A plan to expand the Soulajule Reservoir, a move that would inundate several Hicks Valley ranches, appears to be losing favor with the managers of Marin’s municipal water district.
In a presentation last week, Marin Water staff said that building a new pipeline to convey water from Sonoma County is the most efficient near-term option for boosting supply during droughts.
Three of the five directors appeared to favor removing Soulajule from their list of immediate expansion options, given the impact the plan would have on the neighboring ranchers, who already sacrificed land when the reservoir was built in the 1970s.
That comes as a relief to Hicks Valley residents, who say expanding the reservoir would have devastating effects. “I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but things are looking very much like Soulajule will not be recommended as a project for further study,” Carol Dolcini, whose family has owned a 1,100-acre ranch in Hicks Valley for five generations, told the Light.
The board is expected to choose a project or projects for further environmental review at its Feb. 25 meeting.
The district’s “water supply roadmap,” devised after recent droughts, set a goal of adding roughly 8,500 acre-feet of water to its supply with short-term projects. But the district has revised that target and now hopes to add just 4,750 acre-feet, according to Paul Sellier, the district’s water resources manager.
The lower target is sufficient because conservation efforts by customers are projected to save about 2,000 acre-feet a year. The district is also raising the spillway at the Nicasio Reservoir, which will provide an additional 3,000 acre-feet without changing the contours of the reservoir. Other improvements will add about 1,000 acre-feet a year, Mr. Sellier said.
A slide presentation by Mr. Sellier at last week’s board meeting illustrated the pros and cons of various options for boosting supply, from desalination to recycling to building a new pipeline from Sonoma County. In addition to cost, the analysis considered environmental impacts, disturbances to private property owners, construction challenges, reliability and water quality.
Other than the pipeline, the option with the next fewest drawbacks was desalination, according to the staff presentation, but such a project would be more expensive than building a pipeline. Desalination projects can range from $350 million to $520 million, with substantial annual operating costs, while a pipeline could be added in phases, with the initial phase costing $168 million and ultimately totaling $405 million.
The pipeline would convey water to the Soulajule and Nicasio Reservoirs and, because it would be tapped only during drought, the additional water would not exceed the reservoirs’ existing capacity.
Board members seemed to agree that a pipeline appeared to be the least disruptive approach for achieving immediate needs, although each option under consideration has benefits and shortcomings.
“We’re talking about the least bad option,” said board member Diana Maier, who concluded that a Soulajule expansion would be the worst option of all.
“We already asked these folks to take a hit for the team, so to speak, in the 1970s,” she said. “Now we’re talking about inundating their homes and their lands.”
The social impact, she said, would be long lasting.
“I personally have big concerns about that, and concerns for what kind of a conflict we create that might take many, many years to get over if we were to go that route,” Ms. Maier said. “I know we have a lot of problems with all of our routes, but I am particularly concerned with that one.”
Board member Larry Russell said that expanding the Soulajule was excessively disruptive and unrealistic because the local watershed would not even provide enough water to fill an expanded reservoir.
“I think we need to trim out things like the Soulajule from consideration altogether because of its impact and also because of its practicality,” he said.