Much to be Grateful For During This Season of Thanks, By Rebecca Gold

FEATURED COLUMNIST

Much to be Grateful For During This Season of Thanks

By Rebecca Gold Rubin

The holidays are just around the corner! Does it feel like 2022 has just flown by incredibly quickly? Suddenly, Thanksgiving is approaching — a time when many people take a pause to appreciate family and friends and renew our gratitude for the many positives in our lives, our work, and our communities.

Here at Soquel Creek Water District, we are thankful every day for the opportunity to serve the people in our District by providing a safe, high quality, reliable, and sustainable water supply to meet our community’s present and future needs in an environmentally sensitive and economically responsible manner.

When I stopped and thought about some of the positive things, we’ve experienced this year at the District it gives me even more to be grateful for, and a renewed optimism for the future of our water supply.

Perhaps at the top of the list of things for which the District is grateful is the generous State and Federal support we’ve received this year.

This past summer our Pure Water Soquel project was awarded a $21 million U.S. Bureau of Reclamation “WaterSMART” Grant, which was part of President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law for the planning, design, and construction of water reuse projects.

Then, just last month, the project received an additional $13.25 million grant from the California State Water Resources Control Board.

This is in addition to previous years’ awards of $52 million in Proposition 1 grants, and several substantial low-interest loans from the California Seawater Intrusion Control Program and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act Program.

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