Officials say pricey water projects are long-term investments
and should not be measured by economics
Gilroy – At first glance, the math on the massive recycled water project being built by the South County Regional Wastewater Authority and the Santa Clara Valley Water District isn’t very encouraging: $28 million; four customers.
“We think it’s a big, big white elephant,” said San Martin resident Bob Cerruti, a longtime critic of the water district. “We feel that the cost incurred really doesn’t give a return to the thousands of residents who are paying for it but will not get any benefit from it. We’re paying for a service that does not provide any water to us at all.”
Indeed, the water district’s budget shows only $1 million in revenue expected over the next year from all of its recycled water projects in the county. Compare that to the $3.2 million the district will spend on the South County project this year alone – for new and retrofitted pipelines and new storage and pumping facilities – and the $6.5 million it has already invested, and it’s clear the project doesn’t pay for itself.
But water district officials say that recycled water projects should not be measured by economics alone. The real return, they say, will come when Santa Clara Valley experiences a drought like that of the early 1990s. Keith Whitman, a deputy operating officer at the district, said the South County project must be viewed as one investment in a portfolio. It may not be a hot-shot water stock, but it is a hedge against an environmental downturn.
“We look at it as a balanced portfolio. How do all these things function together?” Whitman said. “Recycled water is an all-weather supply. We can count on this water being there.”
The South County project will triple the recycled water capacity at the SCRWA plant southeast of Gilroy. By next year, the plant will process nine million gallons of recycled water for customers – Obata Farms, the Calpine-Gilroy Energy Center, Christmas Hill Park and the Eagle Ridge Golf Club – that are all eager for more.
At an April rate hearing, a Calpine representative pleaded with the district’s board for more recycled water, which also happens to be cheaper than water pumped from the groundwater basin. Municipal and industrial users will pay $156 an acre-foot this year, compared to $215 for well water. The rates for farmers are slightly higher, $39 rather $21.50, but Tom Obata has said that he saves about $50 an acre-foot in electricity and diesel costs for water he doesn’t have to pump from wells.
Eventually, South County customers will use about 10,000 acre-feet of recycled water each year, and the district hopes that about 10 percent of the 400,000 acre-feet used in the county will be recycled by 2020. An acre-foot of water is equivalent to an area the size of a football field filled to a depth of one foot, or about enough water to service two families for a year.
“Everybody else should be happy because of everybody who actually uses recycled water,” Whitman said. “As we expand and pick up more customers, that’s all water that does not need to be pumped out of the groundwater basin.”
Whitman said that there are more potential customers for the water than what the SCRWA plant will be able to produce, but there’s no escaping the enormous expense of building an infrastructure to reach those customers. The South County project’s master plan identifies scores of customers in Morgan Hill, for instance, but reaching them with current technology isn’t feasible.
“The problem with that long list of customers is that they’re spread out all over town,” Morgan Hill’s public works director Jim Ashcraft said. “If you try to pump water 10 miles uphill to Morgan Hill from the SCRWA plant, that’s not very cost effective.”
But Ashcraft is very interested in using recycled water and the city has identified one potential major user that would justify building what’s known as a scalping plant in Morgan Hill – the Math Institute Golf Course east of Highway 101.
A scalping plant would recapture residential wastewater before it’s flushed south toward the SCRWA plant. A study is currently under way to determine whether the golf course is depleting the groundwater to the extent that makes such a plant necessary.
“This may be a way for the golf course and the city to partner and use recycled water,” Ashcraft said. “We’re looking at it, and the first cost-effective project would be that golf course.”
Whitman said that the North County’s population density makes it a better target for expanding recycled water use. Already, the district is involved with the South Bay Water Recycling Program in San Jose, and is developing recycling programs in Palo Alto and Sunnyvale. He said the water district won’t commit itself to long-term recycled water projects in South County until there are clear benefits.
“There’s tremendous development potential in the north,” Whitman said. “That’s not necessarily the case for [the South County] master plan, which is one of the reasons we haven’t committed.”
