The City's plan for a long-term, reliable water supply

For over a century the City of Santa Cruz has been providing drinking water to residents and businesses in the water service area.  All water supplied to Santa Cruz customers is and always has been limited to locally available surface and groundwater resources; no water is imported from outside Santa Cruz County.

Santa Cruz relies predominantly on surface water including the North Coast sources (Liddell Spring and Laguna, Majors, and Reggiardo Creeks), the San Lorenzo River, and Loch Lomond Reservoir. These surface water sources represent the majority of the City’s total supply used to meet system demand; the balance comes from groundwater extracted from the Beltz Well system in the Purisima Formation in the Santa Cruz Mid-County Groundwater Basin. Historically, the North Coast sources have represented 23% of the total water supply, the San Lorenzo River represented 56 %, Loch Lomond Reservoir 15%, and the Beltz Well system contributed the remaining 5%.

Santa Cruz water customers maintain some of the lowest per capita demand in the state at 44 gallons per person per day. Despite low demand, Santa Cruz is vulnerable to water shortages during multiple dry year periods; this situation is exacerbated when impacts of climate change are included in the analysis with single year supply deficits potentially ranging from 10-50%.

The City has investigated water supply augmentation strategies for decades. Most recently, in 2014, the Santa Cruz City Council appointed a diverse community group to evaluate the City’s water supply situation by developing a problem statement, to solve, identifying and evaluating alternative solutions, and developing recommendations to the City Council on water supply augmentation actions to be pursued.  Those recommendations included active and passive groundwater recharge in the form of Aquifer Storage and Recovery and passive recharge through water transfers and exchanges with neighboring water agencies, as well as evaluation of recycled water opportunities and desalination.

Water Department staff, in collaboration with other City Departments, neighboring water agencies, as well as both the Santa Cruz Mid-County and Santa Margarita groundwater sustainability agencies, have been evaluating these alternatives. Refer to the glossary for definitions of these projects, and the figure below for schedule of milestones.

The Water Commission, advisory body to the City Council on matters related to water, receives routine updates on the Water Supply Augmentation Implementation Plan.

Watch: Water Director Rosemary Menard's August 2022 update on water supply planning in the video below.

 "Weather whiplash,” “atmospheric rivers,” “severe drought”—if you live in California, this is probably not the first time you've seen these phrases. But why are these wild weather swings happening, and what do they mean for us? Check out this video to learn more!

Watch a short video to learn about the need to reinvest in the community's water system 

Online Reports

Reports related to Water Supply Planning are available on the Online Reports webpage.