Supes OK deal with UCLA
The Imperial County Board of Supervisors discussed a wide range of issues during its regular meeting on Tuesday, among them the approval of an agreement with the University of California in Los Angeles to gather additional health data from its resident in the northern portion of the county, and further discussed the state of the New River.
Board voted unanimously to approve an agreement between the Imperial County Public Health Department and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research for $352,000 to expand the size of the sample data collected from county residents in the northend.
“Public Health investigated the best way to go about this and we did encounter that the California health survey is the best opportunity out there,” said Christina Olson of the ICPHD.
“It is the gold standard for health data in our state, and is the largest statewide database in the nation for health.”
County Supervisor for District 4 Ryan Kelley led the effort to get a better picture of the health assessment of those residents in 2015.
UCLA routinely conducts about 250 general population telephonic health surveys in Imperial County, including 50 from the northend.
The agreement between the university and the county is to expand the sample size of northend residents by 350, to have a total of 400 northend residents surveyed.
“The goal really is to have a baseline of what the health issues are,” Olson said.
“Specifically we want to know what is affecting them, and the potential impact of the Salton Sea and other issues happening in the north.
It serves a dual purpose as it gives us the opportunity for us to gather data for the comparison of health issues north end to rest of county and other counties.”
In addition to the general health survey, ICPHD asked to add additional questions on health measures related to air quality, diagnosed and undiagnosed respiratory diseases among those residents.
“We are hoping the data gives us a better picture of what is going in the area,” Olson said.
New River
Due to the recent sewage spills into the New River, which originated south of the border, the board gave staff direction on how to engage in the matter.
Two different spills occurred last month and the largest of which was due to a 36-inch sewage collector that collapsed. The discharge into the New River was approximately 13 million gallons of raw sewage, although the problem was corrected within a couple of days.
Supervisors Michael Kelley and Ray Castillo pointed out that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in recent years had provided funding to Mexicali to upgrade its aging infrastructure and suggested to have Jose Angel, the interim executive officer for the state Regional Water Quality Control Board, Colorado River Basin to come to the board and answer some of the questions they have.
“We absolutely should be involved in this, we should be part of every discussion,” said Ryan Kelley. “It plays into the overall impact at the Salton Sea and it needs to be followed closely by the county.”
In another matter pertaining to the New River, county Executive Officer Ralph Cordova gave the board an update on the New River Rehabilitation Project. He said the county is looking at different options to get the first stage of the project done.
The state allocated $1.6 million for the engineering and design of the project, however, the California Department of Water Resources told county officials that it could take nearly a year to award a contract in order to begin construction. Cordova said he was told it takes seven months to get a contract out in order to request proposals.
“We are working hard to see if we can find another angle to get that design and engineering awarded to start getting the work now,” he said. “You don’t want the funding to go away, we certainly don’t want to lose the momentum that we have for this project.”