Friday, Sep. 05, 2008
Water master plans are approved
Plans will keep rates lower, officials say
By Corey Pride / cpride@losbanosenterprise.com
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ReprintThe City Council on Wednesday approved master plans for the city's water systems.
The plans are designed to serve Los Baños through 2030.
"There's a lot of meat in these plans, but it's real stuff. It's not just generalities," Councilman Joe Sousa said. "It just will result in an absolute benefit to the community. That benefit is reduced waste."
The city hired Carollo Engineers to produce the master plans.
Tim Loper of Carollo Engineers said the city currently has 124 miles of sewer lines and 13 lift stations. He said the wastewater treatment plant processes 3.5 million gallons per day but his company designed improvements for a peak flow, which is about 6.1 million gallons a day.
Improvements to the wastewater infrastructure include rehabilitating deteriorated sewer lines, expanding the system to serve developments that will come into the city during the next 22 years and expanding a specific sewer line that exists downtown. Another lift station will also be created.
Currently in the downtown area storm drains are directly connected to the sewer system. Rain water sometimes overwhelms the sewer lines, according to Loper and his colleagues.
"What we did was we developed improvements to take those connections out of the sewer," Loper said. "Without these improvements here you would have had a major construction project... once or twice a year."
Tommy Greci of Carollo Engineers said Los Baños has about 79 miles of storm drains.
"We took advantage of the planned park areas and added our existing facility improvements and future facility improvements," Greci said.
The majority of the storm water system improvements include disconnecting from the sewer lines and maintenance of infrastructure.
Los Baños' water system has to prepare for change. Currently the city's water supply is provided through the use of wells. Los Baños may be required one day to use surface water. By 2020 officials believe Los Baños will need a water treatment plant.
Carollo Engineers have proposed blending surface and well water at some point in the future.
"The surface water tends to be higher quality, lower solvents, with lower hardness, and your groundwater in some locations has higher hardness. By blending the two the entire community benefits," said Jose Gutierrez, who is also with the engineering firm.
Public Works Director Dwayne Chisam said the city wants to begin negotiating to acquire a surface water source so as new development occurs developers will be required to pay for its cost.
"There are basically two alternatives," Chisam said. "You can either continue on the ground system that is less expensive ... and incur an absorbent cost for cleaning up that water on the other end; or you can try and find another water source."
Chisam said if the city spends its money on treatment you still have poor water quality.
"It's not just aesthetics, we're talking also about arsenic," he said.
Chisam said the long-term planning will allow the city to develop a financial plan over time that avoids large spikes in water rates.
The City Council spent an excess of 10 minutes complimenting staff and representatives from Carollo Engineers for laying out a plan that took into account the officials' desire not to put a large financial burden on Los Baños' current residents.
Enterprise staff writer Corey Pride can be reached at 388-6563 or cpride@losbanosenterprise.com