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Sonoma Water outlines multi‑year fixes for aging pipelines, wells and tanks, flags FEMA funding uncertainty
Summary
Sonoma Water briefed the Rohnert Park City Council on a slate of transmission‑system projects — including $6.9 million in grants for well rehabilitation, an $80 million 10‑year tank rehab program and cathodic‑protection upgrades — and warned that some FEMA‑backed work faces federal funding uncertainty.
Sonoma Water engineering officials told the Rohnert Park City Council on Feb. 28 that the wholesale supplier is advancing a package of projects intended to shore up a largely linear transmission system that serves some 600,000 customers in Sonoma and Marin counties.
Kent Gilfy, Sonoma Water’s director of engineering, said the agency has secured roughly $6.9 million in grant funding to rehabilitate two production wells and is proceeding with pilot and permitting work for an aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) program that would recharge groundwater with excess winter water. He also outlined a 10‑year, approximately $80 million program to rehabilitate storage tanks, including seismic retrofits and corrosion protections, and said crews are converting old passive cathodic protection on aging aqueducts to impressed current systems.
The presentation detailed multiple active and planned projects: production‑well rehabilitation and ASR pilot testing; completion of the Castania and Kanana tank work and the planned 2025 outage for a major 18‑million‑gallon tank that serves the Rohnert Park area; replacement of electrical gear and a redundant pump at the Wilfred booster station in Rohnert Park; and a phased program to address fault and stream crossings such as the Bennett Valley fault crossing near Montgomery Drive in Santa Rosa.
Why it matters: much of the system is linear — pumping generally moves water from north to south — so a failure upstream can affect many downstream communities. The tank and aqueduct projects are pitched as resilience measures to reduce that single‑line vulnerability and maintain supply during droughts, earthquakes or other disruptions.
Council members focused questions on locations and funding. When asked where the fault crossing project is sited, Gilfy pointed to Montgomery Drive near Spring Lake. He and Sonoma Water staff said they are exploring FEMA funding to help build certain seismic projects; at least one booster‑station project is FEMA‑funded but officials said the recent national changes to federal program administration have left timing and procurement questions unresolved. "There's scrambling going on to try to determine what it means," Gilfy said of the federal guidance, adding the agency is assessing whether to pause work or proceed and absorb costs pending reimbursement.
Sonoma Water also described supply‑chain hurdles for major electrical gear — a factor that has delayed breaking ground on some funded projects — and invited council members to tour production facilities to see aging systems firsthand.
What’s next: Sonoma Water staff said their draft financial package for the upcoming budget and rate discussions will be shared with water contractors in March. The ASR pilot testing and permitting work are scheduled to follow the rehabilitation of specific wells, with some tank projects expected to be out to bid or under construction through 2025–2026 depending on weather and procurement.
Attributions: Kent gilfy, Director of Engineering, Sonoma Water; David Royal, Assistant General Manager (operations and maintenance).
