Wednesday, 01 August 2007 02:04

Camanche Mobile Home Residents Get Encouraging News

slide3Last Thursday night’s meeting at La Contenta golf club was no doubt crowded with worried Camanche area residents of three East Bay Municipal Utility District owned mobile home parks. All of the residents, and many elderly as well, were concerned over their future and how it would be impacted by East Bay MUD’s update of its Mokelumne Watershed Master Plan. Although no promises were made, the utility did acknowledge some of the owner’s concerns and points of information as valid.

The park’s Residents on both the Amador and Calaveras County shores of Lake Comanche packed a meeting room expressing fear and anger that the Master Plan update could eliminate the mobile home parks as a "general increase in protective measures related to water quality."  The good news delivered at last week’s meeting is that the mobile home parks are indeed profitable for the utility district, as many of the residents have pointed out, and that there is no indication that they create any environmental problems. East Bay’s Project Manager Eileen Fanelli, who will be presenting the land-use options to EBMUD directors, told the residents of the parks that the mobile home rents and fees subsidize recreation areas, hiking trails and other elements of the watershed management plan to the tune of more than $600,000 per year.

slide13 Fanelli implied that her bosses at EBMUD will look at that fact as an asset of maintaining the mobile home parks, since the Camanche Lake enterprise costs the district $9.2 million to operate, but generates only $4.9 million in revenue. The Board of Directors will address the issue at their August 14th meeting. Of the four options being presented only one leaves the local residents high and dry so to speak, the other three all leave the parks as they are- residential communities. The master plan will establish policy and long-term direction for management of land owned by the east bay area utility district in the Mokelumne River  Watershed which includes approximately 19,000 acres of land and 10,000 acres of water surrounding Camanche and Pardee reservoirs. The plan will update a land use plan prepared by the district in 1970. EBMUD, based in Oakland, provides drinking water to 1.2 million residents in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.