California Forever Releases Water Plan, but There Are Still Some Questions

One of the biggest questions surrounding California Forever’s ambitious proposal to build a city from scratch in eastern Solano County is about water, where it will come from and whether the company’s plan can withstand the inevitable yearslong drought.

Last week, the company released its long-awaited plan, outlining how it expects to provide water to a new city of 100,000 residents initially and that will eventually grow to serve 400,000 when it is fully built out.

“This will be the most sustainable city on Earth,” Bronson Johnson, the company’s head of infrastructure and sustainability, said to KQED. “We are creating a diverse portfolio of water supplies. It’s what you need to manage through drought conditions and what you need to manage seasonally.”

California Forever plans to use a combination of water sources to supply the needs of the new city, including tapping into groundwater and surface water rights, which the company already owns thanks to its purchase of more than 60,000 acres of farmland. Right now, the water is being used to irrigate “some marginal [almond] orchards that don’t produce very much,” according to CEO Jan Sramek.

They expect the groundwater and local surface water to make up more than a quarter of the new city’s water supply and will be used for some of the drinking water.

California Forever representatives said they also plan to import almost a third of their water supply “upriver from out-of-county sites in California,” conveying it through “existing points of diversion on the Sacramento River and its associated tributaries.”

Water experts who have reviewed California Forever’s plan said it’s clear the company did its homework, but some vital questions remain — especially around its plan to rely on water diverted from rivers in a state where drought is so commonplace.

“I am impressed that California Forever has engaged water resource management and legal experts to evaluate the complex issues that are raised by the proposed city,” Brian Gray, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center, said to KQED. “However, the projected short- and long-term water supplies will be tight, and there are many details that remain unresolved.”

While Gray said it’s not uncommon for California cities to import water to serve their residents, he noted how precarious it might be for California Forever to rely so heavily on that amount of imported water.

“The way they’re describing their imported water strategy suggests that the long-term water supplies are tenuous,” Gray said. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I think there’s a lot of red flags.”

Gray also questioned where the company could import enough surface water to make up a third of the new city’s total supply, especially because California Forever has stated it will not seek water from Lake Berryessa via Solano County’s irrigation district. They have not identified precisely any other long-term water supply source.

Company representatives said they are in “advanced talkes on numerous aquisitions” and the details will be ironed out before it releases an environmental impact report.

“It can’t be some loose thing in the future that we’ll acquire what we need, we actually have to have the control of that water,” he said. “We’ll acquire some amount greater than what we actually need for resilience in drought years.”

Gray noted that water acquired from existing users in the Sacramento River basin would have to be conveyed through the California Department of Water Resources’ North Bay Aqueduct, which is currently “oversubscribed” by other cities.

In addition to importing water, California Forever plans to pump groundwater from the Fairfield-Suisun and Solano Subbasins, whose 60,000-acre property sits atop. A concern there, Gray said, is that the basins could become overdrafted, like many others, over years of drought.

So much water has been pumped from the Solano subbasin that the state’s Department of Water Resources has required local agencies to limit the amount of water landowners can use from the ground in times of drought.

The biggest percentage of the new city’s water supply — about 40% — will come from what the company calls a “circular economy” of recycled water powered by water and wastewater treatment plants to be built in the new city. The recycled water won’t be used for drinking, cooking, laundry or other household uses, but instead will be put to agricultural, industrial, commercial and other uses.

“We’re focusing on that lower-hanging fruit,” Johnson said. “We can design those plants so that we’re able to move that recycled water where it is best used and then maintain those precious potable water supplies.”

California Forever argued its new city won’t require as much water as other, more suburban cities because it will be dense by design and will not have room for lush, green lawns and sprawling golf courses. Its residents will only use 60 gallons of water per day, far less than other cities in Solano County, which average about 100 gallons each day. For reference, San Francisco residents use up to 42 gallons per day, while Sacramento uses about 152 gallons per day.

Some experts noticed similarities between California Forever’s water plan and those of other cities that are now amending their water plans to withstand drought. David Sedlak, director of Berkeley’s Water Center, said the use of recycled water to irrigate landscape and agriculture “is a very well-established approach in California.”

“The per capita water use that they use in their calculations are not very different from what is being obtained in similar developments,” he said to KQED.

An outstanding question is where the new city’s wastewater might filter out to, Sedlak said, once it has been processed in the new treatment facilities. There could be environmental issues if a river or stream becomes overly saturated with waste.

Company representatives said if the initiative is approved, they will study these options in an environmental impact report to be published next year.

The company asked at least three water engineering firms to review its plan, and company representatives have repeatedly said that the new city will not strain water access for existing cities in the county.

Support for the company’s plan is slowly growing as residents and outsiders alike watch the project gradually take shape. California YIMBY, a powerful pro-housing advocacy group, voiced their support for California Forever this week, citing that more discussion must happen before the project is at its “best version” but that a better future starts with “yes.”

Still, some are unconvinced by the company’s promises. The Solano Land Trust, an open space advocate for the county, opposes California Forever’s plan, with water scarcity listed as their biggest concern.

“When we’re talking about surface water, we’re talking about water that flows right into the delta and where Solano residents are currently pulling some of our water,” said Nicole Braddock, the group’s executive director. “It’s hard to imagine how that doesn’t affect our current water sources.”

California Forever’s view is that their water plan would not impact Solano’s current water situation, as they plan to use the same amount of surface water as ranches and farms have in the past, substituting any new diversions with recycled water.

But Braddock remains unconvinced about the ambitious project and think the acres in east Solano County are best kept for dryland farming.

“Right now, they’re proposing this huge development about the size of Vacaville, which is one of our larger cities and operating it on dryland farms — basically growing food only using rainwater,” she said. “To me, [farming] is the best use of that land.”