Design of Long-Awaited San Luis Obispo Pipeline Begins

摘要

Although San Luis Obispo County has owned the rights to a portion of the water in California's Lake Nacimiento for almost 50 years, it has been unable to use this resource because it lacks the means to collect and distribute the water. In the intervening decades, numerous efforts by the county to develop the necessary infrastructure have failed to gain traction. However, after awarding an $8.2-million contract to Black and Veatch, of Overland Park, Kansas, to design a new water intake system and a 45 mi (72 km) long pipeline, the county is on track to begin delivering its water to recipients within five years. Although located in San Luis Obispo County, the Nacimiento Dam and the reservoir it forms are owned by Monterey County, San Luis Obispo County's neighbor to the north. In 1959 San Luis Obispo County negotiated the rights to 17,500 acre-ft (21.6 million m~3) of water per year from the 377,000 acre-ft (465 million m~3) Lake Nacimiento, says John Hollenbeck, P.E., M.ASCE, the Nacimiento project manager for the county's public works department. Over time, Hollenbeck says, communities within San Luis Obispo County have come to the realization that they will need to supplement their water supplies—which primarily come from groundwater—with surface water.