June 2011 Update

 

Web Page Status – We still need a volunteer web page designer.  Until then, the information available is quite limited and outdated. Watch your mailbox for new information and please call your board members with questions and concerns.  Please provide us your email address for infrequent but important email notices; simply include your email address with your payment.

 

Water Rates as of June 1st — members approved a $5/ month increase for irrigation water at the annual may meeting ($80 total /month = $40 irrigation & $40 drinking).  This is the first change since 2007.  Homes exceeding their annual 400,000 gallon irrigation flat rate allocation will be charged $1.00 per thousand gallons of overage for the year.  Drinking water rates remain the same: flat rate up to 15,000/month then progressively higher.

 

Drinking Water System — Everything in the Salem St. pump house seems to be running fine after the failed No. 2 booster pump was replaced in May with a new e-15SV vertical Gould Pump www.goulds.com, 7.5HP 3-phase Baldor Motor industrialmotors.com , and 15HP/46A ABB VFD motor controller www.sqone.com.  This is our first booster pump replacement in 25 years and represents a major investment in our infrastructure.  This work follows the September rebuild of the pump house’s distribution plumbing, also a major investment in the future.

 

Irrigation System — For 2011 our primary replacement water provider, CCWCD, gave all of its GMS customers a 40% allocation.  This amounts to 400,000 gallons per home.  At the May members meeting, after seven years, the board of directors announced the end of mandatory watering schedules.  You can now “water whenever you want, but not as much as you want…” because of the 400,000 gallon limit.

 

Legal Water Rights Work  — #421-R-R Irrigation Well: our small Salem Street well had its water rights decreed “fully absolute” (150gpm) by the Division 1 Greely Water Court in May!  The original filing was six years ago (04CW143). When this well fist came on-line in the fall of 2003 it only yielded 40gpm but, today it is pumping up to 150gpm so there is almost no pumping of our larger Racine well (#420-R).

 

Legal Water Rights Work  — Augmentation Plan: augmentation water is what limits our irrigation pumping, not the capacity of our wells.  Legal work continues on our own augmentation plan (08CW23) to supplement our contract with CCWCD.  We are well on our way toward a court approved plan, hopefully within the next year.  Since the members voted to begin work on our own plan, we have spent ~$54,000 on engineering and legal costs.  Our legal fees have been relatively low ($10,000).  These will increase as we negotiate a decree with our three legal objectors (CCWCD, FRICO, SACWCD).  In addition, Annual Operating Costs are expected to run around $4,000-6,000 for "accounting and administration" reports to the State (engineering costs).

 

Volunteers Needed – Call any board member to get started.