MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – Members of the Callayomi County Water District's Board of Directors are uncertain where their well supplying water to Middletown will be located in the future. But they are certain that it won't be in the Butts Canyon Road area.
That much became clear during a public meeting at the Middletown Senior Center on Thursday night attended by 30 Middletown citizens.
The citizens were adamant in their opposition to placing a well near the Butts Canyon area site, located about three miles southeast of Middletown.
The site previously served as a waste disposal facility where 17 companies and agencies had disposed of geothermal wastes – i.e., drilling mud from exploratory/developmental drilling and wastes from power generation operations at The Geysers energy field – from 1976 to 1986.
The facility, which consisted of evaporation ponds and solid waste disposal, was closed after Geothermal Inc., its former operator, went bankrupt. Pacific Gas and Electric subsequently took over responsibility for the facility.
The site's closure was accomplished between 2003 and 2006 and was overseen by the Central Valley Regional Water Control Board. The cleanup included disposing of seven evaporation ponds in the area.
The meeting on Thursday night concluded with the appointment of Callayomi Board President Steve Bishop and Director Kimberly Haynie to investigate properties and contact their (mostly private) owners when they identified a prospective well site.
Once they do, they will map it out and work with a hydrological engineer to determine its water potential, then have the property appraised, Callayomi District General Manager John Hamner said.
Bishop and Haynie will begin this process this week, according to Hamner, who added, “It's a long, drawn-out process into which $54,000 has already been invested.”
While some citizens present at the meeting expressed concerns that a tentative $3 million grant from the California Department of Public Health, referred to as State Revolving Loan Fund Grant, is restricted to an existing aquifer at Diamond D Ranch on Big Canyon Road, Hamner said that is not the case.
“We will not lose the grant, but at the same time, time is of the essence and we need to find something in a reasonable amount of time or there is a possibility that we'll lose it,” Hamner said.
Much of Thursday night's meeting was consumed with concerns about the Butts Canyon area site, where elevated levels of boron, sulfate, chloride and totally dissolved solids have been detected.
“I came here as a machinist and when they first started fighting about the pollution and everything,” said Jim Bolander, who once worked at the Butts Canyon disposal site. “What I was told was that the stuff they were putting in there wouldn't hurt you.
“But I talked to a biologist and the information he gave me was that when they mix all the chemicals and the iron and the peroxide the composition of all these chemicals would cost $10 million to clean it up. If they ever get a leak in there I don't want my kids or my grandkids and the people in my community to drink any water,” Bolander added.
“We want the truth about what they put in the ground,” said Moke Simon, representing the Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians.
Simon recalled playing at the Butts Canyon disposal site as a child. “If there's a way for PG&E to get around it they'll get around it … We currently buy bottled water on the reservation.
“I'm not saying that water is perfect, but our reason for (buying) it is we know what went into that site. We saw – physically saw – it and we don't want to disturb that stuff,” Simon added. “So we're against it and want to be on record and make the community know that.”
Said Linda Diehl-Darms, who has driven a petition in opposition of the Butts Canyon area site, “When the cleanup of the waste site was first proposed I asked that they remove the waste completely. PG&E worked along with the Regional Quality Control Board and said it wasn't fiscally feasible for them to remove the waste out of our area. Then I asked, 'Could you put a lining between the waste and he earth?' That was not fiscally feasible either.
“Do the agencies supplying the funds have knowledge of the Title 27 noncompliant cleanup site approximately two miles upstream from the proposed well?” she asked.
But Hamner insists that consideration was never given to the Butts Canyon Road site.
Among sites that are being considered, he said, are a couple near the Middletown Union School District and Long Valley.
But of the school, he added, “We've already got some wells out there and they don't produce water very well,” and one of the Callayomi directors is opposed to the Long Valley site.
Email John Lindblom at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .