Over 100 people gathered on Holohan Road Friday to celebrate the completion of the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency’s (PVWMA) new College Lake Water Supply Project.
The landmark project, designed to protect the Pajaro Valley’s groundwater resources, includes a water intake and fish passage facility, a water treatment plant and a 6-mile-long, 30-inch diameter treated water pipeline to convey water from College Lake to thousands of acres of area farmland.
“This new water supply facility will produce around 2,000-acre feet a year,” said PVWMA General Manager Brian Lockwood. “In this area, that’s enough to irrigate about 1,000 acres of typical Pajaro Valley crops.”
Lockwood added that the project will provide a passageway for critically endangered south central coast steelhead, and preserve habitat for migratory water fowl.
“And it will help protect the agricultural way of life in the Pajaro Valley,” Lockwood said.
The project kicked off in May 2023.
The pipeline—which had to be laid across and under agriculture lands, and under highways through Watsonville—also aims to help stop seawater intrusion, reduce groundwater overdraft and achieve sustainable groundwater resources.
“This is exactly what we are trying to do with the state—to be resilient through the face of climate change; to do what we can to diversify and protect our supplies, protect our water quality and manage our ground water basins locally,” said Dorene D’Amato, who serves as Vice Chair on the California State Water Resources Control Board.
State Sen. John Laird delivered a certificate of recognition to PVWMA for their accomplishment.
“In Santa Cruz and Monterey County we do not import water, so we have to survive on what drops from the sky or is in the ground,” he said. “You now have about a 25 to 30-year head start on the sustainable ground water management act. So that is why people from around the state are looking at the recycling plant and this project to see what you are doing to see what they should be doing. The overall goal here is to be sustainable locally and that is what this project at the recycling center has done.”
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The College Lake Water Supply Project is located at 76 Holohan Road. For information, visit pvwater.org/college-lake-project.
