State liberates prison water

The state agency that halted the flow of California Correctional Institution waste water to two customers in May has authorized resuming delivery to the struggling businesses.

In a July 1 letter to the waste water plant manager at CCI, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board authorized the resumption of recycled water delivery. The problem, according to Bill Sessa, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, was that the computerized system that monitors the Title 22 pollution levels had to be upgraded.

“The portion that monitors water is done,” Sessa told Forde Files on July 16, and Tehachapi is receiving the prison’s recycled water.

The Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District sells and distributes the recycled CCI water to two customers, the Horse Thief Country Club in Stallion Springs and Tehachapi Sod Farm, but has no control over the source. District General Manager John Martin, frustrated with the state bureaucracy, said that as of July 14, the golf course was receiving 368,000 gallons a day – less than half the amount CCI agreed to provide. He speculated that the CCI waste water plant has to refill its ponds before pressure is sufficient to move all the water.

The sod farm is contractually a lower priority than the golf course. and is still in jeopardy. As of July 17, it was not receiving water, Martin said.

Martin said he noticed in February that CCI was using spread fields to dispose of recycled water in large quantities almost every day. While the water was being sprayed onto the ground, Horse Thief General Manager Kenn Arnecke and Dan Gibson, owner of Tehachapi Sod, were desperately trying to keep their businesses alive.

“We put all the resources we had left into the greens,” Arnecke said. “The only way I saved the course was to sacrifice part of the course. The fairways will come back.” Five years ago, Horse Thief owner Dan Neveau paid $500,000 to build a four-mile pipeline from the prison to the golf course. When CCI water is not available, the golf course and sod farm buy more expensive State Water Project water and, Arnecke said, struggle to pay bills.