Supervisors press SFPUC on safety, monitoring and outreach for groundwater blending; hearing continued

The Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee held an extensive hearing on May 24 on the San Francisco Groundwater Supply Project, focusing on whether adding locally pumped groundwater to the city's drinking supply is safe, how the PUC monitors contaminants, and whether outreach and transparency have been adequate. Following presentations from SFPUC and the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH), more than two dozen public speakers raised concerns about contaminants, cumulative exposures and the adequacy of outreach. The committee voted to continue the hearing to the call of the chair for additional data and analysis.

Supervisor Norman Yee, who called the hearing, said he had heard concerns from constituents across multiple districts and invited SFPUC Assistant General Manager for Water Steve Ritchie to summarize the project. Ritchie said the effort to diversify local water sources began as a PUC policy in 2008 and is intended to bolster reliability and resilience in the face of drought, climate change and regulatory pressures affecting the Tuolumne River supply. He described the Westside Basin aquifer (roughly from the Presidio to Lake Merced and over toward the airport) and said the PUC has 45…