Woolf steps down after reprimand

Angels Camp’s chief water and wastewater plant operator resigned this week, a fortnight after receiving a warning for alleged insubordination.

Carol Woolf will go on vacation beginning today and officially retire March 13.
 

“I just don’t think I could work in good conscience with the existing council,” she said. “It’s nothing personal.”

Woolf was sent a warning by the City Council after she showed up with her deputy, Garret Walker, at a meeting between two city councilman and representatives from the California Department of Public Health.

The department’s representatives had invited her, but the two city councilmen — Rick Downey and Mayor Jack Lynch — were not aware she was coming and were shocked and angered to find her there.

They were meeting with the department to make a case that they had addressed a series of capacity violations the city’s water treatment plant earned in the summers 2007 and 2008 by fixing a severely leaking water main.

Downey later said at a council discussion on the matter that the presence of Woolf — who has repeatedly said hot weather, not the leaking pipe, was responsible for the city’s high water usage — “undermined” the negotiations.

But Woolf thought her presence was required. Plus, she believed she followed all the city’s standard protocols and procedures by contacting the head of administration, not the council members.

“I really feel that I was not in the wrong,” she said. “I’ve never directly contacted a City Council member.”

Woolf, 56, said retirement was in her near future in any case. She had come back to her post following a stroke in 2006 against the advice of her doctor.

The reason? Her desire to see through a pair of long-planned projects: The addition of a fourth filter at the water treatment facility and the installation of an ultraviolet treatment system at the wastewater treatment plant.

The latter is now under way. The former — which was one of the options mandated by the state following the city’s violations — remains in limbo.

She feels she leaves the two plants in capable hands.

She plans to spend six months in the desert camping and rock hunting to start her retirement, followed by visiting long-neglected friends and family.

“I have all kinds of family and friends who want me to visit them who I’ve been ignoring,” she said.

Among them are a daughter and four grandsons, ages 9 to 19, in Atwater.

Offers of employment, part-time and as a consultant, from various agencies have poured in since her resignation, she said.  

“I’m not officially off the city books and people are already making me crazy,” she said.

But even if she gets a part-time job, she says she’ll never be more than a phone call away from her old colleagues.

“I’m sure I’ll still be in touch with my operators when they have a question,” she said. “It’s not like I’m going to get an nonlisted number.”