Amador County – The Amador Water Agency Board of Directors at its early May meeting decided to see an outside assessment of the agency’s financial systems.

AWA General Manager Gene Mancebo said the board “agreed to hire an independent accountant to evaluate the efficiency, checks and balances, and transparency of the Water Agency financial systems.”

He said the agency’s current accounting system was set up in the mid-1980s, and the “agency has also had significant turnover of staff recently, including a controller who was with AWA for 26 years and an 11-year financial manager. A lot of changes in accounting requirements that affect water agencies have occurred since that time.” The AWA Board directed staff to bring back proposals from accounting firms for review.

The AWA board also heard results of a Lake Camanche Village customer satisfaction survey. More than 750 surveys were mailed to water customers and 131 completed surveys were returned.

AWA office manager Karen Gish said overall, Lake Camanche customers gave the agency good marks for service and water quality. According to the surveys returned, she said “75 percent of customers who contacted the agency for customer service said they were satisfied or very satisfied with our office and field staff.” She said “66 percent were satisfied or very satisfied with overall water quality and service.”

70 percent of respondents said they were aware that a major well in the Camanche system was shut down for several months last year due to water quality problems, and water reliability ranked third in importance to customers after water quality and cost of water.

The survey also asked for customer comments and the most frequent comment was concern about the price of wastewater service in the Camanche area. Complete results of the survey are available on the agency’s website, or at the AWA office.

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