LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Three major county water projects have a good chance at moving forward thanks to state emergency drought funds being made available this year.
Lake County Special Districts submitted three proposals for its county service areas at Mt. Hannah, Paradise Valley and Spring Valley to the California Department of Water Resources, which opened applications for Prop 84 Emergency Drought Grant Funds this spring, according to Special Districts Compliance Coordinator Jan Coppinger.
Last week, the state issued its draft recommendations for the funds, and included all three projects. However, the final recommendations will be based on a public comment period that ends Oct. 8.
The three Lake County projects – totaling just over $2.6 million – are among 110 projects totaling an estimated $200 million that the California Department of Water Resources is recommending for funding under the Proposition 84 grants.
The grant funding is meant to help alleviate drought conditions and improve regional drought preparedness, the state said.
The proposal amounts are as follows:
– Mt. Hannah, CSA No. 22: Transmission line replacement, $270,000.
– Paradise Valley, CSA No. 16: Consolidation with Clearlake Oaks County Water District, $1,378,000.
– Spring Valley, CSA No. 2: Replace and loop distribution system, $960,000.
Once the public comment period is over, the state will put together its final funding determination, Coppinger said.
“They said we should hear something final by the end of October. I'm hoping it won't be that long,” she added.
Coppinger said the state's grant funding application window was very short – about two weeks. “It was a very short window because it was emergency funds.”
She added, “It was somewhat luck that we were able to get these three in there.”
While there may have been luck, there also was preparation.
Special Districts was able to get the applications for the three projects to the state even on short notice thanks to the fact that it had been working on them and they were close to being ready, outside of some final right-of-way and archaeological studies that were needed, Coppinger said.
“For the most part, they were all shovel-ready,” she said, adding that it just so happened that all three fit the emergency drought funding criteria.
The Mt. Hannah project includes a 900-foot transmission line from the tank to the new well, which Coppinger said was paid for through a $37,800 emergency grant from the California Department of Public Health.
The Paradise Valley project will consolidate customers from the Paradise Cove subdivision, where there are about 80 residences, as well as a planned subdivision across the highway, for a total of about 160 connections, with Clearlake Oaks County Water District, she said.
The new subdivision's developer, Brookwood LLC – which needed water supply issues addressed before moving forward with its plans – is paying the grant's required 25-percent match, totaling $375,000. Coppinger said the developer already has paid preconstruction and engineering costs.
The full match, along with the grant, will be paid by next spring, at which point the shovels should be in the ground, Coppinger said.
In the mean time, if the county receives the funds, Coppinger said all preconstruction work will continue over the winter months.
Spring Valley's project is the largest of the three. Coppinger said it will include completely replacing distribution lines and creating a looping system.
“That will be pretty huge,” she said.
With Spring Valley's $2 million treatment plant upgrade and a new storage tank completed about a year ago – also funded through state grants – the next steps will be to replace 7,500 linear feet of existing distribution lines and install 9,000 linear feet of new lines to loop the system and remove dead-ends that can cause water quality issues, Coppinger said.
Coppinger noted that one of the unique things with the state's new funding is that it has never funded distribution lines before.
However, she noted, leaking distribution lines waste water, a big issue in the current drought.
Spring Valley has needed the distribution line replacement for a long time, she added.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.