Source Water
Sustainable Maintenance Practices
You may have noticed some furry friends around our oldest reservoir site (Maple Grove Reservoir) throughout 2024. We were excited to welcome a few herds of goats who helped us with invasive weed and vegetation management grazing.
Our improved approach to sustainable maintenance practices is only one example of our awareness of the environment, long-term efficiency, and sustainability. The goats are effective at accessing terrain difficult to reach with traditional equipment. They are also more effective with long-term noxious weed control versus chemical application methods.
Ongoing, we will continue to maintain our properties with an understanding and focus on sustainability and the environment.
Source Water Quality Monitoring
A core focus of CMWC’s mission is delivering quality, clean water. This effort begins with testing water quality at the source—even before it goes into the treatment process.
In 2024, the Source Water Monitoring Program was enhanced by deploying an automatic vertical profiler system in Maple Grove Reservoir. This new system allows us to collect water quality data with increased frequency and accuracy. This helps us make data-informed decisions about infrastructure improvements, reservoir management practices, and operational changes to improve overall water quality.
Additionally, we have increased our sampling efforts to all of our source water sites. As urbanization continues to expand in the watersheds we receive water from, it will become more important to understand the base quality of our water. As we continue to gain understanding and monitor the changes in our source water, we will be more prepared to adjust our source water system operation to improve finished water quality while reducing the treatment cost for the final product that we deliver to our customers.
Grant Funding
In last year’s report, we informed you that our focus on the future included finding alternative methods to help fund improvements to our raw water system. Grant funding was a huge success in 2023, and we are pleased to share that our strategy for finding grants for various projects continued into 2024.
In 2024, we were awarded a grant to help study and design an improvement to our Lena Gulch Sedimentation Basin. This project will protect Maple Grove Reservoir from the increased urbanization upstream. Additionally, it is a vital project to ensure that CMWC continues to mitigate growing concerns regarding PFAS in the nearby watersheds.
Grant funds are complex to identify, competitive, and require significant administrative effort. However, we believe the effort is worthwhile because of the effects of our large projects on our overall budget and capital improvement plan. We know that our dedication to this work illustrates our great stewardship of the shareholder’s money and our long-term commitment and dedication to our customers.
