Riverside, CA - The Bureau of Reclamation and the Western Municipal Water District are seeking comments on a supplemental draft environmental impact report/draft environmental impact statement (SDEIR/DEIS) for the construction of a proposed aquifer storage and recovery project. The project is designed to help supply water to up to 80,000 families in California's Riverside and San Bernardino counties. An electronic copy of the draft document is available at: www.usbr.gov/lc/socal/envdocs.html.

The project will allow Western to store water in groundwater basins in the San Bernardino and Chino areas during wet years and deliver the water to retail and wholesale customers in years of drought or during a catastrophic loss of water supplies instead of importing water from the Colorado River and California State Water Project.

"The feeder project will provide critical linkage for local water sources as part of a regional water management system," said John Rossi, Western's general manager. William J. Steele, Reclamation's Southern California Area Office Manager added, "The Bureau of Reclamation is glad to help the Western Municipal Water District with this worthwhile project which diversifies Western's water supply portfolio. This project allows the district to extract and deliver groundwater when it is needed rather than waiting for capacity to become available in existing regional transmission pipelines managed by other agencies."

Individuals and groups are invited to submit comments until March 22, 2011 to Amy Witherall, Water Resources Planner, Bureau of Reclamation, Southern California Area Office, 27708 Jefferson Avenue, Suite 202, Temecula, CA 92590, or to: awitherall@usbr.gov. Hard copies of the document are available upon request at the same location.

Western successfully secured federal authorization for Reclamation to spend up to $26 million to help plan, design and construct the $200 million project which includes up to twenty new groundwater wells, a 28-mile pipeline with pump stations and a reservoir storage tank. To date, Congress has appropriated $1.3 million toward the project.