Greetings Fellow Co-Owners of the Riebli Mutual Water Company:
A lot has transpired since our last update. Here is a summary of the status of our water system:
Short-term water delivery – we received notice from our water engineer, AJ Piro, and the county health department that we can remove boil notices from the 5 surviving homes in Hidden Hills. We are up and running (mostly!). The system is operational – with a temporary 5,000 gallon tank – in all areas EXCEPT Pinecroft addresses. We still have not found shut-offs for three homes on that street. Once those shut-offs are located and closed, we will begin purging and cleaning the Pinecroft lines. This will cause some disruption of service for those of you connected to the system now. We anticipate that we will need to shut water off about 3 times for about two hours at a time. We will notify the five homes ahead of time. It will be during the day. We anticipate having the entire system up and running in a few weeks.
Long-term restoration – We have engaged American Tank out of Windsor to build a new tank at our location on Meadowcroft. It will be substantially larger. It won’t be redwood as clear redwood in sizes greater than 10,000 gallons don’t exist. We also engaged a civil engineering company – Dimensions 4 Engineering (D4E) – to assist in the design and approval process. They are also working with our neighboring mutual water companies. D4E is working with county fire on our behalf to design a system that will meet current code requirements, given system constraints. We also engaged a geo-tech firm – PJC Engineering for a soils and substrate analysis at the well site. We need this for engineering and approvals to install a new/larger tank and larger concrete pad.
Records restoration – as you know, we lost all our system engineering and historical records. They were all on paper. D4E has been instrumental in helping us restore these invaluable records. In the future, we will store these documents both in a paper form as well as electronically via our web-site.
Insurance – this has been a bit of a slog. We are on our third set of adjusters/contacts for our insurance claims. We know we have coverage for a substantial portion of our system repair and upgrades. We continue to work on clarification and payment.
Building Code Changes – Those of you who have begun work with a builder or an architect may have learned that in-house sprinklers are now required for new home construction. They may have requested water system flow rates or told you that you need to install a separate water tank on your property in order to deliver the water capacity required by sprinklers. As part of our work with D4E, American Tank, the geotechnical firm and county fire and permits group, we are working on a design of the RMWC delivery system that will allow the required flow rates – hopefully without the requirement of additional tanks at our homes. We should have a final decision and design in the next few weeks. We will announce to everyone immediately when we determine what the water delivery design will be.
In addition, as earlier reported, back flow devices and water meters are required, prior to full connection of services. We will be sending documentation on this in the next few weeks.
Billing – we are continuing to waive quarterly bills. We anticipate restoring billing at some point, as our reserve funds are declining.
Regards,
Riebli Mutual Company Board of Directors