Amador County – The Amador County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to extend a grant offer of $150,000 for infrastructure improvements at the Camanche water system, with the consensus that the grant would be withheld if homeowners do not work toward balancing their budget by allowing a rate increase.

Supervisor Richard Forster introduced the issue, saying he has “been attending those meetings in Camanche for 20 years now,” and admitted that the county didn’t do a very good job in caring for the water system, before handing it over to the Amador Water Agency. He said AWA did a lot of improvements, and it still needs work. The Agency took over the system that had a significant reserve, but did “not have a replacement fund.”

Forster proposed a grant of $100,000 to $150,000 for the county to take some financial responsibility and assist the AWA in making some repairs “that the county did not make.”

AWA General Manager Gene Mancebo said it was built in 1972 and uses plastic pipes that have become brittle and fail. It has no “tracers” to help locating it, so it can take crews two days to find a line. The Camanche system is 40 years old, and has seven different units, though the grant is focused on the water systems.

Forster said: “I think a grant is appropriate because when the agency took over the system,” if it had looked at it closer, it would have found that they “should have asked the county for more money.” Forster said “Tom Bailey paid PG&E $400,000” to buy the system and he should have asked to be paid $500,000 to a million dollars to take it.

Since AWA took over Camanche, the water system has had 80 service connection lines replaced, and the multiple wooden water storage tanks needed new hatches and roofs. Operations manager Chris McKeage said costs included work on pumps and the SCADA system, and installation of tank liners.

Mancebo said AWA spent about $800,000 on water systems, and another $800,000 on wastewater systems. Forster said it was a “whole lot of high-cost work,” but some work was not really improvements, because it was built with faulty material.

Forster said “these are system improvements that should have been done a long time ago when the county was running the system.”

Supervisor Chairman John Plasse said he supported helping correct the “deteriorated system the county handed over to them.”

Costs exceed revenue, and the last rate increase was in 2006. A recent attempt to raise rates was blocked by a Proposition 218 protest. Mancebo said workshops in Camanche looked at a 10 percent increase, and a $70 one-time charge for infrastructure work. The charge might be foregone if the 10 percent rate increase goes through, and Supervisors supply a grant.

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