As you walk up the blacktop service road from Graham Hill Road in Felton, you begin to hear the sound about 50 yards away from the large, round redwood water storage tank, owned by the San Lorenzo Valley Water District:
The sound of running water, as if multiple outdoor hose faucets or outdoor showers had been left on.
That sound has been disturbing the hilltop serenity of this place for at least seven years, perhaps longer.
Water is pumped into the tank by the district, to provide water pressure for homes and fire hydrants in the sandhills overlooking Felton.
The water district for several years has had replacement of this tank on its list of needed capital improvement projects, but it hasn’t had the money – nearly $1.7 million – to do the job.
It also has had to identify ways to protect endangered plants and animals in the area.
Through drought years and rainy seasons, the water has poured out of the bottom and sides of the large round structure, from cracks, holes, and seams, creating a constantly running stream around the bottom of the tank, and into a specially made catch basin and back into the aquifer.
There has been no exact estimate of the water lost, but it’s likely in the thousands of gallons. Picture a half dozen homes that left their bathtub faucets or sprinkler systems running nonstop, for seven years.
The site is located between the closed Hanson Quarry and the Santa Cruz County Probation Center and juvenile detention facility. The water district calls the tank, the “Probation Tank.”
This month, the district moved a step closer to the planned replacement of the leaking 100,000-gallon redwood tank with a 527,000-gallon welded steel tank by holding a hearing on a plan to mitigate any damage the construction project might do to several endangered plant and animal species: the Ben Lomond spineflower and Ben Lomond buckwheat, the Santa Cruz kangaroo rat, the Zayante band-winged grasshopper, and of course, the now-infamous Mt. Hermon June Beetle. No one spoke at the hearing.
The next step is for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission to approve the plan, and release the project for construction permits.
A similar process at the nearby Scotts Valley Middle School caused a more-than-one-year delay in construction of the new school.
The water district is hopeful the tank could be replaced in 2018 at the earliest. Meanwhile, water continues to pour out of the tank, day and night.
The district in 2016 imposed a “drought surcharge” of $1 for each unit of water, in hopes of building up depleted capital reserves to fund projects like the Probation Tank replacement. This month, it begins discussion of whether to retain the drought surcharge, and of how much capital improvement money to build into a probable multi-year rate hike.
