Repairs required
Canal repair on track for Saturday if clear weather holds; more rain, snow expected early next week
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. was expecting to have repairs completed by Saturday on a section of the Tuolumne Main Canal that was damaged in storms this week, while the utility’s crews fanned out to restore power to more than 11,000 Mother Lode customers who remained in the dark as of Wednesday morning.
The good news for PG&E workers aiming to fix the canal that conveys roughy 95% of Tuolumne Utility District’s water supply is that Thursday, Friday, Saturday and likely Sunday are supposed to be dry throughout the Central Sierra Nevada, with no more snowfall or rainfall expected after midnight Thursday until the next round of storms is expected to begin on Monday.
“This should be exiting slowly by this evening,” Scott Rowe, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento, said in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon. “We’re not expecting a whole lot more precipitation, and it should be ceasing by about 9 p.m. tonight. Cold conditions can be expected through the weekend.”
In addition, a winter storm warning for the foothills of Calaveras and Tuolumne counties at elevations above 2,000 feet was set to expire at 4 p.m. Wednesday.
No heat wave is expected to come and melt all the snow that initially snarled PG&E’S efforts to reach the section of the Tuolumne Main Canal where a snowladen tree has crashed into an elevated flume between Twain Harte and Lyons Dam.
Overnight lows in the area of Lyons Dam were expected to dip to 26 degrees Wednesday night into Thursday and remain into the mid-20s to high 20s through Saturday, with an overnight low of 30 Sunday into Monday.
Meanwhile on Wednesday, some residents in Tuolumne
“As long as our customers continue to be conscientious of their water use, TUD should be able meet customer demand from stored water.” — Lisa Westbrook, TUD spokeswoman
and Calaveras counties had been without electricity for several days.
Megan Mcfarland, spokeswoman for PG&E, said about 5,700 customers in Tuolumne County and 6,300 in Calaveras County remained without power as of about noon Wednesday, with a storm system hampering progress that crews had made Tuesday.
Nearly half of the Tuolumne County customers still without lights on Wednesday were located in the Twain Harte area.
Mcfarland did not have an estimated time for restoration for the remaining PG&E customers without power as of Wednesday afternoon. She also did not have the exact number of employees assigned to help with those efforts, though she said the numbers were “significant.”
“We continue to bring in more crews to support and have also activated our mutual aid agreement to get help from other utilities,” she said.
The offices of emergency services in both counties opened warming centers overnight Tuesday into Wednesday and were trying to decide whether to open a warming center or centers for the freezing cold overnight temperatures expected through the rest of this week (see related story on page A1).
Snow was still falling steadily along the snowbound Highway 108 corridor above Twain Harte as of 2 p.m. Wednesday.
“It’s really snowing right now,” Victoria Voorhees, manager of Pinecrest Food Market, said Wednesday afternoon. “It’s anywhere from five to seven feet. Seven feet deep in unshoveled, unplowed areas.”
Accumulated snow was 3 feet deep in Long Barn, an employee at Long Barn Lodge said in a brief phone exchange Wednesday, adding he was too busy to answer more questions.
Likewise in Sierra Village, snow outside was knee-deep to waist-deep on grownups as more continued to fall Wednesday afternoon, Sierra Village Chevron employee Patricia Hartzell said in a phone interview.
“It’s about three feet, and it’s snowing right now,” Hartzell said.
Phone calls to businesses in Mi-wuk Village, Sugar Pine and Twain Harte yielded identical phone messages, “The number you have dialled is not in service. Please check the number and try again.”
The next round of storms, expected Monday through Wednesday, could bring 2 to 3 more inches of rain to Sonora and other Mother Lode foothills communities, and 3 to 4 more feet of snow to Ebbetts Pass, 2 to 3 more feet at Sonora Pass, and 12 to 18 more inches of snow to Tioga Pass.
Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesman, said the repairs to the Tuolumne Main Canal were expected by Saturday as long as there were no additional “severe weather conditions,” which provided some relief for TUD officials monitoring the district’s backup water supply.
Smith said the utility used a helicopter to find where a tree had fallen through a portion of the “A Flume” conveyance supply to the canal, a vulnerable system of flumes and ditches built during the Gold Rush that PG&E currently owns and maintains.
The canal is the key link that conveys water from Lyons Reservoir to the Tud-owned ditches that deliver 95% of the water relied upon by roughly 40,000 residents.
TUD spokeswoman Lisa Westbrook said the district had enough water stored downstream to meet customer demand for about a week, which is one reason why it urged people to conserve as much as possible during the outage.
“As long as our customers continue to be conscientious of their water use, TUD should be able meet customer demand from stored water,” she said.
About 400 TUD customers that receive raw water directly from the ditch were completely without water, Westbrook said, adding that most of them use it for irrigation or agriculture purposes.
Westbrook also said there had been no discussion between TUD and PG&E over the cost to repair the damage to the canal, though the district is currently negotiating a possible acquisition of the utility’s Phoenix Hydroelectric Project that would include the canal.
The district would be equipped to make the repairs itself in the future, Westbrook said.
“As a future possible owner of the system, TUD would be prepared to make the necessary repairs, depending on the type of incident and repair needed,” she said.