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The Pleasanton City Council had a long discussion regarding the city’s water system last week as staff went over the status of various capital improvement projects, upcoming state regulatory changes, future infrastructure needs and the upcoming water rate study that will help shape potential increases for next year.
During the Jan. 21 council meeting, staff started off with its quarterly update on the city’s water system which included information on some of the major initiatives the Public Works Department has been working on over the past few months.
Mayor Jack Balch said he appreciated the staff’s presentation as it went into detail about the various projects and the financials behind those projects.
“It does feel like, to me, that we are very transparent, working through a process (and) people are aware of it,” Balch said. “This report seems to really incorporate lessons learned so that we can deliver clean, affordable drinking for our residents and do it in a very deliberate manner.”
One of the major updates from the meeting was in regards to the city’s joint project with the Zone 7 Water Agency to test viable locations in West Pleasanton for two potentially new groundwater wells outside of a PFAS plume.
PFAS, otherwise known as forever chemicals, have been plaquing the city’s groundwater wells for several years now and after having shut off Wells 5,6 and 8 due to chemical contamination, the city has been looking at other alternatives for additional water supply — currently the city receives 100% of its water from Zone 7.
Even though both Zone 7 and Pleasanton staff continue to assure the public that the synthetic chemicals are not in their drinking water, the city’s groundwater wells contribute up to 3,500 acre-feet per year of water — approximately 20 to 25% — of the city’s total water supply needs.
Also known as the Regional Groundwater Facilities Project, the joint initiative aims to construct new water wells within the Bernal subbasin.
Ryan Smith, assistant director of public works, told the council the project just wrapped up conducting its test drilling at Del Prado Park this month, which is to test the viability of a new groundwater well at that location, and the city is getting set to test drilling at Pleasanton Tennis and Community Park on Feb. 3.
Smith said they are planning to finish up by the end of February in order to move to the last test drilling location — Hansen Park — between the end of February and sometime in March. After that, he said the city will conduct a feasibility study from April to July. If all goes well and the locations are able to handle all the factors that come with new groundwater wells, Smith said they will then be able to move to phase two, which is actually designing the new regional groundwater well system.
Balch asked staff about their efforts to communicate with neighboring residents surrounding the Tennis and Community Park after several residents in the Del Prado community raised concerns about not being notified to which staff said they have sent out an e-newsletter and they will be mailing out physical notices to residents about drilling hours and what to expect.
Smith also went over the Water Enterprise Fund, which finances these types of projects, and how water sales is estimated to bring in $36.78 million — he also reminded the public about the city’s issuance of water revenue bonds with a principal maximum amount of $19 million, which also helps fund various capital projects.
Some of the other projects that Smith talked about were the completion of a new 18-inch water line at Bernal Avenue on the corner of Nevada Street, replaced interior piping and equipment and other projects still under construction such as a water line being installed at Stoneridge Drive and a new booster station that is expected to be installed by Spring 2026.
Despite some of these improvements still being constructed, Smith said the city anticipates it will have enough pressure in the water system to properly serve residents during peak demand in the summer.
Smith also went over new state regulatory requirements that the city is going to face in the coming years.
While a lot of these won’t have any direct effect on general residents, one that he pointed out which could affect folks who have properties with a well, septic system or ones with an existing fire sprinkler system is a “Cross Connection Control Regulation”. He said other places like hospitals that handle chemicals would also be affected by this new regulation.
Some other regulations that the city will have to address in the coming years include a “Water Conservation as a California Way of Life” regulation that is intended to manage urban water use; a ban prohibiting the watering of “nonfunctional turf” with potable water among non-single-family residential property types — this regulation will be phased out between 2027 to 2031 — and new lead and copper guidelines.
According to Smith, the city is required to inspect all service lines for lead and copper and it has not found any lead in the water system as of October of last year.
City Manager Gerry Beaudin said as the city moves toward the required water conservation objectives, including decreasing outdoor water use by 2035 and installation of water meters for large landscapes, it is better to start now on these objectives rather than later.
“There’s a lot of work to be done in the next couple of years on this topic,” Beaudin said. “We definitely don’t want to leave it until the last minute.”
Public works director Siew-Chin Yeong said residents will be able to interact with her team and other staff and ask deeper questions on these various projects and topics during the city’s first-ever “Water Open House”, which will be held at the Veterans Memorial Building on March 1.
In other business
* The council accepted the city’s first-ever Water System Management Plan, which staff called a comprehensive management plan to ensure the long-term sustainability of the city’s water program.
“I am very much in support of asset management plans, water system management plans — things that have never been done before that our city absolutely needs in order to prioritize our … construction costs,” Vice Mayor Jeff Nibert said.
Smith said the item, which was previously continued from the Nov. 19 meeting, was a culmination of years of evaluating different studies that were performed previously in order to develop the plan.
He said the plan, otherwise known as the WSMP, is not so much a document that governs day-to-day decisions about how to operate the water system. Instead, he said the document is more of an assessment for two areas of the city’s water system.
“This WSMP is a needs assessment in two categories: capital needs and operational, programmatic needs,” he said. “These are the facts, we have needs and that’s really what we’re here to talk about.”
The acceptance of this document, which will be a living document that will be updated every two and six years, is just the first of three phases before the council officially adopts the WSMP in July.
Under this first phase, the council reviewed the findings of WSMP and the program needs, including the list of capital improvement project and operations and maintenance project needs along with cost estimates.
Staff reviewed how the plan prioritizes different water supply, distribution capacity and rehabilitation and replacement projects along with other projects to improve emergency power reliability. Staff took all of those projects and developed costs associated with each project as part of this initial phase.
However, more important to the average resident will be what comes next, which is how the city will pay for all of these projects over the next 20 years.
According to the presentation, the total costs for the CIP projects listed in the WSMP is about $262.1 million. And in order to implement all of these projects, the city will have to hire new engineering staff, which could cost anywhere between $8 million to $12 million — there’s also additional operations and maintenance costs that would come with new facilities that total in about $12 million to $18 million.
That means the construction of these projects combined with the implementation of them would total anywhere from $283 to $289 million over the next 20 years.
As the city gets set to move into developing the implementation of the WSMP over the next few months, one important aspect of that second phase will be the water rate study.
Similar to the process that led to the water rate increases back in 2023, staff will be coming back to the council in March to present different financial scenarios and then again in April to specifically talk about water rate scenarios.
According to staff, part of that rate study will evaluate alternatives for the timing of certain projects as staff consider financing and risks.
The council will then review final water rate recommendations in June before officially adopting them in October so that the new rates are effective January 2026.
“I think (the WSMP) went into a lot of depth and thoughtfulness into how to address issues with our water system,” Councilmember Craig Eicher said.
He said he was surprised to find the plan outlines how 25% of the city’s water assets received a poor or very poor rating while 75% of the water assets received a fair or good assessment, which is why approving the WSMP was an easy decision for him.
“Understanding the degree of need makes this plan pretty easy to pass,” he said.
Balch also said he appreciated how the it was a sobering “this is where we’re at,” report and that paying and maintaining the city’s water system will be critical.
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Readers, note the sudden change in tone from Mayor Balch. Suddenly city staff reports are to be trusted and are lauded for their transparency. A departure from the tone employed by then council member Balch in the last election cycle. The only lessons learned by Mayor Balch are that water rate increases are necessary to pay for potable water infrastructure. Because of the persistent budget deficit the city will have to use contractors to install and maintain infrastructure. No appetite for hiring additional staff when we were told staffing cuts are a necessary piece to balancing the budget. Curious how he will sell this to the residents who voted for him.
@Critical Thinker, seems you might have missed the council meetings in 2023 leading up to the compromised reduced rate increases in 2024 and 2025. Details and transparency were lacking in 2023. Finally under Mayor Balch we are seeing details not seen before, yes we are finally seeing some transparency.
The need to hire a department of engineers doesn’t seem well thought out. Many government agencies and private sector businesses outsource functions to keep the costs down.
I’ve been watching and following city council for a long time. I can tell you that the only new details emerging from city council is how quickly Jack has pivoted in his rhetoric. Suddenly the city has we money for contractors. Suddenly Jack thinks increasing water rates for Pleasanton residents is a good idea. It’s not engineers we need, I believe there is a whole department of civil engineers in the City already. It’s utility workers that we need to maintain the infrastructure we already have and that needs to be replaced in the future. We were told during the last election that city employees were paid too much, that the city uses too many contractors for work it can conduct in-house, that water rates were raised to an ill-affordable level. Now Jack seems to have forgot the platform and messaging he ran on. Perhaps winning at all costs was what he was really after.