East Bay Municipal Utility District’s New Water Quality Resilience Investment Is One of the Quietest Infrastructure Stories of the Year

Water infrastructure is almost unglamorous, which is probably why most people don’t give it much thought until something goes wrong. The non-profit East Bay Municipal Utility District, which discreetly supplies Alameda and Contra Costa Counties with 150 million gallons of drinking water per day, is currently undergoing what could be its biggest capital improvements in a generation. You could be excused for not knowing anything about it, though.

The system’s mainstay, the Orinda Water Treatment Plant, has been running almost nonstop for almost a century. Just focusing on that particular detail is worthwhile. It is currently retrofitting a facility that is older than the majority of the homes it supplies with UV disinfection, a new chlorine contact basin, and chemical safety improvements that, to put it simply, reduce the risks for the workers. With a completion date of 2027, it is being referred to as the biggest construction project in EBMUD’s history. The scale is not typical. Even stranger is the quiet that surrounds it.

At the Upper San Leandro plant, improvements to the chemical system and seismic strengthening are about 60% finished. This is motivated by a specific type of California logic. Here, earthquakes are not hypothetical. The Walnut Creek plant is being redesigned in part to deal with the messy aftermath that climate change is already forcing into reservoirs and watersheds because neither are wildfires. Ash-filled storms, smoke runoff, and algae blooms. The amount of water entering the system has changed over the past 20 years, and the treatment procedures are silently working to keep up.

It is also difficult to ignore the political context. The WaterSmart grant program, which promotes efficiency, conservation, and reuse throughout the increasingly arid western United States, has been proposed to be eliminated by the Trump Administration in fiscal year 2027. A sign-on letter to Congress is being circulated by the Alliance for Water Efficiency, and organizations have until May 15 to add their names. It’s unclear if the funding will endure. For its part, EBMUD appears to be moving forward without considering the possibility of federal support.

In the utility’s biennial report, general manager Clifford Chan frames the work in terms of generations. The concept of planning for the next hundred years rather than the next quarterly disclosure has an almost antiquated feel to it. It’s another matter entirely whether it ends up with consumers who primarily want their tap to continue operating. Generally speaking, people don’t send their water utility thank-you notes.

Nevertheless, the figures have a silent weight of their own. Water costs about two cents a gallon. 4,200 miles of pipe. A watershed of 57,000 acres is under management. Ninety percent of the water flowing through East Bay faucets comes from the Mokelumne. It’s the kind of math that doesn’t make headlines but would make a lot if it didn’t.

Observing this develop gives the impression that the construction itself is not the true story. It is predicated on the idea that a public utility can continue to plan for decades, treat reliability as a non-negotiable, and construct long-lasting structures. It is still unclear whether that assumption is true at this political time.