Desert Water Agency

About

Desert Water Agency is a public, non-profit agency and a State Water Contractor, serving a 325- square-mile area, inc the Palm Springs area.

Story

Desert Water Agency is a public, non-profit agency and a State Water Contractor, serving a 325- square-mile area, including parts of Cathedral City, outlying county areas, Desert Hot Springs and Palm Springs. An elected five-member board sets policy and represents the ratepayers.

About 95 percent of our clean, refreshing water is pumped from deep wells located throughout the service area. DWA pumps using 29 active wells into our water system—which includes about 22,000 active services throughout 369 miles of pipeline.

We replenish the groundwater with water from the State Water Project. Because there is no direct pipeline from the SWP to Palm Springs, we exchange water with Metropolitan Water District. Our replenishment water comes from the Colorado River Aqueduct. We use the water from two connections to fill our recharge basins, located at Whitewater and Mission Creek.

The agency also gets water from mountain streams including Chino Creek, Snow Creek and Falls Creek. We get about 3 million gallons a day from stream supply and about 78 million gallons per day in well capacity.

Desert Water works hard to ensure the purity of this water by carefully monitoring and controlling the quality of water that we supply to our customers.

Well-trained DWA employees provide information, service hook ups and emergency assistance in the case of accidents or other problems affecting service to our customers.