Quick Take
While PV Water’s College Lake project will cause some traffic delays along Highway 129 until the early summer, officials say it has far-reaching benefits, including better water resiliency for farmers and residents in the face of drought and climate change.
Along with the many road projects in progress all around Santa Cruz County, various water supply projects are also underway. From water purification to returning stormwater to the ground, various agencies are working to bolster both residential and agricultural water supplies.
The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency’s (PV Water) College Lake Integrated Resources Management Project looks to capture more rainwater runoff for use by local farms.
Currently, crews are in the process of building a 6-mile water supply pipeline that will collect surface water runoff from College Lake near the fairgrounds in Watsonville. That water will flow through the new pipeline into 22 miles of existing pipeline, delivering it to growers. That means one eastbound lane along Highway 129 will be closed until June, and some parking spaces on Highway 129/Riverside Drive east of Union Road will be lost in the coming months.
However, Marcus Mendiola, water conservation and outreach specialist for PV Water, said the work is vital to the agricultural and economic health of the region.
The project is more than 20 years in the making and finally begins to address the seawater intrusion problem that water agencies have known about since the 1950s.
Mendiola said that about 93% of all water demand in the Pajaro Valley is met through pumping groundwater. The new source of water is expected to reduce the strain on the local groundwater supply by capturing more rainwater that would otherwise flow out to the ocean.
“By giving farmers an alternative to pumping, we’ll see less pumping in the coastal zone and groundwater levels will rise,” he said, adding that PV Water’s pipeline feeds water to more than 6,000 acres of farmland. “That farmland is a really key driver of our economy, so we’re trying to reach groundwater sustainability while keeping farming in business.”
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Further, Mendiola said the project helps protect the region from the effects of climate change. In dry years, North County water agencies have to pump water from wells due to empty reservoirs, and South County farmers have to pump their wells more than they normally would. This project works to diversify the area’s available water sources, giving farmers and residents more options no matter the weather.
“We’re looking to become less reliant on a single source that we all share and is already heavily impacted,” he said. “We’ve been pumping it too hard.”
The far-reaching project broke ground in May 2023. Seven months later, crews have just over a mile of the 6 total miles of pipeline to construct. While the timeline is all weather-dependent, Mendiola said PV Water expects the final mile of pipeline and its traffic impacts to Highway 129 to be finished in June. That’s not the finish line for the project: Water treatment plants off Holohan Road and a dam used to regulate and measure the flow of water near East Lake Avenue could take until the fall to complete. However, those aren’t expected to cause major traffic disruptions.
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Check out our Carmageddon road delay list here. This week, pay particular attention to:
Electrical and drainage work will cause a closure of the on-ramp to northbound Highway 1 at 41st Avenue, which will last between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
The Pure Water Soquel water purification project continues to move forward, and its current work will affect parts of Laurel Street in Santa Cruz. The installation of an architectural cover for the piping along the Laurel Street bridge will continue this week between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., shutting down one lane of westbound Laurel Street.
The PV Water College Lake Project will shut down one eastbound lane on Highway 129. Crews are installing a 6-mile water supply pipeline along the road.
Also in South County, widespread paving work will shut down southbound Highway 1 on-ramps from southbound Highway 129, southbound Harkins Slough Road, southbound Airport Boulevard and southbound Buena Vista Drive.
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