Attention: Story Correction
This is a correction to last week’s article on the spill at Fall Canyon. The article should’ve read that the Baker containment tanks located at Falls Canyon overflowed, not the desalination plant. There is no desal plant in Falls Canyon. The water that was spilled was produced at the plant located at Pebbly Beach, but the water overflowed at the Baker tanks. The following is a corrected headline and a corrected introduction to the story.
“Falls Canyon Baker tanks spills over
Attention: Story Correction
This is a correction to last week’s article on the spill at Fall Canyon. The article should’ve read that the Baker containment tanks located at Falls Canyon overflowed, not the desalination plant. There is no desal plant in Falls Canyon. The water that was spilled was produced at the plant located at Pebbly Beach, but the water overflowed at the Baker tanks. The following is a corrected headline and a corrected introduction to the story.
“Falls Canyon Baker tanks spills over
About 5,000 gallons of water stored in the Baker tanks at Falls Canyon from the desalination plant overflowed and spilled last Friday, said Ronald Garcia, regional manager of public affairs for Edison, at Avalon’s City Council meeting this week.”
The article contiues below.
Garcia said the spillage had no impact on the Island’s water supply and was due to Edison’s calculations for water consumption that day.
“We projected that we would have a huge demand over the weekend for water. So they ran the plant all night,” said Garcia.
Edison filled up two water containment tanks to capacity expecting visitors and residents to use the water.
Filling up the tanks was an effort to save water consumption from the Middle Ranch Reservoir.
“But people are conserving on the Island,” said Garcia.
Once the water began spilling, Edison immediately began shutting down the plant and started cleaning up.
The runoff has been cleaned up since then. Garcia was at the meeting with Jeff Lawrence, Edison’s project manager for Avalon, to give an update on stage two rationing on the Island.
The October forecast for stage three water rationing is still projected if the current water usage continues, according to Lawrence.
Avalon has been conserving at a rate that has cut water consumption by seven acre feet in March, which is 30 percent less when compared to the same month a year ago.
The continuing decline in water usage has been a mainstay of stage two since it was implemented in August of last year.
Since then, Avalon has conserved about 80 acre feet in comparison to historical averages. That’s about 33 percent less water usage than the same time frame a year ago.
With water consumption declining just how it’s been for a while, what’s interesting is what hasn’t stayed the same.
The number of water violations and repeat offenders has seen a recent up-kick since staying relatively flat for a while.
What makes this even more compelling is the fact that visitor counts to the Island have dropped during March.
Last month saw the water violation count jump 10 marks to a total of 94 violations since stage two started.
The last week of March saw four percent of customers have a flow restricting device installed due to a repeat offense. Even with the recent upswing in violations, Lawrence said that the forecast for the next stage hasn’t changed.
Also at the meeting, Lawrence declined a rumor that stage three could happen as early as July and explained the methodology behind Edison’s forecasting of the next stage. Lawrence said that some might come up with the July forecast by subtracting what they think is highest water use during the summer months, but it isn’t that simple.
“What we did was take our two highest demand months which are July and August. The daily average in July is around 428,000 gallons per day,” said Lawrence.
“So when we have the potential to hit 600,000 or 800,000 gallons in demand we do see daily spikes that high, but that’s not a consistent daily average for the summer season,” said Lawrence.
“It’s closer to 400,000 gallons per day. When you factor in the benefits of stage two water rationing we reduce that by 25 percent,” Lawrence said.
With the 25 percent reduction the average water consumption during July sits at 321,000 gallons and August is at 315,000 gallons per day, according to Lawrence.
When the production of the desalination plant, which is close to 170,000 gallons a day, is factored in then the demand on Avalon’s water resource is even less strained.
“We used the same methodology to forecast stage two and our forecast was within a couple weeks,” said Lawrence.
