Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency officials expect that with a little bit of conservation, there’ll be no problems with upcoming work on local water connections for the State Water Project.
Due to required maintenance from the state Department of Water Resources, SCV Water is asking customers to refrain from all outdoor water use during the weeks of Jan. 6 to 13 and Jan. 27 to Feb. 3, according to the agency.
The California Department of Water Resources, or DWR, is performing “needed maintenance on its pipeline at Castaic Lake,” according to an email from Kevin Strauss, spokesman for SCV Water, and the agency must close SCV Water’s connection to do so.
SCV Water purchases about half its water from outside the SCV, much of which is stored at Castaic Lake.
During the two-week conservation-request period starting next month and continuing into February, the area will be relying on local groundwater and other local reservoirs where the purchased water is stored.
“They’re replacing the portion that is DWR, state of California-owned,” Strauss said in a phone interview Friday. “They’re not doing any maintenance on our connection or the Metropolitan (Water District) connection, to my understanding.”
The idea was to try and schedule the work during the cooler winter weather when demand would be lower, Strauss said, adding that it’s a fairly regular occurrence that had its annual schedule impacted by COVID and other factors, including extremely wet winters in recent years.
However, the state said the work needed to be completed this winter.
“So, what we’ll be able to do is rely on whatever’s in our storage tanks here in the (SCV) and pumping our groundwater from the wells,” he said. “We won’t be able to fall back on the imported supply that we typically have just reserved up there if needed.”
Both Strauss and Mike Alvord, SCV Water’s director of operations and maintenance, mentioned there was no long-term concern about the supply associated with the conservation request.
“It’s merely a response to the temporary disruption of water delivery while key infrastructure is taken out of service for needed repairs and maintenance,” Alvord said in a news release.
The agency is trying to be extra cautious with the request and its projections, Strauss said.
“We run all modeling and all scenarios on, ‘Here’s what our production levels are, here’s what we’re permitted to produce from groundwater, here’s how much we have in storage,’ and we’ve run multiple scenarios and multiple models on that,” Strauss said.
In the less-likely event of a “worst-case scenario,” it would help if ratepayers cut back during those weeks, he said, because outdoor irrigation is traditionally the largest use of potable water, he said.
The forecast available now for the first week doesn’t expect much help for SCV Water in the way of precipitation, according to the National Weather Service.
The two-week forecast has the percentage for a chance of rain in the single digits through Jan. 10 and temperature highs near 70 degrees for the week.
But the agency didn’t sound too worried.
Everything should be fine for those weeks if everyone pitches and tries to hand water their plants for a bit instead of relying on an irrigation system, he said.
“(The plants) can get by with one to two days a week,” Strauss said, “especially for just those weeks.”
