The Palomino Lakes Mutual Water Company was established in 1961 to serve the 340 residents in this small Cloverdale, California community, nestled in the foothills of the Alexander valley in the famous California Wine Country. The current three-member board has been directly involved in all aspects of managing the water system. The volunteer directors, Howard Blake, Lee Tolbert and Rick Corriea have been residents of this community for quite some time and board members since 2003. They are directly involved in the day-to-day operations of managing this small water company.

As with most water companies established several years ago, Palomino Lakes has to continually manage with deteriorating assets and an uncertain future. The board members have been creative in providing the water company with substantial storage and a supply system that allows the residents to depend on the one source of water, a well delivering about 180 GPM at peak capacity.

The three divide the responsibilities for the management of the water company. Howard Blake, the President has the responsibility for strategic planning and engineering, Lee Tobert, the Vice President, has responsibility for operations and compliance and Rick Corriea, the Secretary/Treasurer has the financial and record keeping responsibilities. Howard likes to point out; “we do the nuts and bolts stuff too.”

A unique aspect of this water system is the ability to “reverse flow” water from an upper storage tank to lower storage tanks, then boost the water to the various pressure zones. The upper storage tank has adequate storage for several days and will supply the lower tanks when the well pump can not keep up with the system demand. The reverse flow system is controlled by the liquid level in the lower storage tanks allowing the system demand to “drive” the reverse flow conditions.

One of the most recent major improvements is the purchase of the Watchman System from Weeks Drilling and Pump Company  in Sebastopol California. With the Watchman System the board and their operator, Weeks Drilling and Pump Company, can manage the filling of storage tanks, booster pump run times, residual Chlorine, Chlorine Tank Levels and the reverse flow system. Also with the Iris Spyglass application they can get reports on the system parameters to better schedule maintenance and repair work thus eliminating the unnecessary down time that can come from sudden equipment failure.

Once the decision was made to purchase the Watchman System, Rick Corriea advised Iris that they had “already saved $40,000.” By having precise control of tank filling and reverse flow the water company was able to cancel the planned addition of another storage tank.

The savings will continue through the TOU smart module allowing the pumps to only run in Off Peak when system conditions permit, as well as automatic report filings and alarms on critical components of their water system.

This board feels that the key to gaining support for improvements and system upgrades is communication. Communicating the need for changes, the benefits to the users and the long term benefits to the water system have been resulted in excellent support for rate changes when needed. “We feel that Watchman will enhance our communication with customers as we will have real data to share with them rather than 'guesstimates.' We are planning a Watchman demonstration for sometime this fall. “

The board has been working diligently to get permits and approvals for a second well. The process has been quite time consuming and educational. They have had to learn to work within the restrictions and limitations of ground water source regulations. It is with this same energy and attention to detail that the directors have continually improved the water system.

Palomino’s board feels that for many water companies and Palomino is no exception, “water availability is the major question mark. Government, at all levels, is providing minimal and sometimes conflicting guidance. Environmental considerations have put water sources in jeopardy and there seems to be little consideration to long standing community needs. Compliance is becoming increasingly time consuming and expensive and funding is less and less available. Small water systems are increasingly being squeezed. Planning for reduced availability is virtually impossible. Without Some guidance, what do you plan for?”

With the purchase of the Watchman System, Palomino Lakes says; “simply knowing what we’re doing and when we’re doing it will be a huge step forward. Right now, we only have the most general data such as weekly diversion and weekly chlorine levels. To have data available for virtually any time period-including real time- is almost too good to be true.”

With Watchman, they will have data to support decision making, which is a huge advantage over the present method of “best guess” decision making. Watchman will also provide much better system monitoring and an accurate indication of system health. Palomino says; “this will enable us to better ensure continuous system availability without ‘panic’ response.

The diligent approach that this board has taken has led them to a better understanding of water system management as well as what is required to have confidence the water system will meet their customer’s needs now and into the future.