Emergency resolution being added to agenda
As a result of last week’s storm that brought high winds and heavy rain into the Imperial and Coachella Valleys, Imperial Irrigation District (IID) will take action to adopt an emergency proclamation during its Board of Directors today.
On Sept. 8 the storm caused damage to the district’s infrastructure including transmission and distribution lines, power poles and hardware.
IID spokeswoman Marion Champion said in an email that the heavy rains caused some canals to wash out and drains to overfill in Calexico and the north end. Champion said repairs began Friday, continued throughout the weekend and inspectional repairs continued on Monday.
In terms of energy, the storms caused damage to major power lines in the Calexico area; the storm continued its path toward Holtville, Niland, Calipatria, Mecca and Winterhaven.
On Monday, the estimate of downed power lines was at least one hundred, Champion said IID crews were still patrolling the service area to continue to assess the damage.
More than 3,300 customers in the IID service area lost power at some point during the storm. The IID requested mutual aid assistance from San Diego Gas and Electric, Riverside Power Utility and Southern California Edison to help IID crews work. Champion said most of the customers were able to be brought back online within a couple of hours, but did acknowledge there were a few areas in which it took longer to get the power going again.
Due to flooding in the Winterhaven area, crews were unable to patrol lines until the weather eased, nonetheless the residents had power restored by Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, as of Monday morning, at least 73 customers in the Niland area were still without power.
The Emergency Proclamation will be brought to the board during Tuesday’s regularly scheduled Board of Directors meeting.
The adoption of the emergency proclamation makes the IID eligible to receive reimbursement funds from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services for work and materials to replace all damaged energy systems.
As of Monday afternoon, the IID was still working on assessing the total costs caused by the storm. The emergency proclamation comes just one month after the previous one for the July 31 and Aug. 3 storms that hit Seeley and Brawley.
The damage caused by the storms that hit the area little more than a month ago caused severe damage to forty power poles, wires and hardware and also damaged the IID S-line — One of the IID’s primary distribution lines.