Crestview and Calleguas have executed an amendment to their contract that requires Calleguas to pay the costs of Crestview’s Well #8 and for Crestview to complete the project by October 8, 2024. Both parties’ obligations are suspended indefinitely, and all options will be collaboratively reexamined. Here’s why.
The Well #8 project, located on Crestview Avenue just east of Ashdale Court, was obviously going to miss the October 8 completion deadline. Issues had been raised in the permitting process that would require time and money, potentially too much of both, to resolve and created a substantial risk that the permit would be denied. The existing contract makes Crestview solely responsible for cost overruns and total project failure, and the $3.3 million limit on Calleguas payment obligation was obviously going to be overrun by at least $1 million. Crestview Watch posts on these problems are available here.
Meanwhile, the denial of the Well #7 permit in September 2021 led to analyses showing that such a well, with necessary pipelines and neighborhood impact mitigation, would likely have costs in the $4-5 million range. That raised serious questions about affordability and inspired consideration of a “One-Well Scenario,” in which Crestview would install only one new well to back up and replace both Well #4 and Well #6 and Calleguas would pay for it. Calleguas seems willing to do this so long it gets the benefits of an emergency supply of local groundwater—as it does in the existing contract. It became clear that the well in a One-Well Scenario should be located in the upper pressure zone (where Well #7 would be) and not at the present site of Well #8 in the lower pressure zone.
The recent amendment evidences Calleguas’s openness to the One-Well Scenario and facilitates discussions about how to maximize mutual benefits by such measures as having Crestview upgrade disinfection from chlorination to chloramination, by adding emergency generators, by revising pipelines and valves, and by making it easier to meet Calleguas’s preference to receive emergency water at the top of our system instead of at the Springville Dog Park.
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