About RSWD:

RSWD Water Services

The first service provided by the District was retail water sales and was the reason for the District’s formation in 1958. This service is still the primary function of the Water District. To establish the newly formed district, the voters of Running Springs passed a bond issue which provided the funds to purchase the area’s four existing private water companies and to correct the major water system deficiencies. The purpose of this consolidation was to provide stability, and to attempt to guarantee continuous service throughout the area. The inability of the existing companies to maintain consistent service, and the desire of the people, prompted the District’s formation.

Over the years, the Water Department has used a number of different water sources ranging from pumping and treating surface water from Rainbow Lake (Deep Creek), purchasing emergency water from the Arrowbear Park County Water District and from the Mojave River and using a variety of horizontal and vertical wells. In the late 1960’s and the early 1970’s, the Water Department experienced difficulty meeting its water consumption demands because of the increasing population growth and land development within the District. Further, the use of several of the District’s sources of water had to be discontinued for failure to meet State Health Department standards.
 
Years of long, hard work ended in 1972 with the successful completion of the phase of construction of the State Water Project that brought water from Northern California into Southern California, and equally as important, into portions of the San Bernardino Mountains. The imported Northern California Water is supplied from Silverwood Lake by the Crestline-Lake Arrowhead Water Agency (CLAWA). This water is, and will continue to be, an extremely important source of water for the District and its customers.

In 1984, as part of the Water Department’s water development plan, the District and the Arrowbear Park County Water District entered into a joint venture construction project to connect the two agencies’ water systems. The inter-connection tie between the two systems provided the capacity for the two Districts to transfer water to meet the needs of each community for both domestic water and fire flow demand. In 1984, through a combination of local funds and a $1.5 million loan by the State Development of Water Resources (Safe Drinking Water Bond Law of 1976), the Water   District started a three year system improvement /replacement project. Approximately eight miles of substandard deteriorated water mains were replaced and a one-million gallon storage tank and radio frequency controlled water management telemetry system was added.

The District’s Water Department currently operates approximately 45.5 miles of transmission and distribution mains ranging in size from 2” to 16”. These mains transport water for domestic use and fire protection purposes to the 3,065 plus customers in the District’s service area. The water distribution system is divided into five separate pressure zones that have a combined water storage of 2.73 million gallons. The primary local sources of water are vertical and horizontal wells located in Sidewinder Canyon, and approximately 80 gallons per minute of vertical well groundwater purchased from the Arrowbear Park County Water District.