Soquel has finished construction on a water reuse project that’s been in the works for 10 years. The Pure Water Soquel project will divert a quarter of the water coming out of the Santa Cruz Wastewater Treatment Facility to an advanced water purification plant.
From there, injection wells will pump treated water back into the ground. Soquel Creek Water District general manager Melanie Mow Schumacher says the project will address two major problems with the mid-county groundwater basin.
"There's been too much water over time historically that has been extracted than has been replenished by natural rainfall," Mow Schumacher says.
That over-extraction creates seawater intrusion.
"Ocean water is seeping into the fresh groundwater underneath and into the groundwater basin," Mow Schumacher explains.
The $200 million project created four miles of underground pipes, a new treatment facility, and three injection wells.
At the water district office, Cameron Kostigen Mumper, associate manager of water resources, holds up a glass bottle of wastewater and shakes it.
"It's pretty cloudy," he says. "It's got some solids floating around in there."
He picks up a second bottle full of clearer water. It’s what leaves the treatment plant and usually goes into Monterey Bay.
"This serves as that source, or that feed water, for us," Kostigen Mumper says.
That water will go through four treatment processes, including reverse osmosis and UV purification. The final step is raising the pH and re-adding minerals before pumping it into the ground.
With the major construction complete, the state is now doing final checks with the water district. Similar projects have been successful for years in places like Orange County and Monterey.
