Water Sources and Supply

The Carpinteria Valley Water District’s service area is approximately 11,300 acres. Domestic water service is provided to a population of about 15,619 and approximately 3,253 acres of irrigated agriculture, ranging from lemons and avocados to various nursery products, through a total of 4,503 service connections. Currently the District relies on three sources of supply to meet water demand in its service area. These are the Cachuma Project, the State Water Project, and local groundwater.

Cachuma Project

The District receives 50 to 70% of its water from the Cachuma Project which stores water in Lake Cachuma from the Santa Ynez River. The District’s annual supply from the Cachuma Project can vary but is 10.94% of the available Water Supply and in most years amounts to 2813 acre-feet (AF). The District also receives as much as 400 AF per year from Lake Cachuma, from a State Water exchange program with the Santa Ynez Water Conservation District, Improvement District No. 1.

State Water Project

The District has a Contract entitlement of State Water Project Water of 2000 AF per year with an additional 200 AF per year of drought buffer. Delivery of State Water can vary from 5% to 100% of Contracted entitlement in any given year depending on Hydrologic conditions in Northern California.

Groundwater

The long-term sustainable annual yield of the Carpinteria Groundwater Basin (CGB) is 4000 AF. Of that, the District pumps an average of 1460 AF per year, while the remaining 2540 AF is generally pumped by agricultural users.

Groundwater Model

In 2012 the District completed and updated the CGB hydrogeologic budget and updated groundwater model that improved the District's understanding of the basin and water balance. In this update the District reduced its long-term average annual operational yield from 5000 AF per year to approximately 4000 AF per year.

In 2019 the District completed construction of clustered seawater intrusion wells along the coast to monitor Aquifers A, B and C for signs of seawater intrusion. These “Sentry” wells are equipped with level measuring transducer to track changes in level over time. Additionally, water samples from the wells will be tested for various constituents on biyearly or quarterly basis to determine if salinity is increasing or decreasing from the baseline condition.

Click the links below to view the Groundwater Model and Annual Reports below:

• 2012 Groundwater Model Report This is a very large file ~ 35 MB.
• 2017 AB3030 Groundwater Report Presentation
• Annual Groundwater Reports

Looking to the Future

Recycled water

In light of the recent multi-year drought, the District began looking into recycled water as an additional local water source. The Carpinteria Advanced Purification Project (CAPP) will replenish groundwater basin with purified recycled water in order to create a locally-controlled, drought-resistant drinking water supply. For more information visit our dedicated CAPP website.