Amador County – The Amador Water Agency this week announced intent to consider a mitigated negative declaration for its proposed Gravity Supply Line, which would carry raw water from the Tiger Creek area to the Buckhorn treatment plant. Interim General Manager Gene Mancebo said a comment period opened November 21st and extends until December 21st. The notices are available on the AWA website, the agency’s office and the Amador County Library. Mancebo said the AWA board on January 14th will consider whether to make the negative declaration. The GSL’s estimated construction cost is $13.4 million, for which AWA is working with California Rural Development of the USDA for an $8 million loan and $5 million grant. Mancebo said the gravity supply project does not use power, and would replace pumps that carry raw water uphill to the Buckhorn plant for treatment. Those pumps lost power in Sunday’s storm. Power was restored about 24 hours later. Mancebo said one option AWA could consider is to just upgrade the pump stations, potentially needing backup generators there as part of the system upgrade. The generators there now are not big enough to operate the pumps. He said if the Gravity Supply Line was built, AWA wouldn’t have to have the pumps. After the outage this weekend, PG&E had crews searched a 60,000-volt line for causes. AWA “had a request to make it a priority.” Late Monday night, power to the pump stations was restored. Mancebo said Upcountry areas were working to restore stored water used for treating. Conservation efforts helped and it “could have potentially been much worse.” He said during the 24-hour outage, the agency “used more than half of the water from storage” in “20 diff storage tanks throughout different systems.” He guessed customers “probably used 30-40 percent less water than they normally use.” Taking a generator to the pump stations would have involved traveling on private, un-cleared roads, to treacherous pump location on the sides of cliffs. Mancebo said “had power not been restored, they would have had to clear the roads to haul generators down there.” See the Gravity Supply Line notice of intent at www.AmadorWater.org. Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.