Local News in Brief : Countywide : New Pond Will Help Boost Water Supply

Efforts to recharge the county’s natural underground water supply has received a boost from the filling of a new $2.4-million storage pond in north Anaheim.

Officials of the Orange County Water District on Tuesday dedicated the 46-acre Kraemer Basin just west of Anaheim Lake near Miraloma Avenue and Kraemer Boulevard. The district supplies water to about 80% of the county, and much of it is pumped from the vast aquifer that stretches beneath much of central Orange County.

The district owns about 1,000 acres in the county, much of it along a six-mile stretch of the Santa Ana River in Anaheim and Orange where a series of basins, or percolation ponds, have been built, according to Gordon Elser, a spokesman for the water agency.

Winter storm runoff from the Santa Ana River, as well as imported water from the Colorado River, is diverted into the basins so it can percolate into the ground, Elser said.

The flat, sandy site for the Kraemer Basin was farmland before the water district bought it in 1976. To lower the depth of the basin about 50 feet, the district sold sand and gravel to local contractors. Elser said the sales earned the district about $5.4 million.

Elser said about 20,000 acre-feet of water a year will be percolated through the basin, enough water for about 50,000 to 75,000 customers. An acre-foot is roughly 326,000 gallons, or the amount a family of four consumes in an average year.