Contracts Awarded for Major Construction Work, Environmental Assessments, and Outreach
by Mark Dolson
The San Lorenzo Valley Water District (SLVWD) Board has met three times since my last report: on August 18th, September 1st, and September 15th. All three meetings were fairly short and relatively free of controversy as the Board focused much of its attention on the details of contract awards for upcoming projects.
By far the largest contract was for $5,023,000 and was awarded to JMB Construction, the lowest of five bidders, for the District’s “CIP Pipeline Project.” This project bundles together multiple proactive infrastructure improvement measures. An aging 40,000-gallon redwood tank will be replaced with a new 160,000- gallon tank fitted with improved monitoring instrumentation. Also, approximately 8,500 feet of aging and/or undersized water pipeline spread across four locations within the District will be replaced with 8- inch ductile iron pipe. This will improve water delivery and fire protection.
The District awarded three related contracts in support of its Conjunctive Use Project. Regular readers may recall that the goal of the Conjunctive Use Project (discussed most recently at the August 4th meeting) is to enable the District to minimize depletion of groundwater by allowing water to be freely transferred between various parts of the District’s water system as needed. Unfortunately, the District is being forced to complete an expensive Environmental Impact Review (EIR) due to an objection filed by the City of Santa Cruz. Contracts were awarded to Rincon Consultants (for $132,058 to complete the EIR document and process), to Nossaman LLP (for $64,250 for legal costs associated with completing the EIR process), and to Mike Podlech (for $32,000 to provide essential support as a fisheries biologist).
In a subsequent meeting, the District awarded a contract for $72,193 to Panorama Environmental for essential environmental consulting services needed for the consolidation of the Bracken Brae and Forest Springs mutual water companies into the District’s system. A competing bidder actually submitted a lower bid, but the Board found important deficiencies in this latter proposal. Also, the District has received a state grant which will cover the required spending in full.
Lastly, the District awarded a maximum of $55,000 to the Santa-Cruz-based public relations firm Miller Maxfield to replace Buzz PR as the District’s supporting partner in its ongoing and expanded outreach efforts. There was some extended discussion about this as Director Fultz expressed a strong preference for the competing (larger and Southern-California-based) firm of Dudek. Staff and other Board members viewed Miller Maxfield as the respondent who best demonstrated a strong understanding of the local area, clear ability to understand local water policy issues based on past work, and the full range of public outreach and event planning capabilities which would be required to meet all the District’s evolving needs. The final vote was 4-1 in favor of Miller Maxfield.
One important aspect of these recent Board meetings that would not be apparent to anyone not in attendance is that the current Board members are providing impressively detailed and valuable cross-checking of Staff decision-making. This is important for residents of the valley to understand because the upcoming November election features four candidates running for three open four-year Board seats (a fourth open two-year Board seat will be filled by a current incumbent who is unopposed). All four candidates are well-qualified, but voters owe it to our community to try to identify the three who will have the most positive impact.
The next regular Board of Directors meeting will be at 6:30 PM on October 6th (still via Zoom).
