The Tehachapi, Calif., golf course has benefited from the California Correctional Institution’s wastewater treatment program, but the supply recently dried up because the computer system has malfunctioned for months. If the golf course is forced to rely on state water, the General Manager said it “will have to close [its] doors.”
The golf course at Horse Thief Country Club in Tehachapi, Calif., has benefited from the state prison turning wastewater into high-quality irrigation water several years ago. But the supply of treated prison water has proved spotty this year and recently dried up completely because the state has for months failed to fix problems at the CCI plant. If they aren’t fixed soon, the golf course may have to close, the Bakersfield (Calif.) Californian reported.
Treated water from the California Correctional Institution is about one-fourth the cost of the only other alternative for irrigating the course—state water imported by the Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District, the Californian reported.
John Martin, General Manager of Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District, has been frustrated with the pace of repairs. His district buys the so-called tertiary water from the prison and re-sells it to the golf course. He believes it’s a huge community benefit—especially during the drought, the Californian reported.
This past week, he sent letters to state officials including those in the governor’s office and Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that ended with “PLEASE HELP!”
“On the one hand the state water board is saying we have to cut back (on water use statewide) 25 percent, but on the other hand, we have the state preventing us from using this (prison) water supply,” Martin said.
Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the corrections department in Sacramento, said the prison is working on the repairs and they should be done “within months.” What’s malfunctioning now is the computer system that allows the plant to operate at full capacity and make its full tertiary water deliveries. Once the computer software is upgraded and integrated with some other repairs, Sessa said, the plant will resume normal operations, the Californian reported.
“We are doing everything we can to move the project along as quickly as we can,” Sessa said.
Martin said that prison officials have given him an ETA of late July. That sounds much better than earlier estimates, he said, and he hopes it proves true. If it takes longer, Horse Thief won’t survive the summer, said General Manager Kenn Arnecke. Last month when the club had to buy some state water (19 acre feet, according to Martin) spending what it typically spends on a whole summer’s supply of prison water, the Californian reported.
“If we have to rely on state water, we simply will have to close our doors,” Arnecke said.
Martin said state water costs $363 per acre foot while that amount of recycled prison water costs $90. The golf course typically uses 50 acre feet of prison water a month during the summer. To boot, Martin said, the club spent $600,000 to build a four-mile pipeline that delivers prison water, the Californian reported.
Martin said the plant typically produces 60 to 80 acre feet of tertiary water per month when it’s fully functioning. Water district officials realized something was wrong with the plant in January or February when they saw treated water being used on a spray field and that the storage ponds weren’t full, the Californian reported.
They learned the water had to be wasted on the spray field instead of stored up for delivery because it didn’t meet quality standards due to problems at the plant, Martin said. The water quality problems have been addressed, he said, but the lingering issues with the computer system mean the plant is only operating at about 40 percent of its ability. The plant delivered just 2 acre feet of tertiary water to the golf course last month, the Californian reported.
“The real shame is here we are in a historic drought and we have on the order of about 700 to 800 acre feet of water being available from CCI (annually), and that number has gone to zero,” he said.
Until 2014, the only prison water customer was the Horse Thief Country Club. It took about 200 acre feet a year. Last year, Valley Sod began farming and used 103 acre feet of prison water on a 40-acre patch the last half of the year. It planted another 100 acres and was planning to use 300 to 500 acre feet in 2015, the Californian reported.
When Tehachapi-Cummings learned of the problems at CCI several months ago, the district cut off deliveries to Valley Sod because the club was the first-priority customer. Tehachapi-Cummings thought the prison would deliver enough water for at least the golf course, but that turned out to be wrong. In May, the golf course received just 2 acre feet. Now CCI says there is no water for the golf course, the Californian reported.
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