Neighborhood water supply runs dry

For about a year, Kevin Orlopp took a two-hour trip nearly every day to keep his wife and four young children supplied with that most basic of resources: water.

The family’s well at their Rancho Calaveras home began to run dry about three years ago, then tapped out last year, Orlopp said.
  

Thanks to a meter installed Saturday by the Calaveras County Water District on a fire hydrant just a stone’s throw from his house, Orlopp’s days as a water carrier are now over.

But the family — and a handful of their neighbors — must continue to fill huge tanks at their home almost daily to flush their toilets, shower and cook.

Coming in the middle of an economic downturn that has left some residents jobless or in foreclosure or both, the burden has led some to consider just walking away from their homes.

“It’s kind of a perfect storm of economic circumstances” for some in the community, said Supervisor Russ Thomas.

For Orlopp, the burden has mainly been the time and heavy wear on his truck, which he estimates at several thousand dollars a year. As he looks for a solution to his situation, the liability grows exponentially.

Bids solicited by Orlopp and one other neighbor to extend CCWD’s water main to their properties ranged from $70,000 to $250,000, with a range of other fees to come, he said.

The landscaper and 10-year Rancho Calaveras resident says he would be more than happy to pay the district’s $10,000 fee to hook up his house to the water system.

“What I don’t understand is why we have to pay to have their water main put in,” said Orlopp, who is otherwise grateful to the district for providing cheap water when he had to truck it in and recently installing the fire hydrant meter.

That is district policy, according to Larry Diamond, district general manager. “The folks requiring the service pay for that service,” he said.

While the county did kick in a few thousand dollars to widen the pipe of a 1997 extension to three lots in the subdivision, the rest of the installation cost was borne by the lot owners, he said.

Most of Rancho Calaveras was hooked up to district water through piping paid for by the developer, but a small patch on the eastern edge of the 8.5-square-mile subdivision was left on wells, according to CCWD maps.

“Apparently, they ran out of money and didn’t finish that last 10 percent,” Orlopp said, referring incorrectly to the county, though a similar guess about the developer is likely correct, suggests Diamond.    

Those residents’ problems started more than a decade ago. About half of respondents to a 1997 district survey of the area said they were already in need of outside water.

“Everyone who has a functioning well is fine with it until they wake up and it’s not functioning,” said Director Ed Rich.

While Diamond says the district’s system would actually benefit by connecting the two pipes that terminate outside the area, thereby bringing water to the neighborhood, how to pay for it is uncertain.   

Even if all the neighbors buy in to the plan, which past efforts suggest is unlikely, finding a mechanism for that arrangement will be tricky.

“The problem is going to be financing,” said Director Jeff Davidson. “Everyone’s not going to have $10,000 cash.”

Ed Pattison, the district’s water resources manager, suggested it may be possible to arrange a loan for the homeowners through one of the agencies the district deals with, such as the USDA, though guaranteeing such a loan poses problems.

Meanwhile, Orlopp, his family and his neighbors will mull their decision to buy a house in the section of Rancho Calaveras that, unlike most of the community, does not have a water main.

“Unfortunately, we just happen to have a house in that last 10 percent,” he said.