It doesn’t look like much from the surface, but the Goleta Water District has a lot of reasons to be excited about its new groundwater well.
General Manager David Matson said it’s the first well built in 40 years, and it’ll be the biggest one in the district when it starts operating in 2026.
Matson, board members and district staff showed off the well to Deputy Secretary of the Interior Laura Daniel-Davis during a West Coast visit on Tuesday.
The $6.5 million project was partially funded with a $2 million grant from the Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART program, part of the huge federal infrastructure bill.
The Goleta Water District is “doing a lot of innovative work across the board to ensure that you’re looking down the road,” Daniel-Davis said.
“You’re living already with drought, with climate, with the wildfire threat, and having that key understanding of what the available resources are and where you need to be shoring up aging infrastructure,” she said.
The district’s eight active wells can pump up to 3,600 acre-feet a year, engineering manager Daniel Brooks said. The new Hope Well (named in a staff contest) will boost that capacity.
He said the wells can also inject treated water to replenish the aquifer, which only a few agencies are permitted to do.
“The district has come a long way building resiliency to drought and other emergencies,” board president Farfalla Borah said.
Matson said the district is ramping up capital investment, tripling its spending in the past two years. That’s what is necessary to keep the system going, and replace aging equipment, he said.
“The district is celebrating its 80th anniversary, so we’re getting older, too, yet at 80 we’ve never been stronger,” he said.
The new well was drilled at the district headquarters at 4699 Hollister Ave., in the fleet parking lot.
“There’s nothing that folks back in Washington like to hear more than what’s happening on the ground with these resources,” Daniel-Davis said after her tour.
Her visit coincided with National Groundwater Awareness Week.
In Santa Barbara County, groundwater makes up 50% of water supplied in public water systems and about 80% of the overall water supply, according to the county, which recognized the week with a resolution.
“Groundwater aquifers below the Earth’s surface make up over a thousand times more water than is all the world’s surface water in rivers and lakes,” the resolution said.
Across the county, water agencies are working on groundwater sustainability plans to manage pumping — by public and private users — into the future.
Several of the plans already have been approved and the rest are being reviewed by the state Department of Water Resources, according to the county.
The Goleta Water District has an adjudicated basin, so it did not have to form a Groundwater Sustainability Agency.
It’s a good time for the district right now, after “10 years of not knowing where our water would come from,” Matson said.