Clair A. Hill Award Winner Celebrates Project’s Completion with Community

August 12, 2025

Last month, more than 100 community members, staff, Board members, and elected officials gathered for a celebration marking the completion of the Calleguas-Las Virgenes Interconnection Project. Earlier this year, the districts were honored to receive ACWA’s prestigious Clair A. Hill Award recognizing this achievement. The districts marked this accomplishment and thanked the community for their patience with tacos, ice cream, cake, a raffle, and more, creating a fun-filled and informative evening.

Ten years in the making, this innovative and collaborative project crosses neighborhoods, service areas, and County lines to provide greater water supply reliability for both Calleguas and Las Virgenes MWD. This ability to now share water between the two agencies in times of need is the critical back-up plan needed to ensure that water keeps flowing to residents, businesses, schools, and parks.

This project is especially important for these two water suppliers who are wholly dependent upon imported water from one source, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Metropolitan). If this supply is ever interrupted due to a natural disaster or other circumstance, the new interconnection will allow the two agencies to physically share water between their systems, providing a critical backup supply to facilitate reliable delivery of water. The interconnection also provides opportunities for future collaboration in the development of local water supplies that could help both districts increase self-reliance and reduce their dependence on Metropolitan.

Calleguas Board President Raul Avila noted, “This game-changing effort shows how tight-knit, creative partnerships keep our water flowing strong. By teaming up, we’re delivering lasting wins for our community.”

“We are proud of this project and the strong partnership between our two agencies,” said Andy Coradeschi, LVMWD Board President . This regional asset is a blueprint for other agencies to follow.”

This project was funded in part through the California Department of Water Resources Integrated Regional Water Management Grant Program. Calleguas received $4,369,241.28 in funding from Proposition 1 and LVMWD received $1,975,517 from Proposition 84.