As the Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency prepares to submit its updated Urban Water Management Plan to the state by July this year, the agency is sharing its water supply outlook and drought plans with the valley residents it stands to affect.
The UWMP is a state-mandated document that helps water agencies forecast future water demands, as well as plan for droughts and climate change. Urban water suppliers are required to submit them to the California Department of Water Resources every five years.
Wednesday evening’s UWMP community workshop, held over Zoom – the third community-facing workshop held on the plan – gave virtual attendees a breakdown of the agency’s protocols for saving water during a drought, where that water comes from and how that may change over the next two decades.
Ali Elhassan, director of water resources at SCV Water, led Wednesday’s presentation. He told attendees that one of the strengths of the agency’s water portfolio is its diversity.
“Our agency is proud to have a diversified water supply portfolio,” Elhassan said. “This … portfolio is very essential and very important for our supply for the customers’ area, (like) when we had the drought in 2021, 2022, and at the same time had to reduce our groundwater pumping.”
As of 2024, that water supply comes from groundwater, at about 15,800 acre-feet; imported water, at about 45,600 acre-feet; and just a smidge of recycled water. The agency also maintains 128,000 acre-feet banked in Kern County in dry year reserves.
According to Wednesday’s presentation, current usage sits at about 60,000 acre-feet.
Imported water comes from the State Water Project, a massive state-owned water storage and delivery system that spans hundreds of miles, and agreements with partner agencies for fixed amounts of water per year, such as with the Buena Vista Water Project. Groundwater is pulled from two sources: the Alluvial Aquifer – which runs under the Santa Clara River – and the Saugus Formation, which goes to depths of 2,000 feet.
According to the presentation, SCV Water projects its supply will increase to around 110,000 acre-feet by 2030, where it’ll remain about the same until at least 2050.
If water usage trends proceed based on 2024’s rate of water usage, SCV Water expects demand for water supplied by the agency to increase from around 60,000 acre-feet to about 110,000 by 2070.
Groundwater supply is expected to hold steady between 2030 and 2050 at around 40,000 acre-feet, alongside imported water supplies at about 60,000 acre-feet. By 2050, the agency’s supply of recycled water is projected to reach little over 5,000 acre-feet, the only significant increase in a supply stream projected between 2030 and 2050.
When it comes to the forecasted effects of climate change on the valley’s groundwater supply, the agency plans to pull more from the Saugus Formation in the future. The Saugus Formation runs significantly deeper than the Alluvial Aquifer.
The basin’s groundwater is managed according to Sustainable Groundwater Management Act sustainability criteria, overseen by the SCV Groundwater Sustainability Agency, one of many joint agencies formed by that act after 2015, when the state mandated GSAs be created to protect the state’s groundwater basins.
“(The Alluvial Aquifer) is a primary source of water supply during the normal years, these are wells that go between 20 feet … to 200 feet, these are very shallow, very close to the ground’s surface, there is a direct connection with this aquifer to the surface water body,” Elhassan said. “The Saugus Formation … functions as a strategic reserve for us, in all of our plans we are planning to use it during droughts.”
In the event of a drought, that aquifer would come in handy: according to Wednesday’s presentation, to keep supply at the same acre-feet by the end of a drought modeled after the worst five-year drought in 100 years, the agency would shift to using more water from the Saugus Formation, along with using water banked in its strategic reserves.
Increased groundwater use would supplement a significant decrease in water supply from the State Water Project.
How the agency’s water supply portfolio and drought plan figure into its Urban Water Management Plan will figure into SCV Water’s next community workshop in the spring.
SCV Water will go over the details on the updated UWMP in a virtual workshop scheduled for April 1. Between March 28 and April 28, the public will be able to make comments and provide feedback on the plan. After those comments are incorporated into the draft, the plan will be released a second time for more comments between May 8 and June 9.
The final version is scheduled to be adopted on June 9, the month before it’s sent to the state Department of Water Resources.
