Finally, construction begins on sewer system for Quail Valley

EMWD Vice President Ron Sullivan discusses the new sewer system planned for Quail Valley. Menifee 24/7 photos: Doug Spoon

City, regional and county officials gathered on Thursday to celebrate the start of a project that is of great importance to the residents of the Quail Valley community.

Officials of the Eastern Municipal Water District hosted the event at the EMWD offices to announce the start of construction on Phase 1 of a sewer system for Quail Valley. This phase will bring environmentally safe wastewater infrastructure to more than 200 properties in the rural community, located in the hills west of Menifee and adjacent to Canyon Lake.

Nearly $10.5 million has been contributed to the EMWD project by three other agencies. The State Water Resources Control Board is contributing $8 million, the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority is providing $1.93 million in grant funding and the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board is providing $455,814 in Supplemental Environmental Protection funds.

"This is a milestone achievement for the Quail Valley community," said Ron Sullivan, vice president of EMWD and the board member representing the area. "EMWD and many others have worked for more than a generation to present our case, emphasizing the need for a sewer system and to secure funding from state agencies for the project to move forward without placing the burden on ratepayers in the community."

The only part of that area that now has sewer service is the Canyon Hills community, which was developed much later than adjacent neighborhoods of Quail Valley. Originally developed as a resort area for tourists and hunters of quail, dove and cottontail in the 1920s, Quail Valley enjoyed its heyday in the 1950s and early 1960s. Residences were primarily cabins on small lots designed for vacation use, however, and increasing population over the years put extra pressure on older septic systems.

"Many of those homes were originally built for intermittent usage, not everyday use," said Paul Jones, general manager of EMWD. "Over time, the septic systems became outdated. Wastewater was impacting the groundwater. Many groups were involved in this effort; getting here was not easy. We are grateful to the community activists who gave us the impetus to move forward."

One of the residents most involved is Janet Anderson (left), who has lived in the community for 10 years. She is an advocate for Quail Valley as a quiet, rural residential area, but she admits that outdated septic systems with broken leach lines in the neighborhood's narrow, downhill roads have created health and sanitation issues -- especially during rainstorms.

"For years, we had children walking to school with raw sewage running down the streets," Anderson said. "That is the horror we're trying to correct here today. That's how bad it was."

Cleanup efforts are a short-term solution, but Quail Valley residents and EMWD officials knew a sewer system was needed in the long term. It took seven years of meetings between residents and officials since the creation of the Quail Valley Environmental Coalition in 2010, plus countless meetings with regional and state officials, to get to this point. EMWD needed to secure grant funding, and the recession of 2008 dried up many of the resources for years.

"Nobody has the resources to clean that up on their individual properties," Anderson said. "It’s something you have to live with. That’s why we started to fight, why we got organized."

Sullivan said the state Water Board's $8 million contribution was the result of positive feedback state officials received about a similar project the state invested in with EMWD, the City of Perris and Riverside County to construct sewer systems in the Enchanted Heights community.

"It was the same type of area -- very rocky, with small lots," Sullivan said. "It showed what you could do. The success we had with all the residents ... they couldn't stop heaping praise on the project. Once that was done and the state looked at it, they thought, 'This is something we need to be able to do again.' "

Phase 1 of the project take place in Subarea 9 of the EMWD service area map. That includes the southernmost portion of Quail Valley -- the neighborhood farthest downhill and just above Canyon Lake. Motorists traveling northwest on Goetz Road into Quail Valley and turning left onto Vista Way will be in that neighborhood, which also includes Casa Bonita Avenue, Datil Drive and Platino Drive.

"That's the first phase because what we do there will help prevent some of the things from overflowing into Canyon Lake," Sullivan said "The next phase is Area 4. That's where a lot of the residents live."

Funding and infrastructure design for the Area 4 project is in the early stages. The Phase 1 project in Area 9 will take a year to 18 months to complete.

The new system will connect via gravity flow downhill to a regional lift station being constructed by EMWD and partially funded by Brookfield Residential, developers of the Audie Murphy Ranch community. That lift station, to be built near Audie Murphy Road and Normandy Road, will raise the level of the wastewater for pumping to a processing station in Sun City, then on to the main reclamation plant in Perris near the 215 Freeway.

"This is a milestone, not only for the entire City of Menifee, but for the people of Quail Valley," said Matt Liesemeyer, Menifee City Council member representing that district. "It is truly a collaborative effort. Phase 1 will hopefully be the catalyst for even more improvements."

Map of the area shows the direction of the downhill flow of the sewage line to a lift station (far right), where wastewater will be pumped on to Sun City and then the Perris reclamation plant.

The yellow area in the middle of the EMWD service area map is Area 4, which is the next planned phase of the project. The gold area is the site of Phase 1.