BOARD AGENDA MEMORANDUM
Government Code § 84308 Applies: Yes ☐ No ☒
(If “YES” Complete Attachment A – Gov. Code § 84308)
SUBJECT: Title
Receive and Discuss Revisions to the Draft Water Supply Master Plan 2050 and Provide Feedback to Staff.
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RECOMMENDATION: Recommendation
Receive and discuss revisions to the draft Water Supply Master Plan 2050 and provide feedback to staff.
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SUMMARY:
The Water Supply Master Plan (WSMP) is Santa Clara Valley Water District’s (Valley Water) guiding document for long-term water supply investments to ensure water supply reliability for Santa Clara County. Updated approximately every five years, this long-range plan assesses projected future county-wide demands and evaluates and recommends water supply and infrastructure projects to meet those demands to achieve Valley Water’s level of service goal through the planning horizon. Valley Water’s Level of Service (LOS) goal, as established in Board Ends Policy E-2, is to “Meet 100 percent of annual water demand during non-drought years and at least 80 percent of demand in drought years.”
Valley Water has developed the WSMP 2050 to address both existing and emerging challenges and identify strategies to maintain the reliable water supply system for Santa Clara County through 2050. On June 10, 2025, the draft WSMP 2050 was presented to the Valley Water Board of Directors (Board) for feedback. The cornerstone of the WSMP 2050 is an adaptive management strategy to support investment decisions in the face of uncertainties associated with future conditions and project development. With this framework, staff recommends the lower cost portfolio (which includes Pure Water Silicon Valley, Delta Conveyance Project, B.F. Sisk dam raise, groundwater banking, and South County Recharge) while continuing to plan for other projects and make incremental investment decisions through adaptive management.
Following the June Board meeting, staff made changes to the draft plan in response to feedback from the Board, discussions at committees, and comments from stakeholders and the public. The draft WSMP was posted for 45 days for public review. Five entities - City of Sunnyvale, Doug Peterson, Infractiv LLC, Sierra Club, and Tuolumne River Trust, provided written comments. The revised draft WSMP 2050 with major changes tracked is attached (Attachment 1), along with responses to comments (Attachment 2). This memorandum summarizes key revisions to the draft plan. The staff presentation will also include responses to common questions and feedback received.
Board Ends Policy E-2
At the Board meeting, discussion included how the WSMP relates to Valley Water policies. The Board Ends Policy E-2 - Water Supply Services (E-2) lays out Valley Water’s policy for water supply planning and management. This policy establishes not only Valley Water’s LOS goal, but also five other water supply goals and associated objectives. The E-2 policy serves as the basis and guidance for the WSMP. It was added to the draft plan as Appendix A and the water supply goals are cited in Section 1.1.
Scope of WSMP
While the main purpose of WSMP is to identify Valley Water’s future needs and develop investment strategy to meet those needs, it is not intended to determine project design and capacity. Rather, it takes project and program options available to Valley Water and identifies the best investment strategies among those options through project evaluation and portfolio analysis. The design and capacity of specific projects are typically done outside the WSMP process and through lengthy study and evaluation. A clarification of WSMP scope was added to Section 1.4.
WSMP Relationship with Other Plans
Public comments requested more information on the relationship of the WSMP to other plans. In addition to the WSMP, Valley Water also develops Urban Water Management Plan (UWMP) and Water Shortage Contingency Plan (WSCP), both are mandated by the State to be updated every five years to support an agency’s water supply planning and management. Since the UWMP is also a long-range plan, it is consistent with and informed by the WSMP. However, the UWMP must comply with all State-required reporting and therefore includes other information and might use different imported water data. Valley Water intends to use demand projection and water supply strategy developed for the WSMP 2050 for the next UWMP update, required to be completed by July 2026.
The WSCP establishes actions and procedures for managing water shortages due to droughts and other emergencies consistent with new state regulations. The WSCP defines specific triggers, currently based on groundwater storage levels, when Valley Water will call for water use reduction during droughts. These triggers are incorporated in the WSMP model analysis to serve as key indicators of system health and determine whether a portfolio meets the LOS goal. A new section 1.5 was added to explain these relationships.
Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan
Several public comments related to the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan (Bay-Delta Plan) and proposed Voluntary Agreements, which if implemented, could impact water deliveries to Valley Water’s retailers by San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), as well as Valley Water’s State Water Project (SWP) and Central Valley Project (CVP) supplies. Currently, the requirements of the Bay-Delta Plan Amendments are still under review and may change as a result of ongoing negotiations on proposed voluntary agreements, and therefore their exact impacts are not sufficiently understood yet and subject to change. Additional discussion on the Bay-Delta Plan was added to Section 3.3.3.
Non-potable Recycled Water Expansion
Following up on the Board referral to discuss expanding non-potable recycled water use to the Recycled Water Committee, staff presented information on the potential opportunities to expand non-potable recycled water use in the County at the July 30, 2025, committee meeting. The topics includes the countywide water reuse master plan, current non-potable reuse (NPR) system and Valley Water support for South County, WSMP NPR expansion assumption, regulatory requirements and water quality, and benefits and challenges of NPR (Attachment 3). Accordingly, Section 2.6 (Recycled and Purified Water) of the draft plan was expanded to include some of this information.
Project Cost Updates and Line Items
In responding to Board meeting discussion and public comments, detailed project cost estimation and line items were added into the plan. A new Section 5.4.1 was added to include information on capital cost details and annual cost. Detailed cost information was also added to Appendix G. The WSMP recognizes the baseline cost that is already embedded in the current rates and considers the additional cost and rate impacts from the pending investments.
In addition, Valley Water recently received new cost information for the Direct Potable Reuse (DPR) project Pure Water Silicon Valley and Sites reservoir, so the costs for these projects and any associated portfolios were updated accordingly. Since the Desalination project uses the cost of the DPR project as a placeholder while its feasibility study is ongoing, its cost was updated too.
Project Implementation Timeline
To aid better understanding of the proposed roadmap and adaptive management, a graph showing the implementation timeline of major projects was added to Section 7.2. The timeline represents current understanding of each project’s planned implementation and is subject to change, as the projects are in the planning stage and still evolving. Any update to the timeline will be reported in the annual reporting.
Other Changes
In addition to the major revisions discussed above, there are changes and edits made in other areas of the plan in response to public comments and committee feedback. All major changes are tracked in the attached plan (Attachment 1).
On August 26, 2025, the Board decided to suspend the Pacheco Reservoir Expansion project. Accordingly, changes will be made to the final WSMP 2050 to reflect this development. The adaptive management framework will be used to explore other storage options including local reservoirs.
Next Steps
Based on the Board feedback and direction, staff will finalize and bring the plan for Board adoption.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IMPACT:
The Water Supply Master Plan addresses water supply equity by ensuring a cost-effective, high-quality supply is available for all of Santa Clara County, including disadvantaged communities.
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
There is no financial impact associated with this item.
CEQA:
The recommended actions do not constitute a project under CEQA because they do not have the potential for resulting in direct or reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment.
ATTACHMENTS:
Attachment 1: Water Supply Master Plan 2050, Revised
Attachment 2: Response to Comments
Attachment 3: 07302025 Committee Agenda Memorandum
Attachment 4: PowerPoint
*Handout 3.5-A: 09092025 PowerPoint Changes
UNCLASSIFIED MANAGER: Manager
Kirsten Struve, 408-630-3138