During the regular meeting the board received an update from Manager of Engineering and Planning Gene Mancebo on the Plymouth Pipeline Project. Agency staff has been working with the City of Plymouth and its consultants for the last several years regarding the Plymouth Pipeline project. Mancebo reported that staff believes the project will be able to go to bid sometime in May. He said all the permits are in place and those not in hand are expected to be received within the next few weeks. Conversely, the easements required for the project are not complete and the City has requested the Agency’s assistance with easement acquisition. The Agency has been working on finalization of the easement documents. In the mean time Mancebo said there are some potential modifications. He stated that they are expecting iteration for the plan and specification review.

Staff is also investigating an alignment change in segment one which is estimated to save $500,000 to $800,000. The alignment would follow an existing agency pipeline. Mancebo explained that they are facing increasing costs due to arsenic found in the road base. He said the County at some point a long time ago, used mining sand as a base for the roadways, and now arsenic is found thus creating a possible hazard the public. “Because they used as it as road base any time we start excavating into the road...there are of arsenic in the soils. We then have to have it tested and depending on the levels of arsenic present we must dispose of that material. This will (Realigning the pipeline) drastically reduces those soils. We are looking at big savings and are trying to accelerate this option,” said Mancebo.

The potential realignment should not cause a delay in the plans or specifications which are expected to be complete for the release of bidding documents in May said Mancebo. Director Hamaan asked that staff look into whether the county was liable for covering the costs associated with the process of dealing with the arsenic tainted sand since they used it as road base so many years ago. He said he anticipates that the agency will run into this problem again. Also a proposed change is the size of a portion of the pipeline. Staff has reviewed the possibility of increasing the pipe diameter in segments 5 & 6 from a 12 inch pipe to a16 inch pipe.  Mancebo said a recent amount of interest has been shown by developers to move forward with their developments.

He said the problem is, “the pipeline was basically designed to accommodate a 4% growth rate over the next 20 years…(and) Some of the projects together could potentially more than double the size of Plymouth and exceed the capacity that is being looked at for growth.” He said they have had Kastle Engineering look into upsizing the pipe and it appears that it can be done without affecting the bid date however; increasing the pipe size is apparently causing alarm with the US Fish and Wildlife Services.  Because the project is federally funded with Rural Utilities Service monies, the US Fish and Wildlife Services has input on the project as well.

The Department is concerned about the affect on the potential critical habitats and how they will be affected by increase in the pipeline. Mancebo explained later, that they have received the information second hand from RUS and the City of Plymouth that the US Fish and Wildlife Services are concerned, but they are not sure at this point what they are concerned about. “We have a call into them. They may be concerned about accumulative impacts or affects.” He explained that their concern may stem from the fact that the Plymouth pipeline will allow for new growth and in turn the pipeline could be serving a lot that was previously undeveloped with an endangered species living on it.  “Normally everyone would go through a process to see if there are endangered species and if there are there are steps to take. We think its kind of overkill to require that to be reviewed now.” He also said that in talking with the Rural Utilities Services they said this is the first time this had come up.

Director Heinz Hamaan voiced his disgust by saying that it was “rot” and had “nothing absolutely to do with putting the pipeline in.” Director Terry Moore said he though the 12 inch pipeline was a mistake. “What we didn’t take into consideration is all the other areas adjacent to Plymouth that are in the County area… the Plymouth situation is going to change and that will be analyzed in our CEQA documents,” said Mancebo. He said, “If they carried it to the extreme they would not allow the county to adopt a new General Plan because it is growth inducing and might affect wildlife.” In regards to funding Mancebo said, “We expect to receive the letter of conditions from RUS any day. Once we return some of the relevant documents, RUS will provide a funding obligation.” He concluded that, “Overall staff is confident that the project will be ready to bid in May, with the possible exception of easements, which may cause some level of delay.”