City Unveils $40 Million Peck Reservoir Project
Sep 20, 2023 08:34AM ● By Sofie Jones
Mayor Richard Montgomery speaks to the crowd on Tuesday at Peck Reservoir.
Manhattan Beach city staff and community members gathered on Tuesday for a ribbon-cutting in celebration of the completion of the Peck Reservoir after three years of construction. The newly built water storage and treatment facility will hold up to eight million gallons of water and replaces an older reservoir built in 1957.
Although the water treatment facility is not yet operational, Public Works Director Erick Lee told the gathered audience that it would be up and running as soon as the city receives the required permissions from LA County. Lee said he hopes to host a sampling event at that time to give residents the chance to taste and appreciate the improved quality of water treated at the facility.
Manhattan Beach Water Sources
With a budget of 40 million dollars, the constructing of the reservoir and accompanying water treatment facility is one of the largest public works projects ever undertaken by the city government, City Manager Bruce Moe said at the event.
Although construction on the project began in 2020, planning began a decade earlier. Talk of a new reservoir began in 2009 following a city needs assessment and the project officially started the following year, Moe said. Mayor Richard Montgomery and his fellow current City Council members, Amy Howorth and David Lesser, served on council at the time and were involved from the project’s beginning.
“City Council recognized – all the way back in 2010 – that we needed to find a way to make this
happen,” Montgomery said in his speech at Tuesday’s celebration.
The new reservoir, which holds half a million more gallons of water than the previous reservoir, will help the city lower water prices while increasing water quality, according to Moe and Montgomery. It will also, Montgomery said, ensure access to water for Manhattan Beach residents in the case of a natural disaster or earthquake.
All three speakers thanked city staff, Public Works, and the Manhattan Beach School District for their dedication, help, and patience during the project’s construction. “This project involved major coordination between all of our departments,” Lee said.
Montgomery voiced appreciation for nearby residents who experienced additional noise, traffic, and other complications resulting from the construction. Several residents, he said, reached out to city leadership about such disturbances. “I know the neighbors are happy [to have this done], and City Council is just as happy,” he said, laughing.
With all construction is completed, the city will repave streets damaged by construction vehicle traffic. The city plans to begin restoring streets to the east of the reservoir next year and will then begin work on streets to the north and west of the site, Lee said. “That is coming, and I ask that you be patient with us.”
Manhattan Beach Water Sources
The city has three water storage tanks - the water tower at 8th and Rowell in East Manhattan Beach, a 1.6 million
gallon ground-level tank at the same hilltop Rowell complex, and the
Peck Reservoir at 18th and Peck.
As of 2022, the city used about 5 million gallons of water per day, supplied by a combination of local wells and the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, according to city staff.
