Healdsburg's future water supply deemed adequate

Despite a stubborn drought and the potential for more dry years in the future, Healdsburg’s water supply is more than adequate for its projected population growth, according to a consultant’s report delivered last week to the City Council.

The study shows that over the next ?20 years, the city will have plenty of water, in part due to continuing conservation, new construction that will be more water efficient and increased use of recycled water to offset potable water use.

“I have to say, we look pretty good,” Cristina Goulart, a consultant with GHD Inc., told the City Council on Wednesday.

Her company was hired to update Healdsburg’s long-overdue water management plan, something required every five years for urban water agencies in the state with 3,000 connections or more.

“Healdsburg has a very stable water supply going forward,” Mayor Shaun McCaffery said following the council’s adoption of the plan. “There’s a fear out there of lack of water. When you look into it, it turns out everything is OK.”

Councilman Tom Chambers was buoyed by the report. “It looks like we have adequate water supply, even with increased growth over time,” he said.

The city of 11,680 is projected to grow to almost 14,000 people by the year 2035, based on an approximate 1 percent annual growth rate assumed by the Association of Bay Area Governments.

Currently, the city has a water supply of 4,307 acre-feet, but demand is only 2,388 acre-feet. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre to a foot deep, or ?325,851 gallons.

By the year 2035, the city’s total water supply is expected to be ?4,821 acre feet, but demand will still be much less - 2,857 acre feet, according to Goulart’s report.

“As you can see, the city is looking pretty good,” she said of the buffer.

The city obtains its water primarily from wells along the Russian River, pumped from “underflows,” or water about 70 feet beneath the riverbed.

But it also has a small well field along Dry Creek. The study assumes that the city will get state approval by 2020 to use the Dry Creek wells year-round, amounting to another 304 acre feet per year. Currently, it only pumps from them seven months of the year.

The water management plan also compared Healdsburg to other neighboring cities and showed its per-person use somewhere in the middle, with consumption much lower in Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park, but higher in Sonoma and Ukiah.

But some of the per-person figures were not current, because Healdsburg is just now completing its ?2010 urban water management plan.

For a 10-year period ending in 2004 - the most recent comparison cited in the study - daily water use in Healdsburg averaged 203 gallons per person, a figure based on commercial and residential users.

By contrast, in the same period Santa Rosa averaged 144 gallons; Rohnert Park, 162; Sonoma 216 and Ukiah 232. Goulart said Santa Rosa’s low rate was based on aggressive conservation programs it developed 15 to ?20 years ago due to pressure to end its wastewater discharges into the Russian River.

City officials were unable to explain the delay in completing the 2010 report, other than to say some staff duties were reshuffled and the lapse was brought to their attention by “a well informed citizen,” attorney Gail Jonas.

Jonas said because the report was years overdue, she was skeptical whether the city was paying close attention to demand on its water supply.

But after studying the draft report, she said she was satisfied with the study’s positive projections, which show that even in another multi-year drought, water supply will exceed demand.

Healdsburg will soon embark on its 2015 Urban Water Management Plan, which is due next year.

Chambers cautioned against becoming complacent as a result of the upbeat report. Most important, he said, are the actions the city and its residents have taken to conserve water, including only allowing landscape irrigation twice per week. Healdsburg, like other cities, in under a state mandate to reduce its water use due to the historic drought.

Chambers said Healdsburg needs to remain as diligent as possible with conservation “because who knows what’s going to happen in the future.”