During the Signal Hill City Council meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 18, Mayor Ed Wilson (left) presents a proclamation to Robert Long, a longtime Signal Hill resident and business owner, who, along with his late wife, Nancy, have made contributions to K-5th-grade students in Signal Hill. Also pictured is Veronica Plascencia (far right), school secretary of Signal Hill Elementary, who extended gratitude to the Long Family for helping to deliver more than 800 homework kits to students.
Staff Writer
An $8-million project to tap an abandoned groundwater well in the city of Signal Hill may result in a $2 increase in a typical monthly residential water bill, but it would also make the City less reliant on costly imported water and more resilient during times of drought and natural disaster, city officials said.
The City Council at its meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 18 partially moved forward with the project by voting unanimously (5-0) to accept a $2.86-million grant from the State of California to cover a portion of the project’s costs.
The City plans to use the state funding to help pay for the construction of an “advanced wellhead treatment facility” at a groundwater well, known as Well No. 9, located on the City’s public works yard on 28th Street east of Cherry Avenue.
Although the City had drilled the well in 2010, it was left abandoned because of costs associated with building a pumping house that requires the advanced water-treatment plant, according to city officials.
The Council authorized city staff to enter into an agreement with the Gateway Water Management Authority (GWMA), a group of cities (including Signal Hill) and agencies in southeastern Los Angeles County with common water-related interests. City officials said the GWMA, of which Signal Hill is a founding member, helped the City obtain the state grant.
The grant comes from $200 million in Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) funding that Gov. Jerry Brown and the state Legislature allocated through legislation earlier this year to assist drought-affected communities and provide funding for cities and agencies to better use local water supplies, according to a city staff report.
The intent of Well No. 9 was to provide a “more reliable source of potable water” that could serve the southern portion of the City in the event that pipelines crossing the I-405 Freeway are damaged in a natural disaster.
The new well is also planned to offset the pumping demands that are placed on the City’s two operating groundwater-production wells, known as wells No. 7 and 8, located in north Long Beach near the 91 Freeway, according to city staff. The City’s two existing wells that were drilled in the 1970s are reaching their expected lifespan of 40 years and may soon need to be re-drilled or replaced, according to city staff.
The water produced from the existing wells is pumped through approximately five miles of pipelines to a treatment plant and reservoir at Reservoir Park on Gundry Avenue. Treated water is then pumped over a freeway overpass to Hilltop and Temple reservoirs, which deliver water to residents and businesses south of the I-405 Freeway, according to city staff.
In order to tap the new Well No. 9, however, the advanced wellhead treatment facility is needed in order to reduce the “color level” of groundwater after it has been treated. According to city staff, tests have indicated that water taken from the well is safe to drink, but the water was determined to have high concentrations of “organic color.”
Tests found that colored water concentrations of the pre-treated water at the abandoned well ranged from 50 to 60 color units (CU), according to the city staff report.
However, since the California Department of Public Health limits color to 15 CU after treatment, a more advanced treatment process to reduce the color level of the groundwater is required, city staff said.
“If you look at it in a glass of water, it would look a lot like iced tea,” said Steve Myrter, the City’s director of public works. “[The water is] perfectly acceptable and safe to drink, [but] it has a tint. That particular tint requires a much more advanced process to remove the color than, say, [to] remove minerals. We actually have a treatment plant that [removes minerals] right now.”
He said colored water is a direct result of an ancient redwood forest buried about 1,000 feet under the ground, beneath layers of sediment.
“This is a naturally occurring phenomenon,” Myrter said, adding that the water is colored because of Signal Hill’s location and since water passes through an earthquake fault in the aquifer.
Myrter said the well is an expensive water resource to tap. However, he said, in the long run, the project is more cost-effective than having to purchase imported water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD).
The project, according to city staff, is expected to cost the City a total of $8 million. While the state grant covers $2.86 million, the City plans to use $1.9 million from water-impact fees and $3.24 million from an internal city loan that would be transferred from the City’s General Fund reserve to the Signal Hill Water Department’s capital-improvement fund.
Myrter indicated that an internal city loan with a 25-year term and a 3.5-percent interest rate would have an amortized cost of about $210,000 annually, resulting in about a $2 increase in a typical monthly residential water bill.
He said the City gets a return on investment through the State of California’s Local Agency Investment Fund (LAIF), where the majority of the City’s portfolio is being kept. LAIF has only provided an average effective yield for the last five years of .42 percent while the effective yield for October 2014 was .261 percent, according to the city staff report.
City Manager Ken Farfsing said city staff evaluated alternatives other than building a wellhead treatment facility, including partnering with the Long Beach Water Department, which already treats organic colored water. However, he said the City of Long Beach has indicated that such a partnership would be too expensive since it would force the City to renew state permits.
“There’s been other options, but we really feel that this treatment option makes a lot of sense for the community,” Farfsing said.
Signal Hill resident Carol Churchill, a former councilmember, however, questioned the “fairness” of loaning taxpayer money to the City’s water department while charging interest, adding that the Council has a “fiduciary responsibility” to Signal Hill residents.
“You’re kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul,” she said. “And the people in the community are the pockets from whom you’re taking the money out of.”
City Finance Director Terri Marsh, however, noted that it’s “common practice” for cities to charge interest on internal city loans. City Attorney David Aleshire agreed, adding that the City is legally required to charge an interest rate that should not cost more than what is being charged in the private sector.
City staff notes that an internal city loan would cost less than issuing a water bond or taking out a loan in the private sector.
Marsh said the City is choosing to maintain its water-department reserves instead of spending it on the facility in case of a major disaster, such as an earthquake, adding that it would cost nearly $16 million to replace every single water pipeline in the city.
In addition, Councilmember Tina Hansen noted that the City’s water department would have to pay interest on a loan if it were obtained from an outside source anyway.
Signal Hill resident Maria Harris noted that the potential for the $2 increase in monthly water bills constitutes a fee increase. She asked whether the City would be conducting a public hearing to comply with Proposition 218, a state mandate requiring that governments allow ratepayers to protest any fee increase.
In response, Farfsing said a Proposition 218 hearing would likely be conducted once the internal city loan comes up for Council approval. He added, however, that, even if enough ratepayers protest the fee increase, the Water Department could still use its reserve funds to pay for the new water-treatment facility.
Tom Benson, a Signal Hill resident and business owner who currently serves as Planning Commission chair and plans to run for Council next year, said he supports moving forward with the new Well No. 9 project. He added that the City is fortunate to have a new opportunity to become less dependent on costly, imported-water sources.
“Water has become the most important commodity that we’re looking towards for the next several decades,” Benson said. “The fact that we have our own system [and] we have control of our own pumping is an essential piece of our access to water.”
Other Council highlights:
Presentations and introductions Signal Hill Mayor Ed Wilson presented a proclamation to Robert Long, a longtime Signal Hill resident and business owner, and his late wife, Nancy, to recognize their contributions to K-5th-grade students in the city. Veronica Plascencia, school secretary of Signal Hill Elementary, also extended gratitude to the Long Family, adding that Robert has continued to visit the school annually to plan the delivery of more than 800 homework kits to students.
Browning High School update In new business, city officials noted that Chris Steinhauser, superintendent for the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD), plans to provide the Council with a presentation during its Dec. 16 meeting on the school district’s new “thematic” high school, to be called Browning High School, which is currently under construction at a site bounded by Hill Street, Obispo Avenue and Redondo Avenue near Signal Hill.
The next regular Signal Hill Council meeting is scheduled for 7pm on Tuesday, Dec. 2 at the Council Chamber.
