Achieving Drought Resiliency with San Jose Water
Achieving Drought Resiliency with San Jose Water
San Jose Water Company
San Jose, California
The San Jose Water Company enlisted CDM Smith’s team of One Water experts to develop a 30-year strategic plan to diversify its water supply portfolio given the challenges of recurring droughts, environmental restrictions in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and long-term climate change.
California has experienced significant droughts in nine of the last 15 years. 2022 is expected to be the driest year in the past 128 years. As the impacts of climate change intensify, Californians are experiencing increased temperatures, reduced mountain snowpack, soil moisture loss, and increasing wildfires—all leading to reduced water supplies and degrading water quality of surface reservoirs. In addition to climate change, environmental regulations governing the pumping of imported water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are resulting in significantly lower allocations of the State Water Project upon which communities like San Jose rely. And while there are several state and regional projects that can help alleviate some of these pressures, they are in many cases decades away from implementation and have had significant environmental opposition.
As one of the largest and most technically sophisticated investor-owned urban water utility systems in the U.S., the San Jose Water Company (SJW) is responsible for providing safe drinking water to over 1 million residents and thousands of businesses in Santa Clara County. SJW teamed up with CDM Smith to develop its first Strategic Water Resources Plan (SWRP) to increase the reliability and resiliency of its water supplies. This plan, taking a One Water approach, quantified the water supply risks of SJW’s existing sources of water under multiple hydrologic and regulatory conditions, including modeling the impacts of long-term climate change. CDM Smith’s Water Integration Tool was used to simulate future water demands and existing water supplies, determine the likelihood and magnitude of potential water shortages, and rapidly test the impacts of different planning scenarios. Next, CDM Smith experts conceptualized various water conservation and alternative water supplies, identifying new supply yields, cost, water quality benefits, and implementation challenges. These alternatives were then ranked with input from a stakeholder advisory group and SJW’s board of directors through multiple workshops and meetings.
The Board is very pleased and impressed by the roadmap and strategy developed by CDM Smith. The adaptive approach was spot on ideal for this challenge.
The SWRP is a 30-year roadmap to improve water supply reliability, affordability of high-quality water services, and economic vitality. The plan also prioritizes environmental stewardship and quality-of-life improvement initiatives. To develop it, CDM Smith spent one year meeting with SJW’s board of directors, conferring with SJW technical staff in biweekly project meetings, and working with an external stakeholder group to solicit input. “The Board is very pleased and impressed by the roadmap and strategy developed by CDM Smith. The adaptive approach was spot on ideal for this challenge,” said Eric Thornburg, the CEO of SJW Group.
The plan’s technical innovations included:
- Econometric water demand forecasting was used to account for the major factors influencing water use by water billing sector, such as weather, income, price of water, and climate through the year 2050.
- Water supply simulations using CDM Smith’s Water Integration Tool predicted estimates of water shortages through using historical and climate-changed hydrological conditions.
- Scenario planning and adaptive management defined future needs for new water supply investments, ranked alternatives, and developed a flexible strategy that can adapt to changed conditions.
Ultimately, the following options were identified as having the strongest potential to ensure SJW could meet its goal of providing reliable, high-quality water to its customers:
- Brackish water desalination
- Expansion of non-potable recycled water
- Advanced metering infrastructure
- Purifying wastewater for direct potable reuse
Adaptive Management for SJW's Recommended Water Resources Plan Strategy
“I gained insights that were not apparent from either our own previous planning reports or those of our imported water provider,” said SJW project manager Bill Tuttle. “The plan is very detailed and cutting edge for our system and is truly a testament to the CDM Smith team’s engineering prowess.”
“The vision of SJW’s executive leadership to launch the plan, and our close collaboration with SJW technical staff in the development process, were instrumental to its success,” said Dan Rodrigo, CDM Smith’s project director and One Water practice leader.
SJW has quickly launched its first steps in the implementation of the plan’s recommended actions—demonstrating that when vision is matched with tactics, great things can be accomplished to ensure reliable, resilient and sustainable water supply for decades to come.
