Utility districts score $7.5M in stimulus

San Andreas Sanitary District and Calaveras County Water District will together receive more than $7.5 million in federal stimulus money for much needed projects in San Andreas and West Point, leaders at each district have just learned.

The news also means that, while the San Andreas district’s roughly 1,840 customers agreed last month to higher rates, their bills won’t go up by as much as expected.
 

“It’s amazing,” SASD board member Bill Perley said with a wide smile of the $5.8 million the small district is to receive. This and a 30-year loan at a half-percent interest rate will give the district more than $10.5 million to pay for a major renovation of the district’s 65-year-old wastewater treatment plant.
 

CCWD is to receive $1.75 million to construct two steel tanks in West Point that will hold a total of about 650 acre feet of treated water that can be used should fire in the small northern Calaveras County community ever break out.

An acre foot is the volume of water — 43,560 cubic feet — that would cover an acre to a depth of one foot.

If not for this new grant, the tank project would have been on indefinite hold, since the CCWD 2009-10 budget is so lean that four district employees are being laid off, said district Water Resources Manager Ed Pattison.

Getting a loan to pay for the tanks in light of layoffs would have been tough for district leaders to justify, he explained.

On the San Andreas plant project, the design and engineering work is already done, leading district General Manager Steve Schimp to estimate that work on the state-mandated plant upgrades would begin within three months.

On April 15, the district held a hearing required in order to raise rates, and directors then agreed to raise rates from $54 a month to $68.50 in 2009-10, $72 in 2010-11 and $75.50 in 2011-12.

Thanks to the federal money, as allotted to the district by the State Water Quality Resources Control Board, the rates in 2009-10 will rise to about $60, then go up 3 percent in the subsequent fiscal years.

Perley credits Schimp for staying in constant contact with state water board officials in recent years and said this persistence and unexpectedly good timing on President Obama’s stimulus package mean the small district will save millions.

The district had planned on seeking a 20-year loan, with a 2 percent interest rate, but couldn’t agree to that until after holding the rate hike hearing required under Proposition 218. The measure state voters approved in 1996 calls for local utilities to have a vote of their customers before raising rates.

So the loan authorization district leaders were to give late last year was delayed until April. By then, the district also knew it might be in line for the new president’s stimulus money.

The fact that the district serves a community that by per-capita income standards is considered low income also helped convince the state board to grant the district money to upgrade its plant.

Schimp said that the project, if not started soon, could have meant millions in state fines.

“We’ve been looking forward to this and it came through,” Schimp said of the stimulus money and rate hike district customers agreed to in April.

“It all fell into place, like a big team effort,” he added. “ ... Everyone has to be on board. That’s how it works. The people of San Andreas, they trusted us.”   

Delaying the West Point project would not have put CCWD in jeopardy of fines. But the stimulus $1.75 million grant means the district won’t have to further delay replacing an outdated storage tank that is expensive to maintain because of the its heavy plastic debris-catching cover that is also prone to rips, said Pattison.

“We’ve been working on this since 2000,” he said of efforts to replace the old tank with steel ones.

“What it really does for the community of West Point is fire protection,” Pattison said, adding that the tanks also help prevent any treated water from getting into the community water system — a situation that could lead to boil-water orders around the 560-resident town.

He and Perley — who works for CCWD as its utilities director — noted that, like San Andreas, federal census information shows that West Point residents are well below per-capita income averages. That has allowed CCWD to received several grants in recent years to improve the town’s water system.

Pattison said CCWD directors will soon have to vote on whether to seek a 40-year loan to cover a $3.29 million water distribution system to replace the old one now serving West Point’s downtown area.