SCV Water was recently awarded a $363,374 Federal grant under the Bureau of Reclamation’s (BOR) FY 2023 WaterSMART Applied Science Grant Program.

Funds will go towards the Agency’s Groundwater Model Refinement and Calibration Project.

In the coming years, SCV Water’s supplies will be subject to a wide variety of known and unknown risks and uncertainties. To ensure a sustainable and resilient water supply for its customers, SCV Water will need to respond to more extreme droughts, floods, rising temperatures, and changing regulatory requirements.

In FY 2023/24, the Agency developed a Water Resources Integration Model to evaluate new and refined operating strategies, quantify the reliability of its water supply portfolio, and analyze the tradeoffs between different adaptation strategies.

“This grant will assist SCV Water with updating its groundwater flow model to better describe the storage and recharge paths in key aquifers to determine future reliability and recharging needs in the Upper Santa Clara River Valley Groundwater Basin,” said SCV Water Principal Water Resources Planner Najwa Pitois.

Pitois added, “The Groundwater Model Refinement and Calibration Project will also be used to evaluate potential operational alternatives for groundwater pumping and how these alternatives may improve the reliability of the Agency’s water supply portfolio in light of climate change impacts and other future uncertainties.”

The WaterSMART Applied Science Grant will support SCV Water’s Water Resilience Initiative in the following areas:

• Surface water and groundwater. Updated modeling will help SCV Water better understand the interconnection between surface water, groundwater and environmental resources, which will be vital for developing local groundwater resources.
• Water resource integration. The updated model will help the Agency to analyze a complex array of alternative groundwater management actions and compare these actions against various other water supply and storage programs to help guide selection of cost-effective investments in new water reliability programs.

“Receiving this grant will help SCV Water further its Water Resiliency Initiative by taking actions that will ensure safe and resilient water supplies and healthy ecosystems for our community, economy, and the environment,” said Pitois.

Ed. Note: The above information was provided to KHTS by SCV Water.

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