In The News

CITRUS HEIGHTS, CA (MPG) - A potential “sweet spot” in Citrus Heights will soon be tapped to provide an additional, reliable water supply source for customers in the Citrus Heights Water District.

Representative Ami Bera, M.D. (CA-07) and representatives of the Citrus Heights Water District celebrated the $1.5 million recently secured for construction with a tour of the project site at 7725 Highland Avenue on August 1.

The new Highland well will be built on a one-acre lot recently sold to the CHWD by the First Apostolic Church-Faith Christian School. The location is bordered by Beam Lane, a private road and by Highland Avenue.

Pending construction of a groundwater aquifer at 7725 Highland Avenue will allow the district to forego up to 1,500-acre-feet per year (AFY) of its surface supplies and allow the injection of surface water into storage.

“The goal is not just to be able to tap into more underground water, but in a good year, the new Highland well will be designed to take water from the surface and inject it back into the underground aquifer,” said CHWD general manager Hilary Straus.

The new aquifer will help preserve water resources for the Sacramento region through aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) technology, Straus said.

ASR is a water resources management technique for actively storing water underground during wet periods for recovery when needed, usually during dry periods. Artificial Recharge (AR) is focused on actively moving water from the surface into ground water systems, according to the California Water Science Center.

While CHWD receives the bulk of its water from Folsom Lake, it has four active wells and two standby wells that are used to supplement surface water. With Folsom Lake looking more like a pond, and no way of knowing if the next rainy season will deliver, local water agencies, including CHWD, are finding they have to dig deep.

“Our region relies a lot on Folsom Lake and Folsom Reservoir. We need projects like this where, in the rainy months, we can capture that water, and pump it down into the aquifer,” Representative Bera said.

“Highland Avenue is a location we’ve had our eye on for quite some time,” Straus said. According to its own studies, the Highland well location offered ideal geological characteristics for such water storage.

The goal is not just to be able to tap into more underground water, but in a good year, CHWD’s new Highland well will be designed to take water from the surface and inject it back into the underground aquifer, Strauss said.

Wells in Citrus Heights tap into a water source inside a vast deep aquifer called the Mehrten Formation that is pressurized and less susceptible to the variations that come with extreme weather changes, according to CHWD.

With its additional new Highland Avenue storage, CHWD will have the opportunity to better be able to work with regional entities such as the Sacramento Groundwater Authority to increase regional supply reliability and implement the overall goals of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

Straus applauded the partnership between CHWD and the office of Rep. Bera to secure project funding for the Highland well.

District officials say the federal dollars, on top of local funding, will soon help get the shovels in the ground. Funding will support the design, drilling, and testing of Highland Avenue Well within the service area of the Citrus Heights Water District.

The congressional bill to provide project funding awaits an approval vote in the U.S. Senate, and signature by President Biden.

Rep. Bera secured the funding as a community-funded project request through the House Energy and Water Development, and Interior-Environment fiscal year 2023 Appropriations bills, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives on July 20, 2022.

The congressman has secured more than $32 million to support 15 different community funding project requests for the Sacramento-region in the House fiscal year (FY) 2023 appropriations bills.

Citrus Heights Water District (CHWD) has served the community since 1920. Its service area consists of 12.8 square-miles of service line which provides drinking water to an estimated service area population of 67,000 customers via approximately 19,600 water service connections in Sacramento and Placer counties, including about 60 percent of the area within the boundaries of the City of Citrus Heights.