Amador County – Sutter Creek City Council voted 3-0 Monday to hire a wastewater master planning firm for plans for the city and Amador Regional Sanitation Authority, with the deal pending approval by ARSA member entities.
The $110,000 contract would hire HydroScience Engineers to finish two wastewater master plans, with options including whether Gold Rush Ranch & Golf Resort is able to defeat its legal challenges, and options for continuing a regional wastewater partnership with Ione.
Ten firms answered a request for proposals, four made proposals, and three interviewed with the Wastewater Committee, City Manager Sean Rabe said. He recommended HydroScience. Mayor Tim Murphy said Rabe “certainly picked the right consultant group,” as he was impressed by the firm.
Bill Slinter of HydroScience said the firm would put data into tables and charts, and “make it a process so that anyone that comes along later can look at those documents.” Murphy said it was a format shown during the interview which made it understandable to the average person.
Rabe said HydroScience will complete and update the city’s and ARSA’s individual wastewater master plans, because “both are in draft format and have never been finalized.” Members of ARSA must approve the hiring, he said, and should share costs as they share wastewater capacity.
ARSA shares a percentage of its capacity with Amador Water Agency (which gets 14 percent) and Amador City (which gets 3 percent). Sutter Creek gets the remaining 82 percent of capacity. Rabe said the partners should pay that proportional share of the cost of both wastewater master plans, because they benefit from both plans.
Councilwoman Sandy Anderson said the future for the city and ARSA wastewater master plans was based on the future of Gold Rush. She asked City Attorney Derek Cole for an update on an lawsuit by Ken Berry against the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) documents of Gold Rush, and the city General Plan.
Cole said they are approaching the “administrative record,” and a CEQA trial takes 1-3 hours, and “could be less than that.” He said with a late spring hearing, there could be “resolution by the middle of the year.”
Murphy said “we need to make sure we have something we’re comfortable with and makes sense,” and need to be ready when Gold Rush moves forward. Rabe said “if Gold Rush survives the litigation” they will have to build a wastewater plant within 2 years of the ruling. The city and ARSA will need the wastewater master plans completed in a year for Gold Rush, but the city must do the plans with or without Gold Rush carrying forward.
Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
