Emergency Generator
The Board received indications that a new portable diesel generator may come in substantially under the $400,000 budget. At the April 28 meeting, GM Gil Borboa reported that Crestview is now a member of Sourcewell, a cooperative buying organization for public and non-profit water purveyors. It has identified 4-6 local vendors and will handle the competitive bidding process for Crestview’s trailer-mounted generator. Meanwhile, plug-in interfaces for a generator have been installed at Booster 2 and Well #4.
Calleguas
There were reports about the status of negotiations with Calleguas to amend the Well #8 Agreement. Among Crestview’s objectives are to get Calleguas to switch its grant money from Well #8 to Well #7 and/or other infrastructure projects, and to get technical and financial support for other mutually-beneficial projects. Calleguas’s main objective is to be able, in an emergency, to get Crestview to pump Calleguas’s “stranded groundwater rights” because Calleguas does not own adequate pumping facilities.
As background, the last meeting among decision-makers was in late December or early January, at which time lawyers were tasked with negotiating a revised agreement. That has gone slowly, at least in part because of issues discussed here. Also, Calleguas is dealing with new issues such as a Watermaster proposal to change the “in-lieu program” that is a source of Calleguas’s stranded groundwater rights. Meanwhile, the listing for sale of the land for Well #8 is on hold.
Well #4
GM Borboa is working with Richard C. Slade & Associates (“RCSA”) on a proposal to review all of Crestview’s information about Well #4 and to estimate its present health, future utility, expected useful life, and the nature and cost of likely life-extending projects. The proposal is expected to be ready for Board action at its May meeting. The final report, which could be ready in time for the June meeting, would give Crestview its first written professional evaluation of Well #4 and its prospects.
The future viability of Well #4 has been controversial. In 2021, Crestview argued that it desperately and urgently needed Well #7 because Well #4 would soon go dry, as it actually did in August 2021, and could not be made productive again. But in 2022, the pump in Well #4 was lowered, immediately restoring its productivity, and it is still running well. After the Well #7 site selection study revealed that the cost of any new Crestview well would be in the range of $10 million, the Planning Committee and Board began to give serious consideration to the idea that we can get by, as we have for 75 years, with no new well so long as Well #4 and Well #6 are healthy and Calleguas is an emergency backup—especially since our annual pumping allocation is being substantially reduced by the Watermaster.
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