More than 100 acres in La Quinta were officially named the home of Coachella Valley Water District's first east valley full-scale groundwater replenishment facility.

Several of the valley's leaders, including Mayor Don Adolph, Mayor Pro Tem Terry Henderson and Sen. John Benoit, R-Bermuda Dunes, attended the dedication ceremony of the Thomas E. Levy Groundwater Replenishment Facility on Oct. 21, named after Levy who served as the district's general manager for 16 years.

“It's really quite an honor to have something so important to the future of the Coachella Valley named after me,” Levy said during the ceremony. “It is one of the key elements in ensuring that we have adequate water supply for future generations of valley residents.”

The facility, located west of Monroe Street between Avenue 60 and Avenue 62 in La Quinta, will percolate 40,000 acre-feet of water — 13 billion gallons — annually to the eastern valley's aquifer, district General Manager Steve Robbins said.

That amount of water is about how much 40,000 households use a year, making the facility a “milestone for the valley,” he added.

“We all know that it is critically important to our future to replenish the groundwater,” Henderson said. “It's part of maintaining the beautiful place that we live in here.”

The water at the facility is imported from the Colorado River, delivered to the valley via the Coachella Canal which then flows into Lake Cahuilla in La Quinta and pumped into the facility's 39 ponds, which spans 163 acres.

The cost of the project totaled $44 million.

“The valley has really benefited from the decades he was here, and the desert will be the beneficiaries of his solid leadership for years to come thanks to this facility,” Benoit said.

The site was originally known as the Dike 4 Pilot Facility and went into operation in 1994. During the pilot phase, more than 25,000 acre-feet of water was recharged at the location.

“The pilot project was started under your watch, and the water you negotiated for us is being put here in the ground today,” said Peter Nelson, vice president of the CVWD board of directors, to Levy during the ceremony. “That is vital to the Coachella Valley.”

Construction of the recharge ponds at the newly dedicated facility were finished last year with the entire facility completed earlier this year, district officials said.

“It's taken a long time to make this ‘real,' but it's a fantastic project,” Robbins said. “Our projections are that after 30 years of operating this plant, in some parts of the valley, the groundwater levels are going to be over 100 feet higher than they would be at without this project.”

Among all the facts and figures, however, were many jokes about Levy, who worked for the district for three decades.

As somewhat of a trophy for Levy's wins and as a reminder of his desert life because Levy now lives in Orange County, Tom Kirk, executive director for the Coachella Valley Associations of Governments and a former La Quinta councilman, presented him with a jar of Salton Sea water — and a fan. “So you can actually take a good whiff,” Kirk said.