Conservation & Groundwater Management

Water Conservation 

The New Normal

Water conservation continues to be the cornerstone of our Community Water Plan. Using water efficiently is the “new normal” to preserve our precious resource. Even though we have had some wet winters, since 2014 we’ve been in a Stage 3 water shortage due to the historical overdraft of the basin. We maintain the “Biggest Water Rebates Program in the County” and we encourage you to check out the nearly 30 types of rebates for homes and businesses that will save you water and money.

Groundwater Management

Assuring a Healthy Groundwater Basin

With groundwater being the sole source of supply for the District, proactive groundwater management continues to be a critical component of the District’s ongoing efforts. We are working hard to manage our groundwater resource to meet increasingly stringent water quality regulations and our goal of water supply sustainability. 

We continue to protect our groundwater resources in a number of ways:

  • Maintain our Monitoring Well Network Program, consisting of over 80 monitoring wells which are sampled for water quality and tracked for water levels in order to track seawater intrusion at our coastline
  • Redistributing pumping away from the coast according to our Well Master Plan— spreading out pump locations in this way helps reduce seawater intrusion from moving farther inland
  • Developed of a Groundwater Model for the Santa Cruz Mid-County Groundwater Basin continues; it will help us to better understand the basin and determine its sustainable yield
  • Santa Cruz Mid-County Groundwater Agency — a partnership among the City and County of Santa Cruz, Central Water District, and the District— for the purpose of collaborating to meet the California state mandate of sustaining the groundwater basin by the year 2040 under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).