The Valley County Water District (VCWD) is a retail water purveyor serving customers in the Baldwin Park and Irwindale areas of the San Gabriel Valley.
The district has incorporated a variety of changes to its distribution system over the years, including dedicating a treatment facility to local groundwater cleanup efforts involving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), transitioning away from imported water, pressure zone reconfiguration, and accommodation of the water demands associated with industrial growth. Due to these changes, Civiltec was brought onboard to update the District’s Water Master Plan (WMP). The WMP is an assessment of the current capacity and configuration of the distribution system with respect to the District’s vision of the robust, redundant and resilient system performance that they endorse and their customers expect.
The WMP is a snapshot in time of the performance of the distribution system, a projection of future water demand, an evaluation of how the future demand will impact the performance of the current system, and a plan based on those future impacts for the strategic investments required (1) to comply with regulations and (2) to satisfy customer preferences. The foundation of the WMP was a detailed analysis of demographic trends within the District’s Sphere of Influence, water use trends analyzed at the individual parcel level, water quality trends impacting the region, practical service life trends of infrastructure and facilities, and the projected performance of new facilities already planned for implementation. A number of predictive and quantitative models were constructed to assist with evaluating the distribution system and recommending a set of hydraulic solutions to bring the system up to the preferred level of performance.
Civiltec worked closely with the District’s Management and Board of Directors to incorporate recommendations into an implementation plan that was compatible with both the District’s anticipated capital improvement budgets and prioritization that represented the Board’s intimate understanding of their assets and their desire for efficiency.
The VCWD Board of Directors adopted the 2013 Water Master Plan Update at its regular meeting on May 12, 2014. The Master Plan was published in late May 2014.
