RSS Feed
Print Story
E-mail Story
WATER WORKS
Kern agency plunges into urban water sales
| Saturday, Feb 24 2007 8:50 PM
Last Updated: Saturday, Feb 24 2007 8:55 PM
SACRAMENTO
BAKERSFIELD.COM HOT TOPICS:
Loading Stories
Advertisement
It is one of the most powerful public agencies in Kern County.
It controls vast amounts of a precious resource, wields incredible sums of money and has the clout to regularly affect statewide policies.
The fact that you've likely never heard of it is about to change.
Officials at the Kern County Water Agency would probably prefer to stay out of the limelight.
But a collection of huge expansion projects will make that impossible as the agency plunges into the world of urban water purveying. That means it's going to be selling water not just to ag districts, but to you, via your water company, in a big way.
New development in Bakersfield for years to come will be tied directly to the agency with every tap and flush.
So far, officials are saying the expansion will result in "very minor" water bill increases.
The expansion projects will also position the powerful agency to become an even bigger player in California's water world.
"We are engaged in the largest capital improvement phase in the history of this agency," General Manager Jim Beck said recently.
Rise to power
The district was founded in the 1960s primarily to disperse water coming from Northern California's Feather River in the State Water Project's California Aqueduct to farmers on the west side of the valley.
It took on a greater public role in 1972 when it won a $17.5 million general obligation bond. That money built both the Henry C. Garnett Water Purification Plant and the Cross Valley Canal, which brings water from the California Aqueduct to Bakersfield. Some of the water is treated at the Garnett plant and sold as drinking water. The larger users of the canal, however, have traditionally been irrigation districts.
As Bakersfield has grown, so has its need for water. And Southern California's thirst continues to increase as its water sources have dwindled.
In response to those market realities, the Kern County Water Agency appears to be shifting away from a straight ag district water wholesaler to more of a commodities broker -- buying, selling and moving water as the market demands.
To do all that, the agency has already embarked on a series of ambitious expansion projects that will cost $160.6 million in all.
Henry C. Garnett Water Purification Plant
The 30-year-old plant will be renovated and enlarged. Its maximum treatment capacity will be increased by 60 percent, from 45 million gallons a day to 72 million gallons. That's a lot of water. The average U.S. household uses about 350 gallons of water per day, according to the American Water Works Association.
California Water Service Company, the biggest water purveyor in the city and already a customer of the Garnett plant, is the biggest participant in the expansion program. Cal Water, which operates two treatment plants of is own, has pledged an estimated $27.5 million for the lion's share of the additional Garnett water. It will also share with Bakersfield in the use of a new feeder line to the northwest section of the city.
The city is buying in for an estimated $13.3 million to get 6,500 acre-feet of water per year. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, so the city's share will be 2.1 billion gallons annually.
It will be the first time in history that Bakersfield will serve treated canal water to its customers, said Florn Core, who heads the city's water resources department. So far, it has used only wells to provide them with Kern River water that has seeped into the aquifer.
Core said the city has plenty of water for the long term from Kern River rights it purchased in 1977. But he said the city wants the additional water to bolster its supplies and allow it to shut down some wells that can't meet new, stiffer standards for arsenic and have other quality problems.
"I would say it's more of an insurance policy," said Bakersfield Councilman David Couch. "We're not out of water, but you don't want to find yourself in a situation where you're in a very tight water supply situation."
Two other water sellers, East Niles Community Service District and North of the River Mutual Water District, will also invest in the project.
The project also includes solar panels to will generate some of the electricity needed to run the plant and reduce energy costs.
So far, the agency's move into more of an urban water supply role has not drawn any criticism.
And it's part of a growing pattern statewide, prompted partly by laws that require developers to identify long-term sources of water before they start building houses, said Ted James, Kern County's planning chief.
"As this growth continues to come, we have to plan for the water," James said.
Feeder lines
Three new or expanded feeder pipelines will also fan out from the treatment plant to move water to neighborhoods.
The northwest pipeline is nearing completion.
An existing line that runs north from the plant is being expanded for North of the River customers and the one that runs east is being expanded for East Niles.
Those are both in the design phase.
Cross Valley Canal
The chief goal of the Cross Valley Canal expansion is to allow the agency and irrigation districts to snag low-cost extra water in wet years and store it underground in the water banking areas along the Kern River bed west of Bakersfield.
Kern County has a voracious appetite for storing water, born of bitter experience in the 1987-92 drought, when little or no water came down the aqueduct and thousands of acres of farmland went idle.
The Cross Valley Canal, a small man-made river that runs between the aqueduct west of Interstate 5 and the Garnett treatment plant in central Bakersfield, will be deepened by one to two feet in most places.
That will allow it to handle an additional 500 cubic feet of water per second (think of cubic feet as basketballs), or 323 million gallons per day.
Its capacity will increase from 922 cubic feet per second, or 596 million gallons a day, to 1,422 cubic feet per second, or 919 million gallons a day.
More than two dozen irrigation districts will be able to pump water out of the deeper canal and store it or use it on crops.
Another goal of the expansion is to make it possible for the Kern Delta Water District to fulfill a deal with the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to store aqueduct water in wet years. MWD can then pump the water out in dry years, put it back in the aqueduct and ship it to Los Angeles. Now, Kern Delta has no rights to use the canal and no way to get the MWD water in and out of its boundaries.
Friant-Kern Canal intertie
Among the agency's projects is a new intertie between the Cross Valley Canal and the Friant-Kern Canal where the two intersect near Coffee and Brimhall roads.
That has major implications for California's entire water distribution system.
The Friant-Kern Canal brings water from Friant Dam on the San Joaquin River northeast of Fresno south along the east side of the valley.
The intertie will allow the movement of up to 500 cubic feet (basketballs) per second, or 323 million gallons of water a day, between the Friant-Kern and the Cross Valley.
Because the San Joaquin Valley is so flat, water can move north or south in the Friant-Kern and east or west in the Cross Valley.
That creates the possibility of major new water banking and exchange programs -- such as that between Kern Delta and MWD -- involving the entire southern half of the state.
For example, MWD is negotiating for a large exchange program with the Friant Water Users Authority, the operator of the Friant-Kern Canal.
They currently have no way to move MWD's water from the aqueduct to the east side of the valley, or back again.
The intertie would make that possible, and fees for the transfer could make money for Cross Valley Canal owners. However, other solutions are in the works and Beck says it would be difficult to use the canal for that because all the existing Cross Valley users would have to be guaranteed their water wouldn't be pushed out to make way for Los Angeles.
Nevertheless, Beck and Jon Parnell manager of the Cross Valley Canal, say the intertie is designed for such exchanges.
Another potential use for the intertie involves a court-order for the Friant authority to restore year-round flows in the San Joaquin River, which have been dried up for most of its length since Friant Dam was built.
The plans calls for east valley farmers to give up some of their irrigation water to restore the flows. The water would flow northward to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. But it then could be put into the Aqueduct and flow southward.
Under the plan, the Friant-Kern farmers could get some or all of the water back, if there was a way to move it from the aqueduct eastward.
The intertie would make that possible, theoretically, for the first time. No deals have been cut, and the agency's Beck said there are many hurdles in the way of such a move.
Nevertheless, that's one reason environmentalists like the intertie plan, said Jared Huffman, a former Natural Resources Defense Council attorney who is now a state assemblyman.
"The better these water systems are interconnected, the better you are going to be able to meet a variety of needs," Huffman said. "My hope is that this new tool in the toolbox will be available to meet some environmental objectives."
The canal expansion is expected to cost about $77 million, with another $6 million going for projects not directly related.
The cost for most of the participants will be offset by $22 million from a $1.97 billion water bond issue approved by voters in 2000, Proposition 13.
But Kern Delta and MWD are on their own for their $29 million share of the cost.
"We didn't want to make our Proposition 13 money available for Los Angeles," Parnell said.