Our modeling analysis determined that recharge capacity was sufficient to make the Bank a financially viable business venture.

Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency

Location: Los Angeles and Kern Counties, California
M&A provides support for a California agency that supplies imported water to more than 20 municipal providers in the Mojave Desert.

OVERVIEW

M&A has been integral in the development of the High Desert Groundwater Bank for AVEK, which aims to improve water supply reliability and generate revenues to offset costs to its customers. In 2019, we subcontracted to Stantec to assist in the High Desert Groundwater Bank design and construction.

SERVICES

Water Supply & Recharge

  • Conducting a recharge feasibility assessment to estimate the recharge capacity of the project
  • Evaluating the efficacy of obtaining funding under California’s Water Storage Investment Program (WSIP)
  • Monitoring and evaluating the hydrologic effects of a 2017 pilot recharge project
  • Preparing a proposal to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for a WaterSMART grant to support additional hydrogeologic investigations to improve confidence in the HDWB performance
  • Evaluating potential impact of the Willow Springs water bank on future operation of the HDWB and ongoing operation of AVEK’s West Side Water Bank
  • Developing and implementing a field exploration program for the HDWB to address data gaps
  • Characterizing vadose zone lithologic and hydraulic conditions in coordination with the geotechnical investigation
  • Developing technical specifications and managing the construction and testing of a deep monitor well, vadose zone piezometer, and four pilot recovery wells

Groundwater Modeling

  • Evaluating two versions of the U.S. Geological Survey MODFLOW model of the Antelope Valley, electing to use the original USGS model version, and then migrating the model to the newer MODFLOW-Unstructured Grid model code to improve model performance
  • Developing a site-specific groundwater model
  • Calibrating the model to site-specific groundwater elevation data obtained during the pilot recharge project
  • Using calibrated model to estimate recharge and recovery capacity
  • Updating model to refine the recharge capacity estimate and design the full-scale recovery wellfield, which is expected to include up to 27 recovery wells