North Yuba Water District fixes portion of Forbestown Ditch

The North Yuba Water District completed repairs to a portion of the Forbestown Ditch that was breached during a storm on Feb. 7 in the Brownsville area.

The portion that was damaged in February occurred when the mountain side supporting the ditch washed out about 200 feet of the canal. Last month’s incident was the second time Forbestown Ditch was compromised due to wet weather conditions.

In January, a similar landslide washed out a 160-foot stretch of the ditch that reduced the amount of water being channeled into a treatment plant to the south and threatened approximately 900 NYWD customers’ main source of potable water. Engineers were able to conduct emergency repairs to the damaged portion of the ditch and completed services within a week.

“This second breach took longer to fix because the mountainside was so saturated and it simply wasn’t safe to start work,” Jeff Maupin, NYWD manager, said in a press release. “Luckily, Mother Nature finally dried things out enough last week to make the repairs.”

To repair the ditch, NYWD installed a pipe to help convey water flowing in the channel into the treatment pond. Officials said a piped ditch would lower the possibility of another breach, save a significant amount of water lost from seepage and evaporation, increase the amount of water available for customers and eliminate a vast majority of dirt, trash and contamination from entering the treatment pond.

“We deal with the reality that the Forbestown Ditch is an open ditch, exposed to the environment and subject to complications,” Maupin said. “The long-term goal is to pipe the ditch, which will make it much less susceptible to a breach.”

No disruption in service occurred during either breach because water runoff remained high and the treatment pond remained near capacity, according to a press release.

During the repairs, NYWD asked customers to be patient and to try and conserve water so that resources wouldn’t deplete too rapidly.

If there would not have been any runoff flowing into the treatment pond, NYWD officials estimated the facility could store up to 14 days of potable water.