Amador County – The Amador Water Agency board of directors wrapped up a series of informational coffee shop meetings around the Upcountry with a special board meeting Wednesday at the Veterans Hall on Buckhorn Ridge Road in Pioneer, and a light public turnout.
aidAWA General Manager Gene Mancebo said the attendance had peaked with last week’s meeting at Mace Meadow Golf Course restaurant when about 24 people attended the meeting, aimed at taking input from customers of the Central Amador Water Project service area, while informing the public about issues the system faces. Agency staff and board members outnumbered the four members of the public in attendance, with two of those staunch opponents, Debbie Dunn and Ken Berry.
Board President Don Cooper said past coffee shop meetings, hosted by himself and Director Robert Manassero, usually began pretty heated, but by the end people understood the dilemma the agency faces in an aging system that needs to be replaced. In meeting exit polls, up to 80 percent said they supported the Gravity Supply Line project.
Mancebo said the GSL would build in redundancy, reliability and water quality to the existing electrically pumped pipeline which now takes water from the Tiger Creek after bay. He said the pumps have run every day since the system was install, up to 22 hours on a typical summer day, and AWA staff “visit those pumps every one of those days.”
He counted 70 outages in the last two years on the pipeline, before he stopped counting. He said there were 163 incidents of inoperability between 2004 and 2008, including 97 electrical or mechanical failures, 14 communication failures and 52 power outages. Staff often must result in buying used parts online for the pump system’s control panel because new parts are no longer made.
District 3 Supervisor Ted Novelli asked if the AWA would need to raise rates if it lost a pump or the pipeline fails. Mancebo said there was no money set aside for a new pipeline or motors. He said CAWP Retail customers have not had a rate increase in nearly 5 years.
He said the agency and its board seek to cut out electrical costs that have more than doubled since 1989, then they paid PG&E $109,000 just to get the water to the treatment plant. The annual cost peaked at $300,000 in 2006, and last year was $250,000. He said the agency would have to pay PG&E for “power foregone,” but “those are wholesale dollars.”
He said drawing from the “regulator reservoir” would increase water quality, and the gravity-fed line would work “rain or shine,” without power. He said maintenance on the CAWP system was $67,000 last year.
Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
