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Members of the Bodega Bay, Monte Rio and
Russian River Fire District’s Boards of Directors Tuesday
night dropped the word consolidation from their vocabulary.
Bodega Bay and Russian River Fire Chief
Sean Grinnell, author of a report urging consolidation, said,
“I regret using the word consolidation. It hasn’t
brought us to a solution.” He went on to say, other
solutions that would effectively solve our problems without
political consolidation should be looked at. JPA’s (Joint
Powers Authority) might be the way to go.
The three boards held a straw vote to
affirm the
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new name for the task force consigned with
researching consolidation Their new name is the West County Fire
Task Force. Their former name the Consolidation Task Force
Committee is gone as well as their former mandate “the pros
and cons of consolidation.”
Now the task force will be looking at ways
to optimize and for cooperation among the West County fire
districts.
At a meeting in January 2005, the three
boards formed the Consolidation Task Force. At the time, the
three fire Districts were looking to consolidate the three
political subdivisions into one, expecting cost savings because
of duplicative and overlapping administration.
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The task force committee composed of board
members and citizens from the three districts began meeting in
January 2005. The task force committee minutes for their June 2005
meeting state, “the task force recommend the following: it is
in the best interests of all three Districts to pursue
consolidation… and completed by July, 2008.”
The report, authored by Grinnell dated
August 2005, from the task force recommends consolidation. The
report lists various benefits to the three districts including
elimination of duplicate efforts, better utilization of
staffing, cost savings by combined purchasing power, increased
training levels, increased fire prevention services,
maintaining current levels of
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The Bruhn Ranch Reservoir effluent holding
pond has over 37 million gallons of wastewater. The pond holds
only 36.5 million gallons. In danger of overflowing, the pond
needs to be drained. That pond holds all the wastewater
destined for irrigation on the
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Bodega Harbour Golf Links.
Since September of last year the Bodega
Bay Utility District has only pumped minimal amounts to the
reservoir. Usually water from the pond is sprayed onto the golf
course. Until the emergency meeting of the Utility District
Board of Directors Tuesday morning, little irrigation water had
been
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used.
Tuesday evening, the golf course
management pumped over 600,000 gallons out of the pond.
At the emergency meeting Directors
declared a state of emergency and ordered the golf course
management to pump 500,000 gallons daily until the overloaded
condition ends.
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The pond is the also collects rainwater on its
surface. Continual rain without irrigation draining the pond has
brought the pond near to overflowing.
Rod Huls, operations manager at the
Utility District, said that overflowing would be a serious
problem. The overflow could cause the embankments encircling
the pond to erode leading to
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