The Santa Clarita Valley Family of Water Suppliers are asking the community to limit outdoor water use during the first week of April.

Scheduled repairs to the water outlet tower at Castaic Lake and maintenance and repair work on Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s Foothill Feeder will temporarily make the water from Castaic Lake unavailable for use.

“The water will be in the lake, but due to planned maintenance, we won’t be able to receive deliveries while the outlet tower is out of service. We will rely on treated water stored at our two filtration plants instead,” said Matt Stone, General Manager of the Castaic Lake Water Agency, the Santa Clarita Valley’s wholesaler of imported water from the State Water Project and other sources. “CLWA and all four local retailers are taking the necessary steps to prepare, so we can continue serving our customers, but we are collectively asking water users to refrain from irrigating next week to help make sure we get through the repair period without any major issues.”

During this outage, the Santa Clarita Valley will rely exclusively on local groundwater sources and water stored in CLWA and local retail purveyor reservoirs.

The Family of Water Suppliers, which consists of CLWA, Newhall County Water District, Los Angeles County Waterworks District No. 36, Santa Clarita Water Division and the Valencia Water Company, is asking all water users to conserve as much as possible and to refrain from irrigating during the week of April 4-11. To help users who may be concerned that their landscapes will get too thirsty during that week, the regular watering schedule restrictions will be lifted for the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, April 2-3.

“The close and constructive collaboration between the Family of Water Suppliers has helped minimize impacts of this scheduled maintenance to customers,” said Steve Cole, General Manager of the Newhall County Water District. “But this is a major source of water for our region and we’re asking that customers shut off their irrigation for a week as a precaution.”

The one-week shutdown is being done to facilitate repairs and maintenance by the state Department of Water Resources at Castaic Lake and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s Foothill Feeder, as CLWA’s water treatment plants are fed by these facilities.

Adam Ariki, Assistant Deputy Director for Los Angeles County Waterworks District #36, said there’s no need for water customers to be alarmed about water availability because the necessary steps are being taken. The retail agencies are filling their storage tanks ahead of the shutdown, and CLWA is filling its 7-million-gallon Sand Canyon reservoir as well as its 25-million-gallon clearwell reservoirs at its treatment plants.

“Plus, the retailers will be able to open interconnections, to help meet overall demand,” Ariki said. “So, we’re basically just asking everyone to be as frugal as possible with their water use, to help make sure everything goes smoothly.”

Ken Petersen, General Manager of Valencia Water Company, said additional reductions in outdoor use, in particular irrigation, can achieve the needed extra water savings with the least impact on quality of life.

“This will be a good week to avoid major outdoor uses of water. Hopefully, we’ll get some rain, which will help reduce the impact of a pause in irrigation,” Petersen said. “We also encourage residents to delay those major one-time uses of water, like draining and refilling your swimming pool.”

Keith Abercrombie, Retail Manager of CLWA’s Santa Clarita Water Division, said the repairs are a necessary fact of life.

“It’s actually remarkable how reliable and durable these kinds of facilities are,” Abercrombie said. “When you think of the continuous operation of municipal water systems, that’s a lot of moving parts. This maintenance and repair is something that has to be done to ensure that the systems will continue to run trouble-free for many years to come.”