The City of Lathrop is planning on doing something novel when it comes to managing the excess water that it finds itself with – putting it back into the ground to draw it out later when it’s necessary.

When they meet next week to discuss the city’s business, the Lathrop City Council – who are scheduled to meet on Monday, Sept. 11, at 7 p.m. inside of the Council Chambers at 390 Towne Centre Drive – will consider moving forward with a plan for Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) that could help the city establish a “rainy day fund” for it’s most precious resource.

According to the staff report prepared for the council, engineering and design work on the project – which will involve injecting surplus surface water the city purchases from the South San Joaquin Irrigation District into specific aquafers so that it can be drawn back out at a later date – has been underway since the council approved it in January of 2022.

The council will decide on whether to adopt the proposed mitigated negative declaration – that outlines the scope of the project and the potential environmental impacts that it may create, and the mitigation measures intended to subdue those impacts – when they meet on Monday.

While the next step in the process won’t come with any financial implications, the total cost of the ASR project is believed to be around $6 million – although the city will only have to end up paying for $1.5 million of that. Since the project was awarded an Urban Communities Drought Relief Grant in the amount of $4.5 million, Lathrop will have to cover the 25 percent local cost share of $1.5 million to complete the work.

The well site that would be used for injecting the water will be constructed in River Islands near the existing potable water tank and booster pump site – which houses a 1.5-million-gallon water tank with plans for two more to be added.

Once the regulatory process is cleared and the city completes construction, Lathrop could end up injecting more than 450 million gallons of water – the amount of water that 1,450 acre feet of water translates into – each year back into a specific, targeted aquifer that it can later draw back out for municipal use.

For more information about the project, or anything else on the council’s upcoming agenda, visit the City of Lathrop’s website at www.ci.lathrop.ca.us.

To contact Bulletin reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.