The City of Morro Bay (City) primarily utilizes State Water Project water (State Water) to meet its water demand but relies upon its local Morro Basin groundwater supplies to supplement during periods of high demand or during partial/full State Water outages. Groundwater from the Morro Basin is contaminated with nitrate and elevated Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) concentrations and requires treatment through the City’s Brackish Water Reverse Osmosis (BWRO) facility.
ConfluenceES developed and received Department of Drinking Water (DDW) approval on a thorough, user-friendly nitrate blending plan for use in everyday operations. This blend plan consists of clear recommendations for blending high nitrate groundwater with low nitrate State Water. Blending under this plan is more efficient for the City due to the additional electrical, chemical, and operational requirements, water losses, and costs associated with running their BWRO, which was previously their only option for supplementing their State Water supply with groundwater.
The Nitrate Blending Plan includes operating procedures, monitoring requirements, field data sheets, and computational analysis templates to assist the City in developing specific blending scenarios for different water supply conditions (i.e. Limited State Water; Full State Water). Each of the scenarios include specific information on nitrate concentrations and production rates for each water source and the necessary blend ratios to meet water system demands and produce water that does not exceed the nitrate MCL.
The Water Reclamation Facility (WRF) Program will provide regulatory required treatment upgrades and relocate the City’s Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), a critical facility, away from coastal and flood hazards to develop a more reliable and resilient water supply portfolio.
ConfluenceES is the Program Manager for the recycled water component of the WRF Program. Development of this sustainable, drought resistant water supply will provide water security for the City, reduce its reliance on Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta imports, improve local groundwater quality, and facilitate providing water to other local water utilities to improve regional water supply reliability and resiliency.
As the Recycled Water Program Manager, ConfluenceES is currently assisting in development of the layout for the injection well network to provide optimum water supply benefits, while meeting all the constraints associated with constructing a large public works project on the coast of California. This includes developing multiple alignment alternatives for the injection wells and pipelines and identifying the preferred alignment that meets the required travel time, allows for cost-effective conveyance, provides for future expansion and addition of more injection wells, avoids environmentally and archeologically sensitive areas, and limits construction impacts for the community.
The City of Morro Bay (City) currently possesses a water supply portfolio that consists of two primary sources. Imported water from the State Water Project (State water) and groundwater pumped from the Lower Morro Valley Groundwater Basin (Morro Basin). The City is in the process of implementing a Recycled Water Program that will include injection of advanced purified recycled water into the Morro Basin to enhance recharge, prevent seawater intrusion, and improve groundwater quality. The advanced purified recycled water will then be pumped from the City’s existing extraction wells after complying with Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR) Groundwater Replenishment Reuse Project (GRRP) requirements to improve the reliability and resiliency of its water supply portfolio.
To assist the City in evaluating how to integrate its new recycled water supply into its water supply portfolio, ConfluenceES developed a Water Supply Operations Model (Supply Model) that was utilized to evaluate water management strategies under current and future hydrologic and demand conditions. The findings from the water supply scenario analysis, which evaluated different options for how the City can utilize its new recycled water supply, provide the City with potential strategies to leverage its current and/or future water supply portfolio to benefit its residents.
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