NEWS RELEASE

Date: July 3, 2002

Water district receives $250,000 grant to improve groundwater monitoring

SAN JOSÉ - The Santa Clara Valley Water District has received a $250,000 grant from the California Department of Water Resources to improve groundwater monitoring in Palo Alto and Cupertino, announced Gregory A. Zlotnick, the water district board member representing those two cities.

The grant will allow the district to add monitoring wells and improve the groundwater monitoring network, especially in areas where valuable monitoring sites have been lost or where additional quality data for local aquifers are needed.

“Monitoring wells are essential to understand the groundwater conditions and effectively sustain, protect and manage groundwater resources to improve water supply reliability and to protect quality more effectively,” said Zlotnick, who also represents the cities of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Saratoga, Monte Sereno and Mountain View, portions of San Jose and Sunnyvale, and Stanford.

Ensuring a safe and adequate supply of groundwater is critical in Santa Clara County because underground aquifers account for nearly half of the county’s annual drinking water supply. The grant will specifically allow the water district to construct two 1,000-foot-deep monitoring sites containing four wells each in the cities of Cupertino and Palo Alto.

The wells in Cupertino will help the district better understand the ground water system recharge capacity, especially the areas in the basin that seem slower to replenish. Data obtained during the construction, operation and monitoring of the proposed wells will give the district increased knowledge of the aquifer system in this area, resulting in more focused recharge efforts and improved basin management.

Similarly, the north county project will provide valuable data crucial to the long-term water supply reliability of the region.
In addition, zones of high chloride concentrations have been measured in Palo Alto, and the proposed wells will help the district better understand local groundwater quality and effectively address the problem.

“In Palo Alto, considering some of the uncertainties surrounding the Hetch Hetchy water system, we need to have a comprehensive understanding of the groundwater conditions before we can look to those resources as a potential back up,” said Zlotnick, referring to plans for upgrading the water system that serves San Francisco and some northern Santa Clara County cities.

Zlotnick is also on the board of directors of the American Ground Water Trust.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District manages Santa Clara County's wholesale drinking water resources, coordinates flood protection for its 1.7 million residents and provides stewardship for the county's 10 reservoirs and more than 700 miles of streams.