Glass Fire impact and restoration progress

To: Adventist Health St. Helena Water System Customers
From: Scott Sandin, Facility Director

Updated: 12/10/20

Water System Update

Ongoing water quality testing has revealed a small amount of dichloromethane in one pipe that supplies water to one house in lower Deer Park that was destroyed by the Glass Fire. Dichloromethane, also known as Methylene Chloride, is a regulated volatile organic compound; it’s one of the chemicals known by the State Water Boards to present in community water systems following a wildfire event. The good news is that the amount of contamination is small and that this one pipe does not serve any other properties in the neighborhood. The bad news is that ANY such contamination prevents us from lifting the DO NOT DRINK order for lower Deer Park. Additional testing has been specified by the State, and my team is getting it started immediately.

Updated: 11/19/20

The State Water Boards has authorized a partial lifting of the DO NOT DRINK order that has been in effect for the Adventist Health St. Helena water system since the Glass Fire. The hospital facilities team has made extensive repairs to our water infrastructure; we have flushed the entire system multiple times; and we have conducted dozens of water quality tests. Our progress so far has convinced the state to allow full use of our water in the sections of Deer Park that are immediately surrounding and above the main hospital campus. More testing must be completed before the state will lift the DO NOT DRINK order for lower Deer Park. We expect continuation of this DO NOT DRINK condition for lower Deer Park to last at least one more week. The zone below the hospital, outlined below in red, remains under the DO NOT DRINK order.

Updated: 11/11/20

The repairs for lower Deer Park have been moved up to Thursday, November 12. Water service to all customers below the hospital will be shut off around 8:00 AM. We expect to have all service restored by 4:00 PM. Printed notices are being passed out to every affected property today.

The community-wide DO NOT DRINK order remains in place. The final test results should be delivered from the laboratory any hour. We expect a clean report that we will share with the State, which should mean lifting the order by end of this week.

Updated: 11/04/20

Water Repairs
The water repair for lower Deer Park has been delayed by one week, although instead of it requiring us to turn off water for an entire day, we expect the outage to last only a few hours. Our plan is do this the third week of November, tentatively scheduled for November 18 or 19. Written notice will be provided at least one day in advance to all affected customers. This notice will be in the form of a printed memo left at each residence.

Quality Testing
The State has expanded the amount of testing required, but they’ve allowed us to accelerate the pace to conduct more tests simultaneously rather than sequentially. We are now midway through what we hope is the last series of tests. If the results come back from the lab without indication of contamination, we could be allowed to lift the DO NOT DRINK order the week of November 9.

The State is requiring that we perform water quality lab tests at every house that was burnt in the fire prior to re-establishing any service connection. If your home was lost in the Glass Fire and you plan to rebuild, contact my office in advance of your need for water. We will collect samples from your service connection and get them to the lab, install a meter, and verify that your backflow prevention assembly is in place. Once complete and we receive the lab report confirming clean water at your connection, we can turn on the service. Until these things are in order, no water can be turned on.

Backflow Prevention Device Requirement
Since the Glass Fire, requirements for backflow prevention devices is now required at EVERY service connection. As a result, every resident will be required to have a backflow preventer in place ASAP and no later than June 30, 2021. With this program in place, we can ensure that no contamination can flow from any customer’s private property back into the community water system. Further communication will be forthcoming on this matter.

This change is in response to the damage caused by Glass Fire. We witnessed heat damage to pipes which presented significant contamination risk to the water system, especially with the frequent and strong pressure changes caused by firefighters tapping into the system’s hydrants. The heat caused damage to pipes, which presented contamination risk to the water system

Prior to Glass Fire, the rules only required a resident to have a backflow prevention device with certain plumbing configurations. Such configurations might include irrigation systems, fire sprinkler systems or independent water wells tied into the house plumbing. If no known cross-connections of this nature were present, the customer was relieved of the obligation to provide backflow prevention. Going forward, however, backflow prevention will be a universal requirement regardless of plumbing layout.

Updated: 10/25/20

As of noon today, we have restored pressure to the water mains serving Mund Road and Community Hall Lane. We shut the service valves at water meters for homes that are still intact but where leaks were indicated downstream. For those properties destroyed by the fire, we made sure every valve was shut. We now have water pressure to every branch on the hospital’s water system except for Sunnyside Road out past the elementary school.

The DO NOT DRINK order remains in place until we complete a series of water quality tests. The State must accept our testing protocols and all test results before they will lift that order. The water system Chief Operator, Glenn Davison, is working closely with the state engineer who oversees the hospital’s water system to develop and follow a comprehensive plan to repair, clean and test. Our new projected date to have the DO NOT DRINK order lifted is November 16.

Updated: October 19, 2020, 5:30 p.m.

Adventist Health St. Helena’s water system sustained significant damage during the Glass Fire. Our ability to produce potable water has been drastically reduced since September 27. Damages include plastic pipe melted by the fire, metal pipes crushed and broken by falling trees, valves and meters rendered inoperable from excessive heat and electrical services for our wells and treatment plant that were incinerated. Our recovery efforts started two days after the fire swept through Deer Park. We have replaced large sections of pipe, and we've restored electrical fixtures at two wells and at our primary treatment plant. As of today, we still have no power and are operating one well and the treatment plant on an emergency generator provided by PG&E.

Immediately following the fire, and at the direction of the State Water Resources Control Board, Adventist Health St. Helena issued a DO NOT DRINK order for all water distributed on our system to every customer. Written notices were placed at every property connected to the hospital's water system. This order will remain in effect until our entire system is flushed with treated water and it is tested and meets quality standards at multiple points throughout the community. The quality tests are performed by a State certified laboratory. Given the low production volume currently available from our wells, we expect this flushing and testing process to take a minimum of another three weeks, which puts our target date for lifting the DO NOT DRINK order around the week of November 9.

We have conducted some preliminary lab tests on our water and received two pieces of good news: (1) There was no bacteriological contamination found in our water; (2) There was no trace of benzene or other VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds), which are the most dangerous constituents of combusted plastics and are routinely identified as contaminants found in community water systems following large scale fires. Despite the lack of these two worst problems, our DO NOT DRINK order remains in effect until all our water testing is complete and the State is satisfied with all test results. Additional tests for benzene and VOC's will be part of our testing regimen.

If you have water pressure at your house, you may use it in accordance with the detail in the printed DO NOT DRINK notice left at your property. This water is fine for toilet operation, yard irrigation and for washing the ashes off your car. Do not ingest it. Do not brush your teeth with it. Do not cook with it.

If you live in lower Deer Park (below the hospital), please know that we must plan for more repairs on the main line serving your neighborhood. We've already replaced 60 feet of pipe that was demolished by a burned fallen tree, but there's more to do. Sometime during the week of October 26, we will shut off all water service to every customer in lower Deer Park to repair more leaks and to replace fire-damaged valves. This will take a full day to complete. We will place written notices at the door of every house affected by this shutoff at least one day in advance of the work.

BILLING: The fire ripped through our neighborhood right at the close of the 3rd quarter and only two days before we were scheduled to read water meters for the next billing cycle. We have completed reading all the meters (those that survived), and we will process 3rd quarter billing as usual. Billing for 4th quarter is questionable. We will not charge for delivery of any water that is not potable, and we need to replace a lot of meters in the next two months. The final resolution for 4th quarter billing is not yet determined, but I expect any water bill generated for consumption during October through December to be minimal. Now is the time to help us flush out the system by watering your yards and washing your cars!

Please check back on this web page in the future for updates. I will deliver fresh news on our water system as I get it. This will include repairs progress, reports of new problems identified (we keep finding new leaks all the time) and lab test results. Please share all this with your neighbors and encourage them to check in on our website for updates.

Thank you for your patience as we continue our recovery efforts.