The Carpinteria Valley Water District voted 4-1 not to fund the "second barrel," an 8,000-foot long pipeline redundancy project that the Cachuma Operation and Maintenance Board (COMB) maintains is crucial to the future reliability of the South Coast’s water supply.

According to COMB, "The Cachuma Project provides approximately 80% of the potable water delivered by Goleta Water District, City of Santa Barbara, Montecito, and Carpinteria Valley Water District. No redundant supply or pipeline exists to convey Cachuma Project water or State Project water to the the Goleta Reach if the South Coast Conduit is out of service, due to scheduled and/or unexpected repairs."



( Image courtesy of COMB )


[ From "Running Out of Time - Water Agencies Wrangle Over Reliability Project Financing," by Ben Preston, SB Independent, November 12, 2009 ]

... [Because] the Carpinteria Valley Water District voted 4-1 not to fund the so-called second barrel... That leaves [COMB's] other three member agencies —- the City of Santa Barbara and the Goleta and Montecito water districts -— to pick up the tab for the proposed $9 million project to be built in Goleta’s foothills or risk losing $3.2 million in grant money from the state. “I think it’s really shortsighted. They’re putting at risk millions of dollars of grant money,” said Santa Barbara City Councilmember and COMB president Das Williams. Carpinteria General Manager Charles Hamilton defended his board’s decision, saying that while the second barrel would restore the original 70 million-gallon-per-day flow capacity that the Tecolote Tunnel and South Coast Conduit were designed to support, there are other repairs that can be made in Goleta’s section of the pipeline. “The system has been altered by Goleta [in their area] over the past 20 years, and it has reduced flow,” Hamilton said.

... the Carpinteria Water District -— saddled with a huge debt from purchasing in the early 1990s what has turned out to be a surplus of State Water, as well as from a series of capital improvement projects to meet increasingly stringent federal drinking water quality standards —- balked at the amount it would have to pay for the upgrades, and decided to opt only for the projects it could fund from its own reserves...

What remains to be seen is whether or not the other three South Coast districts will elect to pay Carpinteria’s portion of the second barrel project, which has seen the bidding on construction already end. COMB general manager Kate Rees said that because COMB entered into an agreement with the state through the County Water Agency to receive a total of $15 million of state funding for South Coast projects, it could potentially be sued for a breach of contract...

[Additionally, Rees said,] the delay of repairs and upgrades to COMB’s aging system could cause water supply shortfalls in coming years. “We don’t know how long we will be able to meet peak demand in the summertime. We come very close (to not meeting demand) every year, so it’s just a matter of time.”

Labels: COMB, water projects