Padre Dam's East County Water Purification Program Moving Forward
The next phase of the Padre Dam Municipal Water District's East County Advanced Water Purification Program has been approved by the district's Board of Directors.
The project, which is expected to produce up to 30 percent of East County's water by 2023, is a collaboration between Padre Dam, Helix Water District, the City of El Cajon and the County of San Diego.
"The entire Padre Dam Board believes the Advanced Water Purification Program has great promise to provide significant regional water and wastewater benefits for all project partners and the region and I for one cannot wait to see this project implemented," said Augie Caires, board president.
The board approved a $3.6 million contract with Kennedy/Jenks Consultants to continue engineering planning, research, outreach and other projects vital to the program's successful implementation. Funding for this work comes from Padre Dam's Advanced Water Purification fund and from project partners, who are expected to contribute approximately $500,000 each.
"We are excited to start work on the next phase of the East County Advanced Water Purification Program and move the project towards implementation," said Allen Carlisle, general manager/CEO of Padre Dam, "This next phase of work is significant in reaching final implementation agreements with our project partners and getting the Project prepared for construction and operation."
"East County is ready for a local, reliable and sustainable drinking water supply and we are working hard to make that a reality," he said.
The Board of Directors also adopted a policy statement in support of local supply incentive programs which states, "Padre Dam Municipal Water District believes that reliable local water supplies developed by local agencies thereby offsetting demand for imported water provide a regional reliability benefit to the entire MWD and CWA service areas. Furthermore it is the policy of Padre Dam to support legally formulated local supply incentive programs by MWD and CWA to share in the cost of providing that regional benefit."