LAKEPORT, Calif. – Work on a pipeline project that will extend water services to the site of the new Mendocino College Lake Center is expected to be completed later next month.

The project runs 5,800 feet along Parallel Drive – starting where the city water main ends near the AAA insurance building – and down to Highway 175, according to Lakeport City Engineer Scott Harter.

He said the contractor, Milpitas-based Preston Pipelines Inc. – the same company doing a nearly five-mile-long force main project for the Southeast Regional wastewater system in Clearlake – has moved quickly on the work, which should be completed at the end of February.

In the three weeks the company has worked on the pipeline, Preston Pipelines has put down 2,000 feet of the pipe, Harter said.

The company has 45 days to complete the work and gets credit for days it can’t work due to weather, such has been the case since late last week, when storms arrived, according to Harter.

Part of the project’s speed – which Harter said was running at about 700 feet of pipeline a day – is due to Preston Pipelines using a machine to crush excavation material. It then mixes that material with sand and water to create a cement slurry that is put back into the trench with the pipe.

That same process is being used for the Clearlake pipeline, and it prevents the contractor from having to wait for slurry to be trucked in, Harter said.

Harter said the new water main will provide city water services to the Mendocino College Lake Center, currently under construction on Parallel Drive, as well as several other properties added to the city’s limits during the last annexation.

He said the city and college are jointly funding the 14-inch water main extension, the total cost of which is $777,265.

Of that, the city and college are splitting $763,363, with the additional $13,902 to install water service hookups to about five other properties being covered by the city, Harter said.

The college could have just installed an 8-inch water pipe, but since the city is expanding water service to the area as part of its water master plan, Harter said it made sense to split the cost and invest in a larger, 14-inch pipe in order to serve the annexation area.

“That’s the philosophy between the split cost,” he said.

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