Amador County – The Central Amador Water Project service area was asked to conserve water Saturday morning, after a power outage knocked out the water pumps that feed the Buckhorn Water Treatment Plant.

Power was restored by early afternoon, but not before the agency requested voluntary water conservation in seven Upcountry water service areas, as power was lost during last week’s storm.

Pacific Gas & Electric had 7,000 or more outages in the Amador and Calaveras areas, and crews were working to respond to the outages in the utility’s 70,000 square mile service area. A PG&E power outage map on Tuesday showed outages from Eureka to Bakersfield, including a large cluster in the Bay Area. Locally, West Point appeared to be the closest area without power.

Amador Water Agency General Manager Gene Mancebo said besides power problems, the AWA had communications interruptions, with phone line downs, as the phones are used to remotely activate and deactivate the pumps, which carry water from the Tiger Creek to the CAWP treatment plant at Buckhorn. The agency notified customers to conserve water.

He said the agency had “some critical water shortage issues Upcountry because of the power outage.” Upcountry water areas affected, included customers from the Pine Grove, Sunset Heights and Jackson Pines area, all the way up to Pine acres, Pioneer, Rabb Park and the Mace Meadow area. All were asked to conserve water usage until power was restored.

“We are scrambling,” Mancebo said Saturday morning. “We have been scrambling with generators, but it is very difficult to get to the large pumps, to get water up to the treatment plant. We have power at the plant, but we don’t have any way to get the water up there.”

He said: “Of course the gravity supply line would help this issue. And we’ve got communication problems, phone lines are down that turn the pumps on and off as well.”

Saturday in the early afternoon, Mancebo said “PG&E was able to restore the power to our pump stations so that we can start producing water at the Buckhorn plant,” and they lifted the conservation request.

“I think this is just one more issue of why that gravity pipeline would be great to have in place,” Mancebo said. The pipeline would replace the pump system with a gravity-fed underground pipeline.

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.