A New Year and a New Future for Sustainable Water, By Dr. Tom LaHue

FEATURED COLUMNIST

A New Year and a New Future for Sustainable Water

By Dr. Tom LaHue, President, Soquel Creek Water District Board of Directors

Welcome to 2022, from the Soquel Creek Water District! As your new President of the District’s Board of Directors, it’s my pleasure to offer a brief look at some of what we anticipate accomplishing in the upcoming year. We are confident of a bright future for the new year.

I want to talk about the two primary things the District will be focused on this year. One is our core service of efficiently providing clean, safe water to the community, every minute of every day, for the entire year. And, to ensure we can continue to accomplish that fundamental objective in the long term, we must also focus on a key sustainability objective, especially in light of climate change: To maintain our momentum and progress on the Pure Water Soquel Groundwater Replenishment and Seawater Intrusion Prevention project.

Just last month we reached a remarkable milestone as we broke ground on the advanced water purification center, which is the very heart of Pure Water Soquel. Now, the three main elements of this project are moving forward — the water purification center (along with a new recycled water plant at the Santa Cruz Wastewater Treatment Facility), the eightmile conveyance pipeline system, and the seawater intrusion prevention wells.

We are well on the way to an operational system in 2023, when we can begin to purify recycled water that will recharge our groundwater and protect the future of our water supply. This is also a critical part of the Mid-County Groundwater Agency’s Groundwater Sustainability Plan. As construction proceeds, we’ll continue seeking state and federal grants to help further offset the project’s costs to our customers.

So, this year brings a clear focus on continuing to move Pure Water Soquel forward. This includes overseeing the construction on these three, very complex and multifaceted elements. The seawater intrusion prevention wells are largely complete. The conveyance system is steadily making its way from the Santa Cruz Wastewater Treatment Facility to the purification center, and to the seawater intrusion prevention wells. Our goals are to keep all of this construction moving ahead smoothly, to maintain the all-important partnerships that are facilitating this project, and to continue communicating with and providing project updates to our customers and the wider community affected by construction.

We have our work cut out for us this year, but given the wonderful progress already made, I have confidence in a successful year for Pure Water Soquel construction.

As that project makes its way toward completion, we never waver from our core services: • We’ll keep up the pace of our pipeline replacement program – monitoring and inspecting the system and taking proactive measures to repair or replace pipelines that are worn out or damaged. • We expect this year to finish up full implementation of our i-Meters throughout our service area and get more people using our WaterSmart online portal — giving customers more control and information for monitoring their water use, leak control, and billing. Use of WaterSmart allows customers to become aware of any leaks much more quickly, which saves water. • We’ll continue providing our customers with other tools they need to continue their already-remarkable job of conserving water • We want to ensure our customers are fully engaged in the District’s programs, projects, and activities, by maintaining our communications and public outreach — a lot of that is still virtual, but when circumstances improve, we’ll be doing more and more in-person • And we are committed to working toward the use of more (and eventually all) renewable energy by the

District, with the eventual goal of achieving carbon neutrality in our operations.

The District very clearly recognizes the great challenges we all face with climate change and its extreme effects on our water supply. 2022 will likely bring more of the same kinds of issues as we’ve experienced in preceding years, and we need to be prepared.

The good news is that our future now clearly includes a sustainable, droughtproof water supply — Pure Water Soquel. And, I can assure you that the people who work here at the Soquel Creek Water District are committed to providing you with the safe, dependable water you and your families and businesses need, to the best of our best abilities, every day. n •••

Dr. LaHue has served on the Board of Directors since 2003. He is the District representative on the Santa Cruz Mid-County Groundwater Agency and serves on the District’s Water Resources Management and Infrastructure Committee. Dr. LaHue is a former member and vice-chair of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board. He has a BS in Biological Science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from UC Davis, and a teaching credential from California State University Monterey Bay. He retired from teaching environmental science at Aptos High School in 2019 after 23 years of teaching and continues to work as a veterinary surgeon.

“Rydell Arts” from page 13

Gross is a member of the Santa Cruz Textiles Arts Guild, Tapestry Weavers West, the Handweavers Guild of America, The Textile Arts Council, and the American Tapestry Association where she currently serves as board treasurer.

For many years she has worked with blind and visually impaired weavers in a program sponsored by the Santa Cruz Textile Arts Guild.

Gross lives in the Opal Cliffs section of Santa Cruz County with her husband. She has a BA from Drew University in New Jersey.

•••

Roy and Frances Rydell established the Roy and Frances Rydell Visual Arts Fund at the Community Foundation in 1985 to promote Santa Cruz County artists and arts organizations. Following their passing, their estate was bequeathed to the foundation. Their gift has generated more than $1.4 million in fellowships for artists and support for Santa Cruz County visual arts organizations.

The Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship program was developed with input from the local arts community to honor the wishes and intent of the Rydells. The fellowship program, now in its 16th year, has awarded $680,000 directly to artists. (Complete list of current and past award recipients is available at www.cfscc.org/articles/ the-rydell-visual-arts-fellowship-program)

Gifts allow artists uninterrupted creative time to focus solely on their work and its impact on the local community and the larger world.

The fellowships help individual visual artists pursue their creative work and are made solely on the merits of their artistry and not tied to the completion of any specific projects.

“Roy and Frances Rydell understood that artists not only bear witness to life, but they play an integral role in helping humanity process our collective experience,” said Susan True, CEO of the Community Foundation. “As we move into the third year of the global COVID-19 pandemic and our community continues to heal from the CZU fires, there is just so much life to witness and process. This new cohort of artists–their diversity in terms of age, background, and forms of expression–will help us think, learn, grow, and witness as life in all its beauty and pain continues to unfold.”

For this round of fellowships, 51 artists applied from a candidate pool nominated by 26 local and regional visual arts organizations and former Rydell Fellows. Nominees were limited to working artists, 25 years or older, who reside in Santa Cruz County and are not enrolled in a degreegranting program.

Nominating organizations were

Janette Gross with her art. asked to consider the broad disciplines the Rydells thought of as part of the visual arts: painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, installation, mixed media, stage set design, photography, costume design, textiles, glass, film and video.

In October, a panel of three nationally recognized arts professionals met at the Foundation to judge the artists’ works and select the fellowship recipients. The panel members were Maori Holmes, artistic director and CEO of BlackStar in Philadelphia; Garth Johnson, Paul Phillips & Sharon Sullivan, curator of ceramics, Everson Museum in Syracuse; and Astria Suparak, independent curator, former director and curator of the contemporary art galleries at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Syracuse University.

The $80,000 in new Rydell Fellowships were complemented by another $200,000 in unrestricted grants made to local arts organizations this spring.

“The fellowships and arts grants we make year in year out support those making our local arts landscape as vibrant and vital as it is. The creativity of our local arts community never ceases to inspire us. We are proud of the funding we’re able to channel to the arts, and it’s thanks to people who love this place, have a vision of a better tomorrow, and act on it by giving.” said Kevin Heuer, director of engagement & impact.

The 2020-2021 Rydell Fellows will be featured in the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship Exhibition at Museum of Art & History in downtown Santa Cruz from Jan. 21 to March 20, 2022. For information visit: https://www.santacruzmah.org/ exhibitions/rydell-fellowship

Community Foundation Santa Cruz County helps donors and their advisors invest wisely in causes they care about, to provide grants and resources to community organizations, and to offer leadership around key local issues. The Foundation manages more than $168 million in charitable assets and provides customized and tax-smart giving solutions that resulted in more than $21 million in grants in 2020. Thanks to generous donors, more than $131 million in local grants and scholarships have been awarded locally since 1982. The Community Foundation seeks to make Santa Cruz County thrive for all who call it home, now and in the future. Learn more at www.cfscc.org. n

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