BP: The water system's very old. I think the last major pipe system that was done was in the ‘80s. There's been a couplesmall ones after that where, some old infrastructure was replaced in the early 2000s and then ‘60s and ‘80s. We still have pipe in the ground that was put in the ‘40s and ‘50s, that is leftover pipe from when they used to build ships in the East Bay. They used a steam pipe -- that's about a 1.9 inch OD pipe -- which is not comparable to fittings that are made nowadays and that was put in the ground. There are probably 7 miles of that still on the ground. It's leftover pipe from the ships that they gave away and water districts all around the Bay Area went and grabbed free pipe. That was put in the ground, and there's still a bunch of that in the ground, which is very problematic. Being a small water district, coming up with money to do big projects is hard. The district has been very good, in the past, at being able to secure funding to do projects. I believe the district has now paid their debt off, so I don't know what they're going to do now. It’s a hard time to do new projects. Everything has gotten so expensive, it's almost impossible. Fittings that used to cost $200 now cost $1800. It's crazy. It's a real bind.  

EE: What can you say about this location and the context, the terrain or geology? What makes water unique here? I imagine it has its own challenges.  

BP: Water is scarce here. In the ‘70s, a group sued the water district because they couldn't get water meters. And I am loosely phrasing how this went; I may be incorrect. It was a legal issue that was in court for, I don't know, 15, 18, 20 years. The argument was that the district's responsibility -- this is how I understood it --the district’s responsibility was to provide water. The district's argument was “we can't provide something we don't have.” So, the district put in a moratorium on building because of the water shortage. This group sued the district that that was incorrect. After many years of litigation, the ruling was in favor of the district. So as a result of that, the district has a limited water supply, hasn't issued new water meters since the ‘70s. I may be incorrect, they may have issued one, I'm not sure. Usually, it's a transfer of a water meter for any building.  

Our water supply comes from the Arroyo Hondo Creek which is inside the national park, so that has its restrictions, being inside the park. We have to abide by park rules and regulations, so development at the water site is monitored heavily and we really can't develop there. The reservoir itself --when you use the term reservoir, you may think of Hetch Hetchy, or around here in Novato, Safford Lake -- our reservoir is about 20 feet wide and 30 feet long and 3 feet deep. And it's a dam on the Arroyo Hondo Creek, which through some magic of earthquake movement and geology is supplied by a spring, and it runs all the time. When we get high, hot, dry weather, and we're in these periods of drought, it slows down considerably, but fortunately, it keeps running and we still have water. As a result, we've had several emergencies over the time I worked here where we've put in extremely rigid water restrictions. Our last water restriction that we put in was kind of unique. What we put in is a per household usage. I believe the last was 150 gallons per home-- not per person. So, if a home had 6 people, it's 150 gallons. If it was 2 people, it's 150 gallons. And when that goes into effect, we pretty much spend most of our time monitoring water usage. That being said, when we went into that, last water drought, we found that about 85% to 90% of the community already met that requirement. It's a very water-conscious community. As homes are changing ownership, it's not a reality to the new homeowners until we get into a drought. We always recommend that people go look at the water source. We do have two backup reservoirs. Those backup reservoirs, I look at them like your bank account. The Arroyo Hondo, our main water source, is your checking account. Every day it gets replenished and then you draw out of it. During a drought, we overdraw our account but we have a savings account, and the savings account are the two reservoirs. They're not enough for long term supply. They're in the national park, so what they are is what they are. We draw from those and there's water quality issues with those which we deal with.  

EE: Like what?  

BP: Oh, there's algae growth, there's high manganese, all of it just plays into water treatment issues that we don't have out of the Arroyo Hondo Creek. So, there's different steps that were taken to be able to deal with that. And then we have an azolla, which is a plant growth on top of the reservoir which is just impossible to get rid of. It makes great animal feed and fertilizer -- very high in nitrogen. So that is taken off, from what I understand now, twice a year, they harvest it off the top of the reservoir. When it grows on the reservoir, it blocks the sunlight, stops photosynthesis in the reservoir, and creates striation in the water. It causes the reservoir to roll over; the water on the bottom comes up to the top and you just end up with just the most horrendous water quality. It's not good. It's those little things that you have to deal with.  

If you are a large water district, you have a whole army of people, you have your own laboratories, and you have your own crews that deal with this stuff on a regular basis. You have an engineering staff and all that. When you're a small district, you don't have any of that. You have to subcontract that out and you have to find people that know how to work with a small district. We've been fortunate doing that. Our water quality is really good. When we have to go on to the reservoirs, it becomes more of a challenge and then the amount of water becomes the biggest challenge. 

BP: The community's very aware of their limited water supply. Bolinas is changing in the demographics. Real estate values like most of California are crazy. They're even crazier here, since it’s a coastal community with restriction, no new building so, homes have a vacation value. They have a value that's crazy, just ridiculous. Nine hundred square foot homes that need a lot of work sell for two million dollars, it's absurd. My opinion, again.  

As that group of people move in, they have different expectations, then they learn the reality of the water supply. It hasn’t been a battle; it requires educating people. It's not confrontational. Some people get upset, but then they get it. So, the community's aware of the limited water. As part of inspections over the years, when I was asked by our regulators, “how do you monitor for leaks? How often do you go up to your water source and monitor for leaks in your collection system and how do you look for leaks in your distribution system?” The answer has always been -- and was totally accepted by them -- is that the community does it. We have a group of people that hike up the Arroyo Hondo Creek every day, different groups of people. There are people that go up and study the plants, birds, artists go up and draw, and they always call us when there's an issue. In this community, people are out and about walking a lot. They walk their dogs; they ride their mountain bikes, they're out and about. And when we promote this, “if you see something, let us know.” And we'll get calls. “There's a wet spot on the road on Tulip.” We'll go look at it and see what it is and if it's not a major leak, it's a small leak, we’ll put a barricade on it or something and finish what we're doing and come back to it. In the interim, we'll get 3 or 4 more calls that there's a wet spot on Tulip --that's the involvement of the community. Everyone's looking if they see something. They know that water is precious here.  

As a district, we are not connected to any other water source or water district. Stinson Beach is three hundred feet across the channel. We are not connected to Stinson Beach’s water system. We are not connected to Inverness. North Bay Water serves part of Inverness; we’re not connected to them. We are surrounded by National Park and there is no pipeline going through the park. What we have is all we have. We are not connected to anything else. When people become aware of that, of course, there's always the questions, “Why don't you put in a pipeline? Why don't we connect to Stinson?” and that's dealt with. They become aware of the fact that we don't have a lot of water. I've taken people up the Arroyo Hondo who want to go see the water source and I never tell them where it is. We just walk and talk and groups break off and we just walk up and I always try to be at the end of the group. I've never had a group of people stop at the reservoir and say, “this is the reservoir.” They walk right past it. I call them back and I say, “this is it” and they are shocked. It's that small.  

EE: It sounds like education is part of what you bring to the job.  

BP: It's not that you bring it to the job; it's part of the job. People have to understand and they get it.  

EE: It sounds like you want them to understand the preciousness of it. Are there other aspects that you want people to know about the water and the water system?  

BP: They don't get that the water's precious from what we tell them. They get that the water's precious when we’re in a drought and there's no water.  

EE: They experience it...  

BP: They experience it. People don't really believe what you say, especially if you're working for the “government”. You know what I mean? So, they just get it or they don't. 

 BP: To go back to things that have happened, incidents in town -- back in the ‘80s, early ‘90s-- we have two water storage tanks. They both needed maintenance and repair. So, we took one of our tanks out of operation. We were just relying on one tank, which was enough to provide water for the town for a while; for several days. That tank was being worked onand we had a series of really big storms hit and as a result of that, our water quality was poor coming into the plant. We were restricted on water treatment, so the surge level in the tanks had dropped considerably. Then we had a big overnight storm hit and we had an unfortunate series of coincidences that led to a total disaster. The power was knocked out. The standby generator did not start. We weren't producing water. The water storage tanks were at about 50%. When I came in the morning, the water storage was at a hundred thousand gallons, which is not a good sign. I could see the water gauge dropping, so overnight we had a pipe break in town which was draining the system. The pipe broke, one tank's out of service, the other tank's almost empty, the generator didn't start. We weren't producing water, and we were restricted on the amount of water we could produce. The result of that was a decision we made -- we had to shut the system off. Turning a water system off is not a good thing. The water system basically drained, the whole distribution system. People didn't have water, so we were in a total state of emergency. We notified the state. We put in a boiled water notice. We have a disaster council for emergencies, they came in and they were activated. All the community leaders came in and we had to restart the system. We had to shut valves in the system going backwards. That's not correct -- we went to our first set of valves that are after the water storage tank. We shut that, we got the filter plant working and started putting water back in the tank.  We isolated the whole system because we didn't have a clue where the leak was. We slowly started the

CW: I grew up in Albuquerque, a native New Mexican. I moved up here in 1973. I bought a house right next door here to where the office is. And then the water system came in in 1978, actually, I'm sorry, 1974 is when they first started it, and through several different renditions and expansions, to its present size. I've been a member since ‘88. You have to be a member to be able to have a meter and be on the system. So I was just a member, the system ran fine for years, and then I was asked to be a board member about 12 years ago — something like that. So I said, sure, I always want to be a participant, you know, and be able to give back to the community. So I was on the board, and when I first got on the board, it was run a lot differently than it is right now. I didn't really have anything to do! We met maybe twice a year. The meetings were kind of short and brief and the manager at that time — the operator at that time — he ran everything. He did it all. So it was a different time, different place than it is right now.  

So fast forward to 2024. We have an operator as a contractor right now. And we just operate under his umbrella. Our operator has several systems that he's going over — some need a lot of work. Our system has a very active board and, with a manager, we do all this stuff that the operator would do, except for maybe some of the tests. So like the heavy duty testing, I can't do, but the bacteria testing I do. So the system was falling apart fast. We put a new well online and we were pumping the heck out of it, everybody was happy. Then all of a sudden the pump, none of the pumps kept up. We just lost water, like overnight. A leak that did not surface — those are very difficult to find. So we were hauling water for probably — we still haul a little bit of water —but we were heavy for like a year. And we spent $250,000 on hauling water one year. $300,000 the next year. Yeah, so it was a lot, a lot that we did there.  

So anyway, so the manager at that time, he completely got overwhelmed. I don't think he was doing a real good job of running the system from a managerial aspect. He had a difficult time making decisions and he had said that he wanted to retire; he's going to get out, like in September of ‘24. So, Gary, the president approached me and is like, “Carl, do you want to take this job?” “No. I don't wanna take this job. It's a thankless job and this thing's going downhill!” So he kept recruiting me and I kept resisting and then the manager at that time, he made some stupid decision and I was like, “okay, I'm in, because I know I can do better than that.” So, I got about a month's training and then I jumped in the seat.  

My first week that I was in this job — I was very lucky. They had a conference down in Las Cruces, the fall water conference that they have that New Mexico Rural Water puts on. I went down there for the whole week and attended everything that I could. I was there from the opening bell to the closing bell and it was really good. I really got connected with a lot of people. That's one thing that the conferences are great for — for connection, for networking. It was really good. I met a lot of people from the environmental department and some other operators too. Which was really nice. So that was really good. Then I  jumped into it. You know, I came back up here. Knew nothing about it, knew nothing about — other than what I knew from the board to this — so it was really intense. The old operator left, the old manager left, so I took over. The whole system pretty much financially crashed in January of ‘25. We had like,  200 bucks in the bank and 7000 dollars in debt.  

EE: Why did it crash? 

CW: The water haul was bigger than what they anticipated and we didn't have money to pay for water haul, and then everything else that happens too. There's a lot that goes on with it, you know? We have tank contracts — we have a contractor that maintains our tanks, and that's $3500 every quarter. We didn't have money for that and repairs and things like that. Plus, on top of all that, that was the year that we had the big deep freeze up here. We had 10 meters freeze up. What do I do? We went around and I was able to thaw a couple of them out, replace some. It took several months to replace some of them. Some of them were summer homes, so we kind of held off on them. That was a huge, huge thing. Well, I worked 33 years, my previous life was 33 years at UPS. It had 33 years of peak season — going through Christmases. This was harder than any Christmas! Yeah, it was tough. We managed to get through that. Much to the chagrin of all the members, we raised the rates a lot. That's finally gotten us out — a year and a couple months later, we got some money in the bank. We’re able to pay our debts. We’re actually moving in the right direction. So, that's one of the things too, that as we move forward, we're looking to get grants and loans. We need to prove to the New Mexico Finance Commission that we can pay these loans back, and I think that we can do that now. So, it's in a lot better position financially. Plus all the paperwork and everything else, it took a lot.  

EE: Did something shift in the community that allowed them to pay more for fixes?  

CW: Uh, it depends on the people. Some are understanding others: “I'm out.” They saw no value in the meter at all,some gave their meters away to other people. You know, you talk to a real estate agent, and that meter is on a piece of property, it increases that piece of property by like $30,000. People saw no value in it because they didn't have any faith in us, I guess. But the board has really come a long ways, becoming mutual domestic — which is a quasi-state government entity — really changed a lot of that aspect. Because now we're more open. We have our monthly board meetings, they're open to the public. We publish everything. Everything is above board. So that’s good right there. That'sdeveloping more trust. Plus, we worked real hard to locate and repair the leaks.