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Trenching began in San Juan Bautista on Nov. 28, the first step in laying six miles of pipe that will run from that town’s sewage system to the Hollister Waste Treatment plant, said City Manager Don Reynolds. The start of the project follows more than three and a half years of studies, planning, fundraising and inter-city agreements.
“We’re still holding tight to our schedule,” he said. “It means that the trenching in the city and the county roads should be done by June 2024.”
The pipes are being stored on San Juan Highway at True Leaf Farms, which is closed through March. Trenching began nearby, Reynolds said, near the corner of Prescott and San Justo Roads, heading towards Hollister.
The work will require closing one lane of the road to traffic. Traffic will alternate in each direction for approximately 10 minutes each way as required. At no point will both lanes be closed.
Reynolds said the city is working closely with True Leaf, Earthbound, Taylor and Coke Farms to make sure the flow of trucks is not interrupted by the work.
“That’s particularly important for our growers out there,” he said, “We’re coordinating with them to make sure that they understand the schedule in terms of their need to get their products in and out.”
Two weeks prior to the construction, biologists approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture began monitoring the area for any disruption the project might cause to local threatened species, including the red-legged frog and California tiger salamander.
The trenching and installation of the pipes is scheduled for completion by June 2024, long before the 2027 deadline mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
However, Reynolds has already identified an issue that will draw out the project much closer to that deadline: the switching gears and control boxes that are required at the lift station to push the wastewater to the Hollister plant through the new pipeline are not currently available due to manufacturing delays.
“It’s a big conversion of that lift station,” Reynolds said, “And it requires special equipment. We’ve shopped four different vendors, and we can’t find anyone who can get that to us in less than 80 weeks.”
Reynolds was required to notify the EPA of the delay and to request a change to the schedule that would also take into consideration other possible delays that might face the contractors.
“The system will be waiting for the electronics to come,” Reynolds said, “and then they need to be installed with PG&E’s help and guidance, which is time-consuming. Then it needs to be tested and put online.”
Reynolds said it was frustrating to learn that the project would be almost completely finished but then would be waiting for over a year to become fully functional.
“It is maddening,” he said. “But I’ve learned that’s just the way these things pan out sometimes. This is not my first rodeo and trying to get any kind of electronics now is a challenge.”
Reynolds has been working on the city’s water and sewage problems since his first day as San Juan Bautista’s city manager on July 2, 2019, when he found a letter from the EPA on his desk detailing 11 “areas of concern” they had identified in a recent inspection of the city’s sewage plant.
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