About Cambria

If you missed the forum on water alternatives on March 16, 2010, you can now view it here on aboutcambria.com (in four parts). Use this link or the link in the header menu. If you were there, watch it again! Thanks to Steve Figler for the video.

93428, cambria

We’ve been on the current path toward desalination, carpooling with Bill D. Moratorium for nearly 10 years. Many studies have been commissioned and reviewed before the CCSD Directors back then decided how much water we need, at what level of reliability and at what cost to the community. How they interpreted the information and answered those questions continue to have a less than ideal affect on our lovely town.

I believe Cambria is full of intelligent, educated and thoughtful people (including the CCSD Board and Staff, no matter what they think). There are many of us here that missed the fun of the 1996 change of leaders and cancellation of a desal project that was ready to go. I think it’s critical to have information to make good decisions. In that light, then, here is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of Task 4 of the Water Master Plan. (The entire document is available for download on the CCSD website.

8.10 Comparison of Water Supply Alternatives
The potential long-term water supply alternatives were evaluated according to the following criteria:

• Water Supply Capabilities: ranked from < 600 AFY to 1,000 AFY
• Water Quality: ranked from Very poor to Excellent
• Reliability: ranked from None to More than Sufficient
• Required Agreements/Institutional Issues: ranked from Very Difficult to None Required
• Environmental Issues: ranked from Significant to None
• Permitting/CEQA: ranked from Very Difficult to None Required
• Cost: ranked as a combination of annual and variable costs from above average to below average
• Funding: ranked from None to Fully funded

Table 8-37 compares the evaluation for each of the alternatives discussed in this section and is based on the assumption that each criterion has equal weight. Alternatives with a score of 2.9 or higher were considered viable options for CCSD. Accordingly, CCSD should consider continuing
Demand Management and incorporating Recycled Water to reduce potable water demand in addition to implementing Seawater Desalination as a supplemental source during critically dry years. Because changes to the criterion weight may alter the final scores, alternatives with a
score between 2.5 and 2.9 may also be considered.