Lee Lake Wells

Customer Profile

Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District (EVMWD) is a sub-agency of the Western Municipal Water District, a member agency of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. EVMWD’s powers include providing public water service, planning and developing water supply, and treating, disposing of, and recycling  wastewater. The district has more than 42,000 water, wastewater, and agricultural service connections.

Challenge

Local water resources, including groundwater and surface water from Canyon Lake, satisfied only one-third of the demand in the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District, forcing the district to make up the difference by importing treated, disinfected water from Lake Skinner and Lake Mathews.

Anticipating rapid population growth over the next two decades, the district needed a near-term plan to increase the supply of potable water while reducing dependence on imported water. They focused on developing groundwater resources in the Lee Lake Groundwater Basin, where they had identified suitable sites for two new groundwater production wells.

The first stage of the project would be to drill test wells, extract representative formation samples, and record reliable groundwater elevation data. The EVMDW turned to Geoscience to manage the project.

Geoscience Solution

Geoscience developed a plan to drill an exploratory borehole near the center of the property for the purposes of evaluating saturated aquifer thickness, production potential, and groundwater quality parameters. The presence of poorly consolidated coarse-grained alluvial material at the site prompted Geoscience to choose the air rotary casing hammer (ARCH) drilling method, which provided representative formation samples critical to the investigation, as well as reliable groundwater elevation data.

Once the team had reached the desired depth, they introduced drilling mud, removed the casing, and performed a suite of geophysical logs. Based on the data obtained from the investigation, they developed a very accurate preliminary design of the production wells, followed by a work plan for the test drilling, field inspection during drilling and testing, and preliminary well designs for the municipal groundwater supply wells. 

In addition, Geoscience staff provided bid support, construction management and observation to drill the initial borehole, and complete isolated aquifer zone testing. 

Customer Results

Based on the results of the zone testing, Geoscience completed the final design and observed well completion, including development of two new groundwater production wells that combined to produce 600 gpm from the aquifer at this location.