EID board tours capital improvement projects

On Sept. 11 members of the El Dorado Irrigation District Board of Directors attended a special board meeting and heard staff reports on projects included in the five-year capital improvement plan (CIP).

After the presentation they, along with members of the public, attended a tour of several district facilities to see, firsthand, some of the projects that were previously funded to be undertaken next year.

Staff will hold a CIP workshop on 6 p.m. Sept. 26 in the district’s headquarters building at 2890 Mosquito Road to present and discuss the 2013–2017 CIP plan. Staff will ask the board to adopt the plan at the board’s Oct. 9 meeting.

“The tour is hosted to highlight to the board and the public the type of complex projects that the district must tackle each year to ensure that the facilities are in top order to provide safe, reliable service to our customers,” said EID General Manager Jim Abercrombie. “It is always an eye-opener for people when they see how much effort it takes to provide them with clean water, to process gallons of sewage, and to ensure that our recreational facilities are in good shape. This annual tour is a great vehicle to do so and I always encourage people to join us.”

Chlorine gas canisters to be replaced at Res A

Approximately $85 million over a five-year period is planned for CIP projects — an average of $17 million each year.

Among the stops along the route, a visit was made to Reservoir A Water Treatment Plant in Pollock Pines to learn about the new chlorine conversion system the district plans to build next year. The new system will eliminate the need to use hazardous chlorine gas in our water disinfection process and replace it with a much safer bleach product — liquid sodium hypochlorite.

This conversion will also require less routine maintenance and reduce chemical costs. The project is estimated to cost $1.75 million. This will be the third chlorine conversion project the district will have completed, completely eliminating all chlorine gas danger from those water treatment plants. Board members and guests also saw the drying beds at Reservoir A that staff will rebuild to improve solids drying process efficiency and reduce staff maintenance costs.

Sly Park Dam

Sly Park dam was visited to view the location of newly planned piezometers, to be installed next year.

Piezometers are used to monitor the internal water levels in the main and auxiliary Sly Park dams. The piezometers are a California state regulatory requirement.

The tour also included stops at two sanitary sewer lift stations in El Dorado Hills, Business Park 1 and 2, where the two facilities are being totally renovated to reduce the risk of catastrophic failure and to prevent sanitary sewer overflows and associated fines.

The estimated cost of both of those projects is nearly $3 million. EID operates and maintains 64 lift (also known as pumping) stations, which must be routinely serviced and upgraded to ensure reliable operation.

These lift stations — most of them built in the 1980s — are a part of the district’s sewer collection system that includes four wastewater treatment facilities and 560 miles of collection sewer line. The tour concluded with a visit to the El Dorado Hills Wastewater Treatment Plant, where the tour participants learned about the plant’s supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA). The SCADA system is used to safely operate the wastewater facility.

Handouts describing the various stops on the tour can be found in the document library on the EID Website or by calling 530-622-4513 or 916-965-0930 to request copies.