Santa Cruz- Soquel Creek Desalinization Plant soon to open

The City of Santa Cruz Water Department is about to have a grand opening of their joint project for a desalinaization plant on the west side of Santa Cruz. This project has been in the works with the Soquel Creek Water Department to provide water supplies to meet growing needs and to supply water during drought years.

After a year of testing the facility, the two water agencies will join in constructing a permanent $40-50 million desalination plant expected to be built by 2012. While the present plant is a small one at present,costing about $4M,it expected to process 50 gallons per minute.

Soquel Creek Water District currently supplies approximately 5,400 acre feet of water annually, approximately 1.8 billion gallons of water,  from two groundwater aquifers. The Purisima Aquifer provides two-thirds of the District's annual production for the communities of Capitola, Soquel, and Aptos. The other aquifer, the Aromas Red Sands Aquifer provides the remaining one-third for the communities of Rio Del Mar, and La Selva Beach.This is a big project, and especially so for Soquel Creek Water District.

The City of Santa Cruz gets almost all its water from the San Lorenzo River, and stores most of it at the Loch Lomond Resevoir. The population of 90,000 uses about 14 million gallons of water a day in the summer and about 8 billion in the winter.

This additional water source is good to have as there has been a drain on the water quality in the Santa Cruz County water basin.Another method being employed as well as extensive conservation is rainwater catchment systems. While these old time sytems are starting to come back into vogue, they take a bit thought; there are rebates available.

While realtors are charged with administering the paperwork for the most common conservation measure, the toilet retrofit, all developers are required to employ the latest water conservation measures. This means all the houses being built have efficient systems of water usage, and drought tolerant plants as well. While there is no way to currently search for property in Santa Cruz by the energy efficiency or water efficiency, the move is afoot towards more solar and green building, in general. Ask me and I can point you to the developments that are most likely to meet these.

To see this plant's grand opening, which is near the Long Marine Lab  off the end of Delaware on March 20th between 3-5:30. Call 475-8501 for information regarding this event.

 

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