Turlock Irrigation District Board of Directors will meet Tuesday morning and enter into closed session negotiations with both the City of Turlock and the Stanislaus Regional Water Authority (SRWA).
TID currently receives a small amount of water from the City of Turlock’s wastewater treatment plant, located at 901 S. Walnut Rd. The price and terms of payment for the purchase, sale, exchange, or lease of the wastewater treatment plant will be negotiated.
Along with negotiations for Turlock’s wastewater treatment plant, TID will also enter closed session negotiations with the SRWA.
SRWA is a joint powers authority which includes members from the Cities of Turlock, Modesto, and Ceres. The SRWA has been in talks with TID for several years to have a long-term transfer of water, with the development of a surface water treatment plant.
All three cities would receive treated drinking water from the proposed surface water treatment plant.
The plant, which has been in planning since 1987, would treat TID-owned Tuolumne River water to create roughly at least 30,000 gallons of drinking water — half of which would come to Turlock. The plant would be located near the Fox Grove fishing access, where Geer Road crosses the Tuolumne River.
Construction of the plant would guarantee a long-term reliable water supply for the City of Turlock, which is currently dependent on a dwindling groundwater supply for it’s drinking water.
The plant, however, would come with an approximately $100 million price tag for the City of Turlock.
Along with the issues of cost, TID has recently been asking the City of Turlock “offset” some of surface water Turlock receives from the plant with recycled water in dry years.
The Turlock wastewater plant releases about 30,000 acre-feet of treated water annually, approximately the same amount of water the SRWA wants to purchase from TID. The water is of high enough quality to irrigate plants or release to a river, but may not be used immediately as drinking water.
However, the City of Turlock has been in talks to sell recycled water to the Del Puerto Water District, a drought-stricken water district in west Stanislaus County.
Both City staff and the Mayor Gary Soiseth have expressed the desire to find a way to get deals with both Del Puerto and TID complete.
“I believe in win-win solutions,” said Soiseth at his State of the City address on Feb. 12. “I believe that the Del Puerto Water District, the Turlock Irrigation District, and the City of Turlock can arrive at a win-win solution to our respective water needs, but we need to come to the table with a spirit of compromise and common-sense.”
On Tuesday, the TID Board of Directors will also hear electric service division, power, and water reports and approve or deny an appeal by Anthony Inzana on the TID Notice and Order on Assessor’s Parcel No. 018-058-019.
The TID Board of Directors will meet 9 a.m. Tuesday in the Board Room of TID’s Main Office Building, 333 E. Canal Dr.
