Emergency Storage Project

GEI provided engineering services to the San Diego County Water Authority to support the permitting efforts for the Authority’s Emergency Storage Project (ESP). As the prime engineering consultant, GEI’s scope of services included investigating a wide range of potential alternatives to meet the County’s water needs should an earthquake sever the water supply arteries that bring 90 percent of the County’s water from the State Water Project and the Colorado River Aqueduct.

Construction costs for the ESP are estimated at $830 million.

Potential solutions considered by GEI included a complex array of new reservoirs, expansion and/or reoperation of existing reservoirs, ground water basins, and new pipelines and pumping stations to distribute the water during an emergency event. GEI developed and implemented an alternatives selection process that resulted in successful permitting of the project, was praised by regulatory agencies, and received the Consulting Engineers and Land Surveyors of California (CELSOC) engineering excellence honor award.

A coarse and fine screening process was developed to numerically rank alternatives on the basis of quantitative measures of 34 independent criteria representing five major project goals. The decision model incorporated a group-based, consensus-building process and provided the framework for a public working committee established by the Authority to discuss and vote on the relative importance of the project’s goals and subgoals.

GEI was responsible for project management and coordination; seismotectonic evaluations; geologic and geotechnical evaluations; conceptual designs of dams, pipelines, tunnels and pump stations; cost estimating; water resources planning; risk assessment studies; and facilitation of meetings between diverse groups. GEI managed a team that included 10 engineering consulting firms and over 20 specialty consultants and subcontractors.

A wide array of near surface pipeline and tunnel alignments were evaluated to connect reservoirs to the aqueduct system. Conceptual designs of pump stations up to 42,000 horsepower in size were developed. Water resources evaluations were performed to estimate available local supplies during an emergency, the potential supply shortfall for each of the Authority’s 23 member agencies, and the changes in the water distribution system required to deliver water for two emergency scenarios. Reservoir operations were developed for both normal and emergency use.

GEI is currently providing technical support services to the Authority for the final design phase of the ESP.