Mark Dolson
Expanded Review of Cross-Country Pipeline Replacement Options
The San Lorenzo Valley Water District (SLVWD) Board has met twice since my last report. There was a regularly scheduled meeting on June 16th and a special meeting on June 29th. The regularly scheduled July 7th meeting was cancelled at the last minute due to a fairly widespread power outage which could have prevented members of the public from attending.
The big topic at the June 16th meeting was further examination of the District’s options for replacing the five miles of cross-country pipeline (connecting surface water sources on the side of Ben Lomond Mountain to the District’s treatment plant) destroyed in the August 2020 CZU Fire. The Constructability Study completed this past spring by the consulting firm of Freyer & Laureta surprised the District with its conclusion that the replacement pipeline would cost around $60 million. (A significant but as-yet undetermined portion of this would be paid by FEMA.) This new pipeline would be mostly buried and would require construction of an expensive and environmentally disruptive supporting “bench” ranging between eight and fourteen feet in width.
Board and Staff agreed that, due to the scope of this project, it would be responsible to obtain a second assessment from an independent team of local technical experts from Haro, Kasunich, and Associates (HKA). In the course of the ensuing discussions, a new middle-ground option was identified, and an assessment of this option (with a much narrower bench) was included in the HKA contract. The District is still planning to promote extensive public review before making any final decision, but there was unanimous agreement that the public would expect some potential middle-ground option to have been explored as part of the District’s due diligence. The Board therefore unanimously approved a contract not to exceed $57,875 with HKA.
The June 29th meeting was convened for the sole purpose of moving forward with a newly awarded $1.1 million grant from the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW), funded through the 2022 Proposition 1 Watershed Restoration Grant & Delta Water Quality and Ecosystem Restoration Grant Program. This funding will partially offset the roughly $2 million cost of the District’s state-mandated Fall Creek Fish Ladder. This project has been under development for a number of years and has recently moved into the active construction phase.
