Templeton Community Services District celebrated a long-awaited drought-resistant water project recently implemented to meet seasonal and projected annual demands for the unincorporated community.
Tina Meyer, TCSD’s engineer for the drought-resistant water project, explained that the implementation “actually increased our water supply availability by 240 to 300-acre feet per year, so it is our water supply that is reliable and sustainable for the District.”
Until last June, 60 percent of the community’s wastewater was diverted to Paso Robles for treatment and disposal. The newly completed Upper Salinas River Basic Conjunctive Use Project will catch wastewater that flows within the east side of the district and return these waters to the Meadowbrook Wastewater Treatment Plant before discharging them back into the Salinas River. In this process, the Salinas River underflow provides subsequent conveyance to TCSD wells that divert from the underflow downstream.
The amount of travel time via the conveyance of the Salinas River underflow is 28 to 35 months before eventual retrieval. The district has determined that the treatment plant’s discharges augment the river underflow at its downstream wells with only small conveyance losses because a clay layer in the area generally prevents those discharges from percolating into deeper groundwater.
The improvements, which began in 2017, added two new lift stations and about 16,200 linear feet of sewer pipeline to capture and redirect east side flows to the west side collection system. These and more improvements are collectively known as the East Side Force Main and Lift Stations Project.
“This is one of the largest projects completed by the Templeton Community Services District,” said TCSD board President Debra Logan. “The project was completed at a cost of $5.7 million dollars, which was funded by grants and low-interest loans. Completing a project of this size and scope is a remarkable achievement for the TCSD, and a huge benefit to Templeton.”
A ribbon-cutting ceremony, hosted by Templeton Chamber of Commerce, took place on September 25. Kristen Handley, who represented Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham, and Courtney Howard, P.E. Water Resources Manager for SLO County Public Works, attended the gathering and presented a certificate on behalf of SLO County supervisors John Peschong and Debbie Arnold, TCSD board members, and others associated with the project.
