Ten years in the planning stages, the Santa Clara Valley Water District project that was recently approved by the city of San Jose Planning Department includes a new state-of-the-art lab to be built on the same property as the district headquarters on Almaden Expressway. It will occupy a portion of undeveloped land behind the district's Blossom Hill Road annex near Sanchez Drive.

"We needed to expand our water-testing lab. There are so many more tests that need to be done," said Walter Wadlow, the district's chief operating officer. "We went through quite an analysis of where we could do it."

The lab will be part of a new 18,530-square-foot facility that will also include a library, mechanical- and electrical-support areas, conference rooms, and shared office space for the 23 lab workers who will operate the lab on a 24-hour basis. Currently, the district's lab occupies about 4,500 square feet at the Rinconada water treatment plant in Los Gatos. The new facility would increase the lab size to about 7,000 square feet, said Patrick Stanton, senior project manager at the water district.

Some testing is now outsourced to other labs, and the district hopes the larger, state-certified facility with cutting-edge equipment will reduce that need.

"We may still send out some of the work, but the goal is to be a full-service lab—to support our own operation," said Jim Scott, district laboratory manager.

Scott said the district is currently undergoing a $200 million update in how it meets water-quality standards.

The Safe Drinking Water Act, passed in 1974 and amended in 1986 and 1996, authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to require water suppliers, such as the Santa Clara Valley Water District, to meet certain health-based standards for drinking water.

While the original act focused mainly on treatment as the means for providing safe drinking water, the amendment in 1996 concentrates on source-water protection.

Part of the district's upgrade to the lab incorporates that focus on source-water protection and will include a storm-water-detention basin.

"It will take the runoff water and focus that water to a basin which has carbon beds and sand beds, pretty much like a mini water-treatment plant," Scott says.

The water will percolate through the carbon and sand beds and enter a conduit joining the Guadalupe River, he said.

"This will be a pristine operation," Scott says. "It will exceed current standards for what exists now. This basin is a much greener business enhancement."

Wadlow said that the district wants to set an example as a "green" business. Along with the detention basin, it is planning to include, in the new building, the ability to add a solar energy source.

"One consideration for the building is to have solar planning capability," Scott says. "It won't be part of the initial phase, but it will be able to handle it."

As part of a future phase of the new structure, the district plans to install solar panels on a carport over the parking lot. It will be built so that it can receive the solar energy, Scott says.

The building will be constructed as an "essential facility," Scott says, meaning that the architectural design can withstand seismic events and continue to operate, much the same as police or fire stations are designed in order to operate during emergency events.

"It will be built extra stout," he says.

The detention basin will be designed to handle the 100-year storm event—a storm that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year—which is the national standard for flood protection.

Construction is expected to begin in March 2004, with a one-year completion date set for March 2005. The space the lab currently occupies at the Rinconada water treatment facility will return to general-use plant operations.