Point Reyes Light - September 14, 2000
Huge Woodacre water tank planned
An official of Marin Municipal Water District announced Tuesday that the district intends to build a 10-million gallon storage tank in the San Geronimo Valley that would make the water distribution system more efficient and help meet anticipated water quality regulations.
"Most of the staff feel this is the single most beneficial project we can undertake from an operational standpoint," Marin Municipal engineer Dana Roxon told about 70 local residents and members of the San Geronimo Valley Planning Group on Tuesday.
Based on preliminary studies, the water district has focused its attention on locating a tank on the eastern ridge of Woodacre, just south of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and east of San Geronimo Valley Drive, because the terrain there seems capable of supporting a concrete, underground tank with sufficient volume.
165,000 cubic feet However, constructing a tank there would require building a temporary road up the knoll for truck access, excavating roughly 165,000 cubic feet of earth, and acquiring property and access easements from up to six different landowners, Roxon explained.
Woodacre residents expressed concerns about Marin Municipal's plans to create access to the tank from Fire Road, as well as all the noise, dust and traffic associated with a five-month dig. The entire project is estimated to cost $6 million dollars and take 18 months to complete.
Roxon said the water district has the right to exercise eminent domain over needed property but wishes to avoid the legal expense of condemnation hearings.
"We will always try to negotiate sales," he said. "Eminent domain is a messy process that serves no one really well."
Blueberry hill Rallying behind the property owners who have kept "Blueberry" knoll undeveloped, Lagunitas resident Jean Berensmier challenged the water district to a political battle. "What would happen if the community spoke out against this project emphatically," she asked. "What would you do?"
Marin Municipal Water District director Jared Huffman, who represents the Valley, responded that the district needs to balance the needs of 185,000 customers with the wishes and desires of the San Geronimo Valley community, but he assured the crowd that no alternatives will be overlooked. "If we find another site that does the same thing and isn't as intrusive, I'll certainly push for it," he said.
The proposed tank would measure roughly 300 feet by 100 feet - roughly the dimensions of a football field - by 40 feet deep, with the whole thing getting buried in a 60-foot deep hole.
Valley emergencies Marin Municipal needs new water storage to replace the leaky Pine Mountain transmission line from Phoenix Lake to east Marin, which holds about 3 million gallons of water. Meanwhile, anticipated new water quality regulations will require the San Geronimo Valley treatment plant to store filtered water somewhere while it performs routine maintenance, Roxon said.
Other benefits from the proposed project would be an increased emergency water supply for the Valley and east Marin in the event of power outages and catastrophes, and a better ability to balance the treatment plant's output of filtered water with the water demands of customers in east Marin, Roxon said.
Still, many in the audience expressed concerns about an 18-month construction project that would have a permanent impact on previously undisturbed property. Perhaps no one was more interested than Woodacre rancher George Flanders, who would be asked to provide an easement through his property for a pipeline to the tank.
Rancher's reward Flanders said his property - the largest single private expanse of private land remaining in the Valley - has long been eyed for public works projects because his family has chosen not to develop the land. "We feel this is just another reward for not selling out," he said at the meeting. "I'd like to see you try and get that pipeline through a bunch of houses."
Other sites on the Valley's northern ridge have been found too small or unstable to support an underground tank, Roxon said. The most suitable site for an above-ground water storage tank, he said, is an oak-clustered ridge that separates the Spirit Rock Meditation Center from Roy's Redwoods Open Space Preserve.
Among the drawbacks of that site is its high visibility, an Open Space easement that might prevent any eminent domain procedures, and the improbability that the meditation center would agree to have construction traffic on its property.
Not growth-inducing Roxon said the tank project remains only a theoretical possibility until geological studies of the selected site have been finished. After that, he said, the water district will draw up a preliminary design and determine whether a full-scale Environmental Impact Report is needed.
Roxon emphasized that the tank would not increase east Marin's water supply or otherwise encourage development over the hill.