Item 28 - Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan

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Santa Ana 2020 Water Shortage Contingency Plan 3-7 In April 2020, OCWD as the groundwater basin manager, executed an agreement with the impacted Producers to fund and construct the necessary treatment systems for production wells impacted by PFAS compounds. The PFAS treatment projects includes the design, permitting, construction, and operation of PFAS removal systems for impacted Producer production wells. Each well treatment system will be evaluated for use with either granular activated carbon or ion exchange for the removal of PFAS compounds. These treatment systems utilize vessels in a lead-lag configuration to remove PFOA and PFOS to less than 2 ppt (the current non-detect limit). Use of these PFAS treatment systems are designed to ensure the groundwater supplied by Producer wells can be served in compliance with current and future PFAS regulations. With financial assistance from OCWD, the Producers will operate and maintain the new treatment systems once they are constructed. To minimize expenses and provide maximum protection to the public water supply, OCWD initiated design, permitting, and construction of the PFAS treatment projects on a schedule that allows rapid deployment of treatment systems. Construction contracts were awarded for treatment systems for production wells in the City of Fullerton and Serrano Water District in Year 2020. Additional construction contracts will likely be awarded in the first and second quarters of 2021. OCWD expects the treatment systems to be constructed for most of the initial 45 wells above the RL within the next 2 to 3 years. As additional data are collected and new wells experience PFAS detections at or near the current RL, and/or above a future MCL, and are turned off, OCWD will continue to partner with the affected Producers and take action to design and construct necessary treatment systems to bring the impacted wells back online as quickly as possible. Groundwater production in FY 2019-20 was expected to be approximately 325,000 acre-feet (AF) but declined to 286,550 AF primarily due to PFAS impacted wells being turned off around February 2020. OCWD expects groundwater production to be in the area of 245,000 AF in FY 2020-21 due to the currently idled wells and additional wells being impacted by PFAS and turned off. As PFAS treatment systems are constructed, OCWD expects total annual groundwater production to slowly increase back to normal levels (310,000 to 330,000 AF) (OCWD, 2020). 3.3 Six Standard Water Shortage Levels Per Water Code Section 10632 (a)(3)(A), the City must include the six standard water shortage levels that represent shortages from the normal reliability as determined in the Annual Assessment. The shortage levels have been standardized to provide a consistent regional and statewide approach to conveying the relative severity of water supply shortage conditions. This is an outgrowth of the severe statewide drought of 2012-2016, and the widely recognized public communication and state policy uncertainty associated with the many different local definitions of water shortage Levels. The six standard water shortage levels correspond to progressively increasing estimated shortage conditions (up to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50%, and greater than 50% shortage compared to the normal reliability condition) and align with the response actions the Supplier would implement to meet the severity of the impending shortages (Table 3-1).