water District 2014 General Manager’s Message n the early 1990s, ACWD’s water supply outlook was Inside I uncertain. The District depended heavily on annual Introduction to ACWD: deliveries of water from the ACWD Service Area and Facilities .........................Page 2 Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — deliveries that were becoming ACWD’s Water Sources.........................................Page 4 less reliable due to the Delta’s declining ecological health. At Integrated Resources Planning at ACWD the same time, the Tri-City The IRP Process and Planning Criteria ...................Page 6 region was booming, and new homes and businesses needed water. Complicating matters, ACWD’s IRP Strategies..........................................Page 8 ACWD lacked the water storage needed to fulfill customer demand in case of drought, and the District’s water deliv- Implementation of IRP Strategies ery infrastructure was nearing capacity. The result: By 2000, the District projected, a single dry year could force Managing the Niles Cone Groundwater Basin.......Page 10 water restrictions of up to 40 percent, with potential short- Local Supplies.....................................................Page 14 ages only getting worse after that. Imported Water ..................................................Page 16 With no simple way to acquire a new source of water, it was clear that ACWD needed an alternative approach to Demand Management........................................Page 18 meet customers’ needs. So in 1994 and 1995, the District developed an Integrated Resources Plan, or IRP. Working Environment: Restoring Alameda Creek..............Page 22 with the community, ACWD comprehensively analyzed the Preparing for Crisis .............................................Page 24 long-term water needs of the Tri-City area and identified the most efficient ways to meet them. The Results What distinguished the IRP process from previous water Improved Reliability, Lower Costs........................Page 26 planning efforts was that it focused on more than just pro- viding additional water. The IRP looked carefully at the Improved Water Quality......................................Page 28 costs and benefits of dozens of approaches to match water supply to water demand, including conservation, improve- Vision for the Future ments in efficiency, operational changes, and more. Opportunities and Challenges.............................Page 30 The 1995 plan clearly established what ACWD needed to do: develop local water supplies, conserve water, use existing supplies as efficiently as possible, and find a way to store water for dry years. It also set other objectives, including containing costs and improving water quality. Today, ACWD and its customers have met or exceeded nearly all of the goals set in 1995. Per-capita water demand has dropped more than 25 percent. Investments in IRP strategies have allowed ACWD to avoid building capital projects that would have cost tens of millions of dollars. And the District’s overall water supply reliability has improved dramatically, even as deliveries from the Delta have grown more uncertain. Following the principles of the IRP process, ACWD has con- tinued to adapt to changing circumstances and plan for the future. In 2013, the District completed the second major review of the 1995 IRP. This publication tells the story of the IRP process, showing what has been achieved since 1995 and detailing the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. — Walt Wadlow, General Manager 1 ACWD Service Area and Facilities Local investments in water supply infrastructure help to provide secure and reliable water service to the Tri-City community. he Alameda County Water District provides water to businesses, industrial users, and more than 330,000 residents T in the cities of Fremont, Union City, and Newark. It has a full-time staff of approximately 230 and is governed by a ACWD Facts and Figures publicly elected five-member board of directors. ACWD was founded in 1914, making it the first public water agency created Alameda Creek: Flowing out of Niles Canyon, Alameda Creek drains a 633-square-mile watershed extending from Mt. Diablo to Altamont under California's County Water District Law, adopted in 1913. The map below shows the District service area and the Pass to Mt. Hamilton.The creek is a major source of ACWD water many facilities that make up the ACWD water system. and is the focus of ongoing ecological restoration efforts. ■ Population served: 336,000 (cities of Fremont, Newark and Union City) ACWD’s mission is to provide reliable, high quality water at a reasonable price. In the District’s early years, meeting these goals meant securing legal rights to what was then the region's only source of water, runoff from the Alameda ■ ACWD service area: 104.8 square miles Creek Watershed. Today, ACWD has a broad portfolio of water sources: runoff from the Alameda Creek Watershed; the ■ Average rainfall: 18.4 inches local groundwater basin, which the District continually recharges; desalinated water produced from the brackish water (varies from ~14" near the bay pumped by the District’s Aquifer Reclamation Program wells; the State Water Project; and the San Francisco Public Blending Facility: This plant blends local groundwater, to ~20" in the eastern hills) Utilities Commission (SFPUC) water system. This mix of sources, along with customer conservation, provides high which is relatively hard, with soft water (see pages 28-29) from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission system. ■ Number of customers (water resilience to drought and has allowed the District to improve water reliability even as the Tri-City area has added new The blended water is distributed to ACWD customers in accounts): 82,533 homes and businesses. Union City, Newark, and north Fremont. ■ Average daily water use per person: ~133 gallons Quarry Lakes Groundwater Recharge System: ACWD fills ■ The ACWD Service Area these deep pits — former gravel quarries — with water from Treatment Plant 1 (Mission San Jose Water Average daily water deliveries: Alameda Creek and the South Bay Aqueduct. The water percolates Treatment Plant) and Treatment Plant 2: 39.2 million gallons into the local groundwater basin, helping to replace the water These facilities treat South Bay Aqueduct water pumped out by ACWD and local private wells. for distribution to ACWD customers in central ■ Miles of water mains in ACWD Production Well Fields: and south Fremont. service area: More than 850 These 16 wells can supply as much as 47.5 ■ Number of water quality samples million gallons of fresh analyzed at ACWD laboratories groundwater per day to the Blending Facility. annually: About 45,000 ■ ACWD annual budget: $104.1 million ■ Number of full-time employees: ~230 Tanks and Reservoirs: Locally, the District operates six tanks and All figures current as of 2013 six reservoirs. Together they hold up Aquifer Reclamation Program Wells: to 80 million gallons of water that is These wells remove brackish water from the ready for delivery to customers. Water use by category, local groundwater basin, helping to prevent 2011-2012 fiscal year: salty water from the Bay from contaminating ACWD’s water supply wells and local private Industrial wells. The water extracted is piped to the Residential 30,887 acre-feet* 3,857 acre-feet Newark Desalination Facility. (8.8%) (70.4%) Other Business 2,946 acre-feet 6,167 acre-feet (6.7%) (14.1%) South Bay Aqueduct: This pipeline, part of the State Water Project, carries water from the Sacramento- San Joaquin Delta and Lake Del Valle to ACWD and other Total: 43,857 acre-feet water districts in the region. Newark Desalination Facility: Brackish water from the Aquifer Reclamation Program wells is treated to Sources of ACWD water: remove salts, blended with groundwater to achieve an appropriate hardness, and then delivered to customers State Water Local Rainwater Runoff in Newark and parts of Fremont. Project and Percolation ~40% ~40% Production Facility San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) Storage Tank Pipelines: Through this system, ACWD receives water from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park along with Alameda Creek Watershed runoff. Well San Francisco PUC ~20% Reservoir * One acre-foot is enough water to serve 3.3 average homes in the ACWD service area for one year. An acre-foot is equal to 325,851.4 gallons, the amount of water required to cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot. 2 3 ACWD’s Water Sources ACWD’s diverse water supply portfolio protects District customers against drought and helps minimize the risk of water shortages. or a system of its size, ACWD has a remarkably complex water supply portfolio: two imported water sources, local runoff, groundwater recharge, local ground- F water pumping, remote groundwater banking, and an aquifer reclamation program combined with brackish groundwater desalination. ACWD manages these sources so that they complement one another, optimizing water reliability and quality. For instance, the District recharges the Niles Cone Groundwater Basin with local runoff and imported State Water Project supplies and pumps water as needed for delivery to customers. By using the basin as an underground reservoir, ACWD can provide water to customers consis- tently even as the availability of local runoff and State Water Project imports varies from season to season and year to year. This