Manager Grace Chan, Resource Planning & Development Section

On Friday afternoon I had the pleasure of speaking with Grace Chan, Manager of the Resource Planning & Development Section of The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.  As an agency of a region that has dealt with consistent unprecedented growth since its inception, MWD is well versed in policy regarding growth in its service area.  Its primary roles are to import supplementary water to meet Southern California water demands (including as a contractor to The State Water Project) and to coordinate regional planning efforts.  Ms. Chan's section is the department that deals with growth.  They are responsible for identifying potential challenges and designing programs to meet and overcome those challenges.  These programs are to incentivize conservation, recycling, etc.

Their guiding document is the Integrated Resource Plan, or IRP.  In short, it is a 3-pronged approach:

1) Using past data to provide a known history of supply and demand variations.
2) Going above and beyond to cover spikes in demand and dips in supply.
3) "Foundational" actions to guard against future uncertainties.

#3 is what I have been interested in addressing.

Of these actions, seawater desalination, stormwater capture, and potable reuse are the three primary pillars of future supply augmentation.

Stormwater capture seems to be the hot public trend among the three.  Because of channelization of the Los Angeles River and other streams earlier in the 20th Century, large precipitation events lose 100,000s acre feet of water to the ocean every year.  The quick basin exportation of stormwater was done in the name of flood control.  Even though much is captured and recharged, more stormwater could be conserved and folded back into MWD's supply portfolio.  There are thing prohibitive reasons an infrastructure has not been built to maximize capture:

1) Cost
2) Property/Land issues.  Right of way.  Cost of purchasing land vs. what the land is worth to development.
3) Idle - the infrastructure is well worth it for the couple times of years it would catch runoff that is not currently being used, but what would it do the other 360 days?  Sit idle?  If it could be used as a multi-purpose channel, perhaps feasibility would increase.

This "Aggressive Stormwater Capture" has been most successful in Orange County where they only lose 10,000s acre feet of stormwater each year.  The rest is captured and recharged.

I asked Ms. Chan if there is any infrastructure improvements planned in the immediate future.  She said beyond regularly scheduled maintenance, there is none.  The 5 existing water treatment plans suffice for operational supply and demand right now.

Of note, a plan for a desalination plant was approve in the San Diego area November 29th.  As part of its incentivization programs, MWD pays for the difference in development of new supplies from what MWD charges its customers.  This is a very effective program to have local districts take more control over their own supplies without being financially punished for doing so.