OCWD Online - Press Release: Water District Captures Stormwater

NEWS | Press Release Library| 2001 Press Releases:

For Immediate Release: January 16, 2001

ORANGE COUNTY WATER DISTRICT CAPTURES 2.2 MILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF STORM WATER

ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. – Not all news concerning rainstorms is bad. As a result of last week’s storm, Orange County Water District (OCWD) captured over 2 million dollars worth of storm water behind Prado Dam for percolating into the Orange County groundwater basin. The groundwater basin that OCWD manages supplies approximately 75 percent of the total water used by 2 million residents in north and central Orange County.

By agreement between OCWD and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, OCWD is allowed to capture Santa Ana River water flow behind Prado Dam (at the junction of the 91 and 71 freeways, west of Corona, Calif.) for later percolation into the large groundwater basin under north and central Orange County. Percolation is the process by which water is filtered by passing through the ground, entering natural storage spaces below the ground surface. The current average annual base flow of the Santa Ana River is about 160,000 acre-feet* per year, with storm flows adding an average of 60,000 acre-feet per year.

Approximately 8,900 acre-feet of water was captured as a result of last week’s storm.

The water will eventually be released in a controlled manner in the coming days and weeks and will be diverted into several percolation ponds in Anaheim, Calif., specifically built to percolate the water into the groundwater basin. This is the same water that will be pumped out by Orange County water suppliers in the years ahead.

The basin facilities have the capacity to percolate about 300,000 acre-feet of water a year.

"We have made a conscious effort over the past ten years to improve the capability of the percolation basins in order to increase the amount of storm water we can capture and make available to Orange County residents," said Jerry King, President of the Board of Directors for OCWD. "Percolating this water into the groundwater basin means we will need to buy less higher-priced, imported water by storing more water that can be used later in times of drought or lower annual rainfall. It helps us provide groundwater at a very reasonable price – about one-third the cost of imported water."

*An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons, or the amount of water to cover one-acre of land to the depth of one foot, and serves two Orange County families for one year.

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OCWD is a special agency created by the California Legislature to maintain and manage the groundwater basin under the northern and central areas of Orange County. The OCWD supplies 75 percent of the water needs to more than 2.7 million residents and businesses in Anaheim, Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, most of Irvine, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Newport Beach, Orange, Placentia, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Stanton, Tustin, Villa Park, Westminster and Yorba Linda.

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