With a zero allocation of blue-valve water this year, the city
has heard more and more requests for access to the new recycled
water coming from the recently finished sewer plant. Read here to
get a summary, and get the full story in The Weekend Pinnacle on
Friday.
HOLLISTER
A year ago, many farmers shunned the idea of using recycled water from the city’s new sewer plant. Now with the federal supply cut off and local growers mostly limited to using their wells, a new demand has grown for the city’s refurbished wastewater, which an engineering official said can be used for “basically any crop.”
Hollister completed its state-of-the-art wastewater plant last year and as part of the long-term outlook, officials had planned to market the recycled water – or “reclaimed” as its called – to farmers for agricultural uses. In the meantime, the city has been progressing on two launch-pad projects for the recycled supply – a pipeline for irrigation to the new Brigantino/Riverside Park on the city’s west side and another pipe being built the airport to water a large patch of open grassland.
Officials had been hoping to use the two projects as examples to garner wider demand. With high interest from the agricultural community in the past month, though, they have switched gears and moved up the expected time frame for allocating the water to farmers from around 2013 to sometime this year, maybe as early as July.
Many farmers are looking for alternative water sources to their groundwater supplies because the federal government this year shut off its allocation, which usually makes up 30 percent to 40 percent of water used on agriculture in San Benito County. Drought conditions over the past three years have been compounded by major diversions prompted by concerns for the threatened Delta smelt fish and other troubled species – causing the zero allocation.
Look for the full story in Friday’s Weekend Pinnacle.
