The Tuolumne Utilities District is seeking an $890,000 state grant for construction of a roughly 1.1-mile pipeline from the Quartz Reservoir. Wastewater from the district’s sewer system is treated at the Sonora Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant and then stored during the fall and winter in reservoir.
The Teleli Golf Club in Sonora, Calif. may soon receive treated wastewater via a roughly 1.1-mile pipeline once the Tuolumne Utilities District (TUD) receives an $890,000 state grant for construction, The Union Democrat reported. The project is part of an agreement with the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians that was approved by the TUD Board of Directors in 2019 after the tribe purchased the property formerly known as Mountain Springs Golf Course.
At a public meeting, the TUD board voted 3-0 to authorize district staff to apply for a grant through the California State Water Resources Control Board’s water recycling funding program that would cover the cost of building the pipeline, The Union Democrat reported. District Engineer Erik Johnson explained the grant would prevent the need for using internal funds collected through sewer rates paid by TUD customers, as the project is already slated for construction in 2025 under a five-year capital improvement plan, or CIP.
“This project is in our CIP, it’s a few years out, so if we were to get a grant it would offset money we feel that we would have to pay in the next few years,” Johnson said.
The agreement with the tribe is seen as beneficial to TUD by providing another place for it to send water from Quartz Reservoir so that it doesn’t overfill during wet years and flow into Woods Creek, The Union Democrat reported.
Wastewater from the district’s sewer system is treated at the Sonora Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant and then stored during the fall and winter in Quartz Reservoir, which can hold up to 1,616 acre-feet, The Union Democrat reported. Treated wastewater from Quartz Reservoir is then distributed during the spring and summer to Jamestown-area ranchers who use it for irrigating their land.
In 2014, TUD relinquished a permit for discharging treated wastewater into Woods Creek due to the monitoring and reporting costs because it typically disposes of all water in Quartz Reservoir under the current arrangements, The Union Democrat reported. However, in 2017, Quartz Reservoir came at risk of overflowing due to an abnormally wet winter and forced TUD to spend tens of thousands of dollars on finding other ways to prevent the water from spilling into Woods Creek.
“Drought is one of those things that feels very common now, but I think what we need to do … is plan for that 1-in-100-year rainfall year,” Johnson said to the board. “We know there is a lot of volatility. There are years where there will be 50 inches of rainfall, it might not be that often, but we need a way to empty that reservoir.”
The tribe currently purchases 300 acre-feet of surface water per year from TUD that comes out of Phoenix Reservoir, which also provides the drinking water for much of the district’s Sonora-area customers, The Union Democrat reported.
Johnson noted how the pipeline would provide the added benefit of keeping the water from Phoenix Reservoir available for other uses in years when treated wastewater is available for the golf course, The Union Democrat reported.
“That’s several hundred feet of surface water that could be allocated for other use here at the district, and we aren’t exactly rich in water rights or water storage,” he said.
The board spent more than an hour discussing the proposal to seek the grant, in part because of the district’s 2019 agreement with the tribe coming under scrutiny in a report by the Tuolumne County Civil Grand Jury the following year, The Union Democrat reported.
Director Ron Ringen, who later in the meeting was voted to be the board’s new vice president, said he had been “grilled” by a number of constituents whom he said perceived the proposal to fund the pipeline being a gift of ratepayer funds, The Union Democrat reported. TUD General Manager Don Perkins shot down the idea of the pipeline being a gift to the tribe. He said other alternatives, such as purchasing land to dispose of excess water from Quartz Reservoir, would likely be more costly.
Kevin Day, the past tribal chairman of the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians, said at the meeting that the tribe was looking to help save taxpayers money through the arrangement while maintaining the golf course as an asset for the community, The Union Democrat reported.
“We’re not trying to get rich off this, we’re trying to sustain something for the community,” he said. “We were asked to buy that place to help the community, because a lot of the elders in this community, that’s what they do, so we’re giving it our best shot to try to make it work.”
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