Placer County Water Agency

Placer County Water Agency encompasses the entire, 1,500-square-mile boundary of Placer County, ranging from the rim of the Sacramento Valley on the west to the Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe on the east.  The Agency is headquartered in Auburn and carries out a broad range of responsibilities including water resource planning and management, retail and wholesale supply of irrigation water and drinking water, production of hydroelectric power and watershed stewardship across Placer County. 

Water:

PCWA is the largest water purveyor in the county, serving more than 41,000 retail treated water customers in its Western Water System, which includes the original Zone 1 and extends east from Auburn to the communities of Applegate, Colfax, and Alta. PCWA continues to provide treated water on a wholesale basis to the City of Lincoln – a service it has also extended to California American Water Company for delivery west of Roseville, and to several historic community systems in the Loomis Basin. In addition, PCWA supplies water from its MFP to the City of Roseville and San Juan Water District, which operate their own treatment facilities. And PCWA continues to operate 170 miles of canals, serving irrigation water for pastures, orchards, rice fields, farms, ranches, golf courses, and landscaping – continuing the heritage of Placer County’s historic water delivery.

Energy:

PCWA’s MFP is the eighth largest public power project in California. It has five interconnected hydroelectric power plants, two major storage reservoirs (French Meadows and Hell Hole) and twenty-four miles of tunnels. The MFP can generate, at peak power, 224 megawatts.

The MFP is a workhorse of the real time California energy management system. The California Independent System Operator uses the flexible generation capacity of the MFP to help regulate grid frequency as electric demand and solar output changes throughout the day. And revenue from MFP generation enables PCWA to supply reliable American River water to Placer County residents at low cost.

The MFP also supports a wide range of recreational opportunities including camping, fishing and boating facilities at our mountain reservoirs, and whitewater sports downstream of the project.

Stewardship:

The old cliché, “Whisky’s for drinking, and water’s for fighting” is still true today. Southern California exhausted its available water supply over 20 years ago. Since then they have relied on stringent conservation requirements and expensive recycling programs to continue to meet the water needs of new development. In contrast, PCWA still has sufficient reserved water supplies in its MFP system to meet all of the county’s projected growth in demand for the next 30 years. This disparity in supply makes protecting Placer County’s resources challenging.

Challenges include drought and increasing state-wide water conservation requirements; climate change, with rising sea levels threatening delta ecosystems and the proposed twin delta tunnels to move Southern California intakes upstream and increase water exports; new state-wide groundwater sustainability requirements; and a proposed water tax to improve water to disadvantaged San Joaquin Valley communities. The list of real-time water issues in California today that threaten our finances and local water supply reliability are significant, and growing.

Plus, we have real needs right here in Placer County, where several small mountain communities are struggling to keep water supplies safe, reliable and affordable.

PCWA officials understand the complexities, interrelationships and importance of sustaining reliable and affordable water and energy for Placer County’s present and future needs. The Agency is actively involved in numerous collaborative partnerships, watershed stewardship, surface and groundwater management, integrated water resource planning, and regional infrastructure projects. Advocacy for Agency water entitlements and energy resources for Placer County are at the forefront of Agency-wide interests and activities.