The Board of Supervisors took up a discussion of the weather situation as an emergency item at its Tuesday meeting.
Mark Dellinger, administrator of Lake County Special Districts, and Steve Stangland, head of the county's road division, gave the board an update during the morning session.
Dellinger said his department's preparations began last Thursday, when he started talking with utility area superintendents and scheduled the most knowledgeable staff to be on call over the weekend.
It wasn't until the weekend's latter half that the weather really started to hit, and Dellinger said it wasn't until Tuesday morning that they started to see some problems and evidence of the storms.
In the district's Utility Area One, which includes Spring Valley, Clearlake and Lower Lake, the system was doing all right, although the flow into the treatment plant was at three million gallons a day, three times the amount making its way into the plant before the storms began, Dellinger said.
On Tuesday morning, they were measuring between 1 and 2 inches of rain, with rain falling at about a quarter of an inch per hour, although it had backed off a bit by late morning, Dellinger said.
He said Special Districts had mobilized pumper trucks to be on hand in the Highlands Harbor and Meadowbrook area of Clearlake, although no spills had been reported at that point. In Middletown there was a short power failure Dellinger was keeping an eye on as the day progressed.
In Utility Area Two, including Kelseyville and Finley, the wastewater treatment plant's capacity was adequate, Dellinger said, while Utility Area Three, including north Lakeport, had recorded just under 3 inches of rain.
That system also was doing fine, with just under two million gallons a day coming into the wastewater treatment plant, about twice its pre-storm amount. Dellinger was concerned that water turbidity could be an issue going forward.
Reports of a big storm set to hit late Tuesday night or early Wednesday also had Dellinger concerned. He noted that the rain and winds could put Special Districts' pump stations in a “precarious” situation, because the pump stations have no backup power.
Helping Utility Area One was the fact that the county's landfill was holding back its wastewater flows and not discharging into the system, Dellinger said. Special Districts and Public Services, which operates the landfill, were watching that situation closely.
Supervisor Jeff Smith said he was surprised to hear pumper trucks already were positioned in the Highlands Harbor area. Dellinger said they were trying to get ahead of the situation in order to prevent problems in the spill-prone area. He said they had several trucks near a manhole on Meadowbrook that is a low spot near a creek.
Stangland said the roads department also started preparing last week.
On Tuesday morning, his crews were dealing with a situation on Bottle Rock Road where a very large pine tree had fallen down around 2:30 a.m. and snapped several power poles. The road was closed while they tried to reach AT&T regarding repairs, and remained closed late into the day.
Stangland said the Bell Hill Road low water crossing also was closed, which isn't out of the ordinary when water levels rise. Road crews were cleaning up a retaining wall that had collapsed at Beryl Way in Clearlake Oaks.
Early Tuesday, Scotts Valley Road near Hendricks and Eickoff roads was closed to all traffic due to flooding, but Stangland said he didn't anticipate it would remain closed, and his department announced later in the day that it had reopened.
The Dry Creek Cutoff near Lower Lake is closed until further notice, according to roads officials. Big Canyon Road near Middletown reopened later in the day after road crews removed a tree that had fallen across the roadway. Some localized flooding was reported in the Butts Canyon Road area.
Rose Anderson Road, from Maria Vista Road to Van Dorn Reservoir Road, was closed to all traffic late in the day Tuesday due to downed power lines, according to the Department of Public Works.
With another 2 inches of rain forecast for Wednesday, Stangland said his crews have sand and plows at the ready.
He was rotating his crews on and off. “We've very short-staffed,” he said, a situation that arose due to staff illnesses and vacations that couldn't be rescheduled.
Supervisor Denise Rushing pointed out that Public Works has cleaned out drainages around Upper Lake in recent years, and she asked if Stangland anticipated any problems there. He said the kind of situation that would lead to an event there would be an act of God that the drainages couldn't handle normally.
Smith said it was good to be a step ahead of the situation and not behind, like the county was in responding to the algae situation last summer.
“We're out there, we'll try to get to it as quick as we can,” said Stangland, urging people to be sensible and give themselves extra time when traveling the county's roads.
Sheriff Rod Mitchell told the board that his staff, including the Office of Emergency Services, was ready to assist any of the county's field agencies.
“When local resources are exhausted the role of OES is to bring in other resources as requested,” Mitchell said.
Dellinger said Special Districts can be contacted at 707-263-0119 during the daytime; Stangland urged people with road emergencies to call 911.
At the Lakeport City Council meeting Tuesday evening, city Public Works Director Doug Grider told the council that he's concerned about forecasts of high winds in the coming days, which could result in trees being uprooted from the saturated ground.
“We're all on high alert,” Grider said.
Mendocino National Forest officials reported Tuesday that the forest had received more then 2 inches of rain, and as a result the off-highway vehicle trails system was closed until they have a 48-hour window with no measurable precipitation.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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