Transparency & Public Records
OCWD Overview & Links to Compensation and Public Records
The Orange County Water District (OCWD or District) is a special district formed in 1933 by an act of the California Legislature. The District was created to protect Orange County’s rights to Santa Ana River water and to manage the vast groundwater basin that provides most of the water demand for almost 2.4 million residents in north and central Orange County. OCWD is committed to constantly improving Orange County’s groundwater quality and reliability in an environmentally friendly manner. With years of sound planning and appropriate investment in the groundwater basin, OCWD has more than doubled its output of water. The basin, which is larger than the largest reservoir in Southern California, has helped Orange County weather multi-year droughts in Southern California. History of OCWD
A 10-member Board of Directors (Board) govern the District, seven of whom are elected and three are appointed by the city councils of Anaheim, Fullerton and Santa Ana. The District has about 215 employees overseeing day-to-day activities at the direction of the General Manager.
OCWD Board of Directors Bios
OCWD Agendas/Calendar
2011 Board & Employee Compensation & Benefits
Salary Schedule Updated 11-22-2011
Employment Opportunities
The District Act provides for local financing of the District's operations by a combination of ad valorem taxes and water use assessments. It empowers the District to levy and collect a replenishment assessment (RA) on water extracted from the groundwater basin. These monies are used to purchase supplemental water for groundwater recharge; to construct, operate and maintain water production facilities; to acquire water rights and spreading facilities to replenish and protect the groundwater supply of the District; and for administrative purposes.
The Board also sets an annual basin equity assessment (BEA) that generally represents the differential cost between pumping groundwater and purchasing imported water. Producers annually pay the BEA on each acre-foot in excess of the basin production percentage (BPP) established by the Board.
The District primarily recharges the groundwater basin with Santa Ana River flows, Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS) water and to a lesser extent with imported water purchased from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). The Santa Ana River flows are essentially free to the District, less the expense to capture and percolate the water, resulting in groundwater that costs about a third of the water imported from Northern California and the Colorado River. Valued at about $120 million every year, the Santa Ana River flows are percolated into deep groundwater aquifers through spreading basins in Anaheim and Orange. By naturally filtering the water through the ground, the District saves ratepayers millions of dollars each year in water treatment costs. The District also holds surplus imported water owned and used by the MWD in its basin, which helps improve water reliability for all of Southern California. (OCWD Recharge Operations)
The groundwater basin provides about two-thirds of all water used within the District’s service area. With one of the most sophisticated groundwater protection programs in the country, the District uses more than 650 (owned and non-owned) wells providing more than 1,300 sampling points from which the District takes more than 20,000 water samples and conducts around 400,000 laboratory analyses every year.
(OCWD Advanced Water Quality Assurance Laboratory)
The District’s monitoring program looks for more than 500 contaminants, which is more than the required 144 target contaminants by health agencies.
The District currently holds rights to all Santa Ana River flows reaching Prado Dam in Riverside County (the dam is owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood prevention). The District owns 2,150 acres behind the dam that it used for water conservation, water quality improvement and environmental enhancement. The District saves approximately $31.9 million a year by collecting storm water behind Prado Dam, which is recharged into the basin instead of being discharged to the ocean. (OCWD Prado Wetlands/Natural Resources)
The Groundwater Replenishment System is the world’s largest wastewater purification facility of its kind. The GWRS takes highly treated sewer water destined for the ocean, purifies it to near-distilled quality, and puts it back into the groundwater basin and the District’s seawater intrusion barrier. The GWRS, a joint project of the District and the Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD), produces high-quality water for about the same cost of imported water, but uses less energy than is required to import water from Northern California.
Additional efforts to increase local water supplies include expanding the capacity of the existing percolation facilities, treating poor quality water to make it useable, studying methods to extend the life of water treatment filtration membranes, improving advanced purification technologies, and studying the quality of Santa Ana River water and other water-related issues. Other District activities focus on expanding the Prado wetlands, groundwater treatment at well heads, computer modeling of the groundwater basin and conservation of endangered or threatened species.
The District continues to adopt strategies to ensure that sufficient water supplies will be available in the future to replenish, protect and maximize the use of the groundwater basin. Ensuring water quality continues to be a top priority for the District; extra effort is extended in the area of monitoring water quality and regular cleanup, striving to improve coastal conditions, along with sound financial choices to minimize the costs of projects.
Budget Reports and other OCWD Publications
Public Notices
Request for Proposals
Public Records & Groundwater Data Requests
Media Inquiries
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If you are looking for additional information that you cannot locate on our website, please call (714) 378-3228 or send an e-mail to gdepinto@ocwd.com.
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