COVELO TOWN FIRE HYDRANT PROJECT
REQUEST FOR FUNDING

Fire Destruction of the North Fork Restaurant and Old Post Office
Covelo, California, July 18, 2020 - did not post with comments

The unincorporated town of Covelo is the commercial and residential focus of Round Valley, California. There is no local government for the town, but there are four county special districts: the Covelo Community Services District (CCSD), the Covelo Fire Protection District (CFPD), the Round Valley County Water District (RVCWD) and the Covelo Public Cemetery District. These districts have various responsibilities and spheres of influence for the unincorporated town and the surrounding area of Round Valley.
There is no domestic water system in the unincorporated town. Each parcel is dependent on its individual well. There is a trailer park in the town area with a community system, and a small business industrial lot with its own system, but every other business and residence is on an independent well and water system.

The town area is served by a sewer system, operated and maintained by the CCSD. The CCSD has approximately 200+ individual customers located in Covelo, which include 189 single family residences, a number of businesses, the mobile home park, the schools, and a motel. The district boundary of the CCSD has an aggregate assessed property tax value of $35,000,000. The town area is basically flat, with a sufficient natural gradient to allow for gravity flow in the sewer system with very few service hookups requiring a pump. In most situations the existing water source for each individual parcel seems to be adequate and satisfactory and there are no plans presently to develop a source or system to provide domestic water to the customers in the CCSD.

In 2016, the Mendocino Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) issued its most recent Municipal Services Review. As noted in the LAFCo review for the CFPD, fire services in communities are classified by the Insurance Service Office (ISO), an advisory organization. The ISO classification indicates the general adequacy of coverage, with classes ranking from 1 to 10. Communities with the best fire department facilities, systems for water distribution, fire alarms and communications, and equipment and personnel receive a rating of 1. In this report, the CFPD has an ISO rating of 9 for residential structures and an ISO rating of 10 for commercial structures. The CFPD reported that current financing levels are barely adequate to deliver services.

Fire is destroying our town. Over time, relentlessly, fires are taking our homes, churches and businesses. Every few years we lose another one or two buildings from wildfire, arson or neglect. Consequently, the town area appears severely blighted, with numerous vacant lots and charred remains where once stood houses, restaurants and retail buildings. The community of Covelo desperately needs the ability to rebuild its core commercial area.

Rebuilding of commercial and residential properties has been hampered by county codes requiring automatic fire sprinklers, and has been discouraged further by lack of available fire insurance. Very few residents have the financial capacity to rebuild and fire insurance premiums are skyrocketing, if insurance is even available. The sprinkler system for the new local IGA grocery store alone was approximately $250,000, and well in excess of $400,000 for the new high school gym.

Since 2011, all new residential and commercial construction in California must include an automatic sprinkler system. The cost alone of this additional requirement has contributed to the lack of rebuilding and subsequent blight. An investment in the infrastructure necessary to provide an engineered system of fire hydrants on the street and the potential to tap into this system for a building's automatic fire sprinkler apparatus may be necessary before any substantial or meaningful construction of new commercial development or residential structures can happen.

An automatic sprinkler system for a residence or a commercial building must be engineered to provide an adequate volume and pressure to the sprinkler heads. In that currently in Covelo only individual domestic water systems comprised of a well and pump exist, which appear to be vastly insufficient for an on site sprinkler system; water pressure for individual sprinkler systems is not available without extensive cost to the owner. One or more large storage tanks must be sited, with a supplemental pump, and in some situations a back-up generator. To engineer and provide this equipment is expensive, takes up valuable space on a parcel of limited size, and has been the stated reason for some of the fire destroyed structures not being rebuilt.

The Round Valley Community Development Corporation, a Round Valley tax-exempt nonprofit, has entered into Memorandums of Understanding with both the Covelo Fire Protection District and the Round Valley County Water District to apply for funding for an engineered feasibility study for a fire hydrant system and to evaluate both the cost and benefit for each affected land parcel and owner, and form a plan for service and maintenance. The fire hydrant system would provide both fire suppression as well as available water pressure for individual sprinkler systems.

The RVCDC obtained quotes from an engineering firm for the design and cost of the system in the amount of $35,000 and for cost/benefit analysis, rate analysis and community outreach/education from an engineering/consultation firm for an additional $15,000. These estimates must be re-worked due to their age.

Once the feasibility study has been developed, including a plan for services and maintenance of the new system, one of our special districts would apply to LAFCo for activation of latent powers to provide this service. Our information is that the cost of this application is between $7,000 and $10,000. The application will require a public hearing as well as a protest hearing upon approval by LAFCo. The next step, a Proposition 218 process to establish rates for the service, will also require a public hearing by the special district and a protest hearing.

The studies will address whether to build a separate system for the unincorporated town or a system coordinated with the existing fire suppression system on the tribal properties of Round Valley Indian Tribes that are both in and near to the town of Covelo.

We ask the Board of Supervisors to consider including our feasibility study and LAFCo application costs for funding from the CBDG Program Income or the upcoming NOFA in January. We, along with many supporters both in and outside of government, have searched extensively for any available funding source, without success. Without the support of Mendocino County, our town of Covelo may just disappear.

We would be happy to provide more detail on community need and community support than this forum allows.

Kay Richards (707) 978-1690
Lew Chichester (707) 272-8548
Round Valley Community Development Corporation, Covelo
rvcdcorp@gmail.com

Anderson Valley Community Services District (AVCSD) has been working toward getting both Drinking Water and Clean Water (sewer) systems in central Boonville since 2015. Both projects have accomplished setting up all the elements (wells, storage tanks, easements for drinking water, 20-acre treatment site for sewer) and have successfully finished the public support phase. Both systems are developing rate studies which will allow us to enter the Proposition 218 protest process shortly after the New Year. However, before we can complete the planning process and apply for construction funding, we need to successfully activate our latent powers with LAFCo. LAFCo estimates each application could cost as much as $7000.
While we have planning grants from the State for each project, funds for LAFCo are not included. We are hoping a CDBG grant can fill this need. We did get a CDBG grant of $5000 in 2016 that paid for the original water testing of 24 wells and supported the expenses of the earliest public meetings. We are very grateful for your support getting this project started and are hoping we can get a CDBG grant for the crucial step of activating our powers.
Valerie Hanelt, Chair AVCSD, valhanelt@me.com 707-391-3526