Municipally-owned electric, water, and sewer utilities have provided quality public services within a highly maintained infrastructure. For the last century, Santa Clara utility customers have enjoyed lower rates for utility services than many other communities in our County. On a recent survey of 105 cities and agencies in the nine Bay area counties, the City of Santa Clara provided the lowest combined water, sewer and electric service charges!

Providing electricity to the City since 1896, Santa Clara's Electric Department, Silcon Valley Power, is one of the three largest municipally-owned utilities in California ranked in terms of kilowatt hour sales. The City's residential electric rates have averaged about 35% lower than rates from private companies in the surrounding areas. With the passage of Assembly Bill 1890 in September 1996, the electric utility industry will undergo massive changes in the way they do business. This will directly impact the City's Electric Utility and our customers. In October of 1996, the City Council adopted a Strategic Plan to guide our Electric Utility through the restructuring transition period and into this century. Strategic Plan goals address competitiveness and the need for a sharper focus on customer requirements and service, along with a renewed dedication to low residential rates, as well as competitive rates for all customer classes. Safe, reliable, and environmentally responsible operation is a central theme of the Strategic Plan, along with the need to reduce costs of operations and debt service.

For more information visit Silicon Valley Power's website.

The City of Santa Clara has three separate sources of high quality drinking water. Often these sources are used interchangeably or are blended together. Together, these sources provide an average of 25 million gallons of water per day to the homes, businesses, or industries and institutions of our community. About 35% of our water is treated surface water purchased from the Santa Clara Valley Water District (imported from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta), and from San Francisco's Hetch-Hetchy System (imported from the Sierra Nevada Mountains). The remaining 65% is pumped from our system of 27 deep wells serving the rest of the City. Regular tests of more than 400 water samples monthly have always demonstrated that our water not only meets, but betters all current drinking water standards.

The San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant is jointly-owned by our City and San Jose, and provides wastewater treatment service to nine tributary agencies: The cities of Santa Clara, San Jose, and Milpitas; West Valley Sanitation District (serving Campbell, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Saratoga, and unincorporated areas in the westerly part of the valley); Cupertino Sanitary District (serving Cupertino and unincorporated areas in the east valley); Sunol Sanitary District and Burbank Sanitary District (serving unincorporated parts of the central area). The Plant provides a "tertiary" level of treatment (which is the removal of contaminants through filtration and disinfection to destroy bacteria that may cause human disease), and has a pollutant removal efficiency in excess of 99%. The Plant continues to receive awards for the excellence of its operations. It has an operational capacity of 167 millions gallons per day (MGD); peak flow for 1998-99 was 120 MGD.

In 1989, the City of Santa Clara completed construction of a system to transport and deliver recycled water from the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant to portions of Santa Clara. The recycled water is used for irrigation at Santa Clara's Golf & Tennis Club, Lick Mill Park, street median landscaping, business parks, and street frontage landscaping for nearby apartment complexes. In 1995, Santa Clara joined with Milpitas and San Jose in a water recycling program which extended and connected the City of Santa Clara's recycled water delivery system to the cities of Milpitas and San Jose. The South Bay Water Recycling Program will deliver millions of gallons per day of highly treated tertiary recycled water to more golf courses, parks, schools, business parks, cemeteries, and agricultural lands. Recycled water will also be provided to industries using high technology cooling and other processing operations.

Since 1975, the City of Santa Clara has taken a leading role in the development and promotion of residential, commercial, and municipal solar energy. As Santa Clara operates its own electric utility, Silicon Valley Power, we were especially concerned about the costs and conservation of conventional energy sources. This concern resulted in the City's establishment of one of the nation's first municipal solar utilities. Under this program, the City will supply, install and maintain solar water heating systems for residents and businesses within Santa Clara on a fee for service basis.