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

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Santa Ana 2020 Urban Water Management Plan arcadis.com ES-3 The City also has a ten-year purchase agreement with MET that allows the City to purchase significantly more imported water, should the need arise. The City does not own or operate wastewater treatment facilities but owns and operates the wastewater collection system in its service area that sends all wastewater to OC San for treatment and disposal. The City benefits from its direct and indirect uses of recycled water. OCWD’s Green Acres Project (GAP) produces recycled water for direct non-potable reuses such as landscape irrigation. OCWD’s Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS) produces recycled water for indirect potable reuse (IPR) through the replenishment of the OC Basin. WATER SERVICE RELIABILITY AND DROUGHT RISK ASSESSMENT Every urban water supplier is required to assess the reliability of their water service to its customers under a normal year, a single dry year, and a drought period lasting five consecutive years. The water service reliability assessment compares projected supply to projected demand for the three hydrological conditions between 2025 and 2045. Factors affecting reliability, such as climate change and regulatory impacts, are accounted for as part of the assessment. The City depends on a combination of imported and local supplies to meet its water demands and has taken numerous steps to ensure it has adequate supplies. MET’s 2020 UWMP concludes that they can meet full-service demands of their member agencies through 2045 during normal years, single-dry years, and multiple-dry years. Consequently, the City is projected to meet full-service demands through 2045 for all scenarios, due to diversified supply and conservation measures. The Drought Risk Assessment (DRA) evaluates the City’s near-term ability to supply water assuming the City is experiencing a drought over the next five years. Even under the assumption of a drought over the next five years, MET’s 2020 UWMP concludes a surplus of water supplies would be available to all of its Member Agencies, including the City, should the need for additional supplies arise to close any local supply gap. Additionally, the City partakes in various efforts to reduce its reliance on imported water supplies such as increasing the use of local groundwater and recycled water supplies. WATER SHORTAGE CONTINGENCY PLANNING Water shortage contingency planning (WSCP) is a strategic planning process that the City engages in to prepare for and respond to water shortages. A water shortage, when water supply available is insufficient to meet the normally expected customer water use at a given point in time, may occur due to a number of reasons, such as water supply quality changes, climate change, drought, and catastrophic events (e.g., earthquake). The City’s WSCP provides real-time water supply availability assessment and structured steps designed to respond to actual conditions. This level of detailed planning and preparation will help maintain reliable supplies and reduce the impacts of supply interruptions. The WSCP serves as the operating manual that the City will use to prevent catastrophic service disruptions through proactive, rather than reactive, mitigation of water shortages. The WSCP contains the processes and procedures that will be deployed when shortage conditions arise so that the City’s governing body, its staff, and its retail agencies can easily identify and efficiently implement pre-determined steps to mitigate a water shortage to the level appropriate to the degree of water shortfall anticipated.