Sunol AgPark Harvest Festival Sunday, September 27, 2015

It may still feel like summer in the Sunol Valley, but, believe it or not, October is right around the corner!

Come join us to kick start the fall season at the Third Annual Sunol AgPark Harvest Festival.

Hosted by SAGE, the Sunol AgPark Harvest Festival features:

• Farm Fresh produce
• Food
• Live music
• Pumpkin patch
• Children's crafts and games
• And much more...

Plus drinking water provided by yours truly....

So bring your refillable water bottle, some sunscreen and your family and come on down!

Sunol AgPark Harvest Festival

Sunday, September 27th, 10 am – 3 pm

505 Paloma Way, Sunol, CA

Learn more at SAGE's Website. 

We hope to see you there!

Star Walk: Sunol Glen School Walk-A-Thon is On!

This Friday, September 18^th  is Sunol Glen School’s 23^rd Annual Walk-a-Thon!

It is the Sunol Glen Community Club’s largest fundraiser.

We at the SFPUC are pleased and proud to be out there again this year to provide drinking water and moral support to the student participants.

How can you show your support, you ask? 

Visit www.sunolglencc.com to learn more!

Go Eagles!!

May the Force Be With You!

Heat and High Fire Danger!

You do not need us to tell you that the weather has been unseasonably hot. Daytime temperatures are 10 to 20 degrees above seasonal averages throughout the Bay Area, according to the National Weather Service.  

Because of the high heat and low moisture, our Natural Resources and Lands Management Division has issued a high fire alert for the Peninsula /Alameda Watershed lands that we own. 

If you are driving in the area, please remember:

• Do not pull your car over to the side of the road in the grass. The heat from the underside of your car could quickly spark a grassfire. This is all too common.
• Please do not smoke, hold lit cigarettes out the window, or dispose of cigarette butts onto the side of the road.
• Please do not operate machinery in dry grasses that might generate sparks, including mowers.

For tips on how to stay safe in this heat, please visit the National Weather Service’s website: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/heat/index.shtml.

Please stay hydrated and stay cool out there!

Please do not operate machinery that might generate sparks, including mowers.

One huge pipe at Calaveras Dam

As we busily work towards construction of a replacement Calaveras Dam, there are many fundamental issues we have to address. For example, given that the existing Calaveras Dam will be left in place when we are done, how will we be able to transport water out of the reservoir when the new dam is built?

Answer: We are building a large pipe (more than 7 feet in diameter) that will be completely buried in the new dam that connects directly to the outlet structure already in place in the existing dam.

This pipe will transport our drinking water supply from the Calaveras Reservoir to the Sunol Valley Water Treatment Plant and then on to our 2.6 million Bay Area customers when supplies are needed.

To date, our crews have installed 500 feet of the new steel pipe, welded  the joints, and started building the formwork for reinforced concrete encasement  around the entire pipeline to protect it. The pipeline and encasement  has been designed to withstand the force of being buried under 180 feet of earth embankment as well as the force of any seismic activity from the nearby Calaveras Fault. The team plans to connect the new 78 inch pipe to the existing pipes within the existing dam in Fall 2016. 

Seems a shame to put all this work into something that will be completely buried under more than 3.5 million cubic yards of earth and rock. But, thanks to these careful efforts, customers will be able to drink Calaveras Reservoir water, even after an earthquake.

The new pipe is shown here in orange on the layout, connecting to existing pipes in green.  The old pipeline in black is being abandoned to excavate the foundation for the new dam.

A Snapshot of our Spillway Chute and Stilling Basin Today

Spillways are important safety features on any dam. They allow for the safe discharge of high water in a reservoir around a dam.  And the new spillway at the Calaveras Dam Replacement Project is no different.

Work began on our spillway in March 2014. A total of 40,000 cubic yards of concrete, equivalent to one football field filled six feet deep, will be used to build the structure. All of the concrete is being supplied by our on-site concrete batch plant. The concrete is placed into the spillway in sections, or slabs. This spillway requires a total of 170 slabs, and we only have 18 more to go.

The spillway chute is 60 feet wide, equivalent to a five lanes of a highway. The slabs are strengthened with reinforcing steel bars and the entire structure is anchored to the bedrock to resist movement during an earthquake. 

The quality of the concrete used in the structure is key. It has to be kept at a cool temperature while it cures in order to prevent cracking. Sunol Valley in summer is anything but cool. That means our crews often begin cement pours at 2 o'clock in the early morning, the coolest time of the day.

The spillway is expected to be completed later this year. This will be a major milestone for the project to complete this important feature of the dam.

Construction Advisory: New Irvington Tunnel

To our Irvington Portal neighbors:
We wanted to inform you of some very important construction activity affecting your neighborhood.

Project Update
The New Irvington Tunnel is now in service delivering water to our 2.6 million Bay Area customers.  With the new tunnel in service, we were able to take the old Irvington tunnel out of service for inspection and repairs. Both tunnels will remain in service during normal operations. The construction team has begun restoration of the above ground facilities. The contractor has demobilized and restored the southern portion of the property. The contractor has removed the sound barriers (shown in yellow) on the south section of the site.  (See map)

Starting as early as June 15, 2015, the contractor will begin the process of removing the remainder of the sound barriers at the Irvington Portal project site.  The sound barriers will be removed at the locations shown on the map in blue. The sound wall removal work is estimated to be completed by early July 2015.

Map of sound walls to be removed

What to Expect:

-       The work involves removal of the panels and digging around the concrete foundation. Workers then remove the foundation and cut or pull the steel beams out. The excavated area would then be backfilled.

-       Noise associated with sound barrier removal will include the operation of heavy equipment, back up alarms, and concrete breakup. The soil backfill will also require compaction where the steel beams and foundations have been removed.

 

Removal Hours:
Sound barrier removal will only take place Monday through Friday from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM.  We will continue to monitor noise and vibration in this area to ensure full compliance with strict noise and vibration standards set forth in the project’s Environmental Impact Report.

What’s Next

-      Installation and burial of permanent portal facilities and security improvements will be completed by the end of June 2015.

-      Once the sound walls are removed, topsoil will be trucked in and spread throughout the disturbed areas of the site.

-      Site restoration for the remainder of the site will be throughout the summer and be completed by early Fall 2015.  This includes paving, fencing and hydro-mulching of the disturbed areas. 

-      An iron wrought fence will be installed at the Mission Road entrance sometime in Fall 2015.

-      Full project completion for the New Irvington Tunnel is currently scheduled for Fall 2015.

Questions?
We sincerely appreciate your patience and cooperation.  Please call our 24-Hour Answer Line at 866-973-1476 if you have questions or comments or email mle@sfwater.org

 

National Dam Safety Awareness Day

As construction continues at the Calaveras Dam Replacement Project, we take a moment to recognize May 31^st as National Dam Safety Awareness Day. Each year on May 31st, the nation remembers teh devastation that occurred on May 31, 1889 in Johnston, Pennyslvania when the South Fork Dam failed. This tragic event resulted in thousands of deaths and left many homeless. The Johnston disaster was the worst dam failure in the history of the U.S.

National Dam Safety Awareness Day reminds us of the importance of dam safety and preventing future failures. Dams provide many befefits such as water supply and storage, hydropower, recreation, flood prevention and improve wildflife habitats.

 

This also reminds us how critical and important our work is here in Sunol Valley to rebuild the Calaveras Dam. We are currently 66% complete and anticipate final completion of the dam in end of 2018.

The Calaveras Replacement Dam when complete will provide us:

·         The largest drinking water reservoir in the local Bay Area storing 31 billion gallons (96,850 acre ft) of water, providing more than half of the storage capacity for 2.6 million customers

·         A new seismically upgraded dam with a structural height of 220 feet, a crest length of 1210 feet and width of 80 feet at the crest and 1180 feet at the base

·         A new 1550 ft spillway and a new intake/outlet shaft tower which will convey water to and from the reservoir through a pipeline downstream and to our Bay Area customers

 

Aerial Photo of the Calaveras Dam Replacement Project
taken on May 21, 2015