Amador County – Amador Water Agency received a second opinion on the life expectancy of its Central Amador Water Project pump and pipeline system, and a local, long-time engineer agreed that evidence indicates that the system risks failure beginning this year.

Professional engineer Roderick Schuler, who has more that 38 years’ experience as a water engineer and “first hand knowledge of the CAWP raw water pipeline,” submitted an independent, unsolicited opinion paper that concurred with a recent risk assessment of the pipeline. Schuler agreed that with respect to the CAWP system, “we are living on borrowed time.”

AWA General Manager Gene Mancebo, in a staff report for this week’s AWA board meeting, said “Schuler has 12 years of experience with Sonoma County Water Agency followed by more than 26 years’ experience as a water engineer in Amador County and is one of the most authoritative sources available on the viability of our water system.”

Schuler “began his tenure with Amador County in 1978 as a senior engineer followed by becoming director of water resources and then director of Public Works for an additional 12 years before retiring,” Mancebo said.

Schuler will give a presentation of his Opinion Paper on the CAWP system at 1:30 p.m. Thursday during the AWA board meeting. Schuler in the paper said he looked at the records of the system to determine the status of the pipeline, in assessing an estimate of the age and life expectancy of the CAWP pipeline.

Schuler said engineer David Willer of Kennedy/Jenks Consultants, in an assessment for AWA, “estimated that the service life of the pipeline is about 35 years. Thus, the year that begins the risk of failure is 2012. After that, we are living on ‘borrowed time’.”

Schuler said: “This is a reasonable estimate, and I support that estimate. This does not take into account the mechanical equipment, pumps and controls that have a shorter service life and are far outdated already.”

He said “with parts more and more difficult to acquire, the risk of getting the water system back in service, within a reasonable outage time, is becoming greater every day.”

Schuler said: “In my opinion, not having a long term reliable water system in place by now to serve the upcountry population is resulting in a huge risk of jeopardizing the health and safety of the people in the CAWP area.”

Mancebo in his memo said the opinion paper was for information only, and he recommended the agency “prepare information to inform customers of the findings from this report.”

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