TKPOA Waterwells Status

By Andy Kopania, Water Quality Committee Chairperson

THE WATER THAT IS CURRENTLY BEING PROVIDED meets all drinking water standards and is completely safe to drink. While two of our three wells are currently shut down, our remaining well provides more than sufficient, clean water during this time of the year. The water coming from your tap is no different than the water that has been pumped from that well for the last 50 years. There is no need to buy bottled water.

Our Board of Directors and General Manager sent out a request for proposals for engineers to help us with this issue in December 2020. In February 2021, a firm called MC Engineering was selected from the four companies that submitted bids. Since that time, MC Engineering, our staff, and a volunteer committee of homeowners with more than 150 cumulative years of water-related experience have been working long hours to develop solutions.

Based on the recommendations from the engineer, our staff, and volunteer committee, on March 11th, 2021, during an emergency meeting, our Board of Directors approved the purchase and installation of an interim treatment system to remove uranium and arsenic from the water from the two affected wells. Those filters will allow us to recover 80% of the production from one well and 40% from the other. The equipment has been ordered, the design is being completed, we will be applying for permits next week, and the system is currently scheduled to be installed in late April and early May – prior to when TKPOA’s peak water demand season begins.

Because we do not have any meters to be able to monitor water use, it is challenging to identify exactly where our main water demands, and potential losses occur. However, using water production data from the State of California for water systems of comparable size and in comparable climates, along with sewer flow data provided by South Tahoe Public Utility District (STPUD) from within the Keys, the best information we have right now indicates that during the summer, 80% to 90% of the water use is for irrigation, with potentially half of that being used in the common areas (including around the townhomes) and the other half being used at single family homes. The balance of the water is for indoor use, including at VHRs and for hot tubs, as best as we can discern at this time. The rate of water use for irrigation in the Tahoe Keys is at least two times greater than that in other parts of northern California, including in the Sacramento Valley.

Now that an initial system is being installed, our engineer, staff, and volunteer committee are looking at ways to better monitor our water use and to identify ways to reduce the extremely large amount of water used for irrigation. That is the next step in our evaluation and planning process. We need to complete that evaluation to be able to know if the capacity that we recover from our two affected wells after the new filters are installed could have the potential to meet some fraction of a reduced irrigation demand. That analysis is a few weeks away. Until such an assessment is completed, there is no way to know if even limited irrigation would cause a loss of pressure in our water system that would cause serious violations of state health & safety regulations. The number one priority is to provide safe and sufficient water for indoor use. Until further assessment is completed, irrigation of any sort should not be conducted to ensure that we comply with those regulations and maintain a safe water supply.

As part of their contract, our engineer will also be evaluating different options for a long-term, permanent solution to the PCE, uranium, and arsenic impacts to our wells. These options were developed by our Board and volunteers in consultation with experts at STPUD, and our engineer is providing additional options for further consideration. The initial assessment from our engineer is currently scheduled to be available in June.

Please do not consider pumping water from the lagoons for irrigation use. The untreated lagoon water may contain bacteria such as E. coli from goose and other animal feces. In addition, at certain times of the year and in certain locations, the lagoon water also contains cyanotoxins from the blue-green algae that form Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). The E. coli and the cyanotoxins would be potentially very dangerous if pets, wild animals, or children came in contact with them on lawns that had been irrigated with lagoon water.

While the detailed engineering work described above has taken precedence up to this point, the Association is also working to make information available to the membership as things develop and will hopefully have a more formal program in place very soon in that regard. Please contact the TKPOA Water Company (530) 3184268 and/or General Manager Kirk Wooldridge, (530) 542-6444 with any questions.