Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, welcome to our show, and thanks for listening. Today on our show, I have a very good friend I've known for more than 20 years. He served the public first as a county supervisor, a very knowledgeable fellow who currently serves as president of the Calaveras County Water District. Along with his many abilities and knowledge, many know him as the singing supervisor of Calaveras county. He's no longer a supervisor, so we'll have to find another name for him. But he's very knowledgeable, and I asked him on the show this morning to figure out how, if you're in Calaveras county, do your water, your house. So welcome to the show, Mr. Russ Thomas.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Hello, Michael. Good to see you.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Good to see you. This beautiful morning. I mean, it couldn't be any better. Little rain doesn't hurt anybody, does it?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Well, we depend on it up here.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, it doesn't. It just seems like yesterday you were four wheeling and taking me on a tour of your county. We went out and visited old indian sites and places where historic events occurred. There's not a lot of people in Calaveras county, so it's nice when someone knows the entire history and can talk to you about what has actually taken place and is taking place in Calaveras county in the beautiful foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. So welcome again. And can you believe it's been 20 years, Russ?
[00:01:29] Speaker B: No, you've got the wrong calendar. Mine doesn't move that fast.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: We were four wheeling in your truck, out in the middle of nowhere. You even showed me where you wanted to build your landing strip someday. Beautiful dream. I still think you need to do it and get you a little airplane to go and play in and knock around in the air. What do you say?
[00:01:51] Speaker B: It would have to be an ultralight.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Just because of the cost of it. I understand that one now. I remember having dinner with my little brother, who wasn't really my little brother, but he's a United Airlines captain and just a good guy full of baloney. Good guy to be hanging around with. And you. We were in Murphy's, and it was kind of an interesting night. We're walking down the street and Russ breaks out in song. And he did a really fabulous job with some song that was operatic. And everybody would bump each other and say, oh, that's the singing supervisor. That's Mr. Thomas over there. Do you remember those days?
[00:02:37] Speaker C: I'm as helpless as the king of the tree.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah, but I didn't like to be called a singing supervisor. I wanted to be called the supervisor who also sings.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Please tell us a little bit about the Calaveras County Water district.
Where does it get the water? How many people it serves, this kind of a thing?
[00:03:04] Speaker B: First of all, I'd like to tell you that the Calaveras county water district was started by a vote of the citizens of the county back in 1946. And anyway, we serve the water needs of a county that has 1000 sq. Mi.
The water comes from starting on the south end of the county at the Stanislaus river, then the Calaveras river, and then the McCollumy river. We have water entitlements on each of those three drainage tributary areas, and we serve about 13,000 water customers and 5000 water wastewater customers.
Anyway, in serving that amount of people, we have 49,000 people in the county, and we serve about 66% of them, or about 30,000 people.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Wow. That's not really huge, but certainly remarkable. And you noted we have spoken in the past. I understand that many of the Bay Area water districts get their water also from McQuillie, and you have three sources. I know the water tastes pretty darn good in the San Francisco Bay area from the McCollumy River. I just don't know how it tastes up in calaveras. What do you say?
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Water should taste the same throughout the state because the department of Water Resources makes sure that everybody treats it to the proper standards. And if we don't, then we could be subject, like any other district, to fines and corrective actions anyway.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Is that where the water titlements come from?
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Your districts get so many entitlements and you get so many acre feet of water, and I guess the state controls that through the resources board. Is that correct?
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Well, I don't know you would properly call it entitlements. There are reservations or water rights that have been developed through the last century. As a matter of fact, some of them going back to pre 1914, and those rights are.
Many people are nervous about having downstream users, through the Department of Water Resources, take away some of those rights and the acre feet that we get the footages that we are, to use that word, entitlement, we are entitled to use about 40,000 acre feet in the Copperopolis area of the Stannislaus. We also have all the highway, four corridors served by water off the Stanislaus. The Caliberis river runs down in and connects with the McCollumy river. And we have 30,000 acre feet that we get off of the McCollumy river watershed.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: And so then it's treated in your treatment plant and then it's put out to the customers. And we spoke at one time about how far can a potential customer can be because it gets really expensive. Running a pipe from your distribution network now to homes that may be out in some valley that's away from the general population. So now you get into costs of well. Do I put my well down and pay the electrics on that or do I run the pipe from the water district and get my water that way?
[00:06:52] Speaker B: I'm a pretty good example. My wife and I are just happy that we have been living in a new home in the country like you're describing for about five months now. But starting many, many years ago I put in a well. And then I've been doing things as necessary or as we could afford it going along. But on balance a person would be paying about the same amount if they put in their own system. If they're too far away from the system like we are.
A well would be in the neighborhood of 25,000 to put in the electrical connection. Cost us 6000 to put in a meter for the well and our sewage system. I did it myself so it didn't cost me this much. But the typical person would be paying about $25 to $30,000 for a septic system. So although many people have the misunderstanding that they could do that job more economically by putting in their own system, it's no bargain putting in your own system. But it'd be difficult for the valley that we live in for a large development to be approved out here because the general plan of the county would not allow that unless it was completely amended. So the water district tries its best to provide water or the availability of water to any place that is designated in the general plan for growth.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Yeah, but then you got to check your well all the time too to make sure that there's no elements that are undesirable in that water. We run across that every time we sell a home that has a well. We do an inspection. They sample the water and they determine is it potable or can it only be used for watering your private golf course if you had one or something of that nature, your lawn or whatever. Right?
[00:08:53] Speaker B: We are very lucky here. We live in a place called Salt Spring Valley but we have no salt in our water. We had it tested like you suggest and it tastes wonderful and my wife is very proud of it.
And we just moved from a home in Copperopolis and I really can't tell much difference in the taste of the water there compared to what we were getting out of the well here.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: But I guess that's the way we want it.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Bouncing around in a four wheel drive truck about 20 years ago on Russ's land and actually taken us out. And then he showed where from his primary business people, maybe they didn't want a pallet of bricks or they didn't want a few windows or what have you, or a few roofing tiles. Russ would store it until he could build his own home, and then he started about, I would say, what, three years ago, building your home. He has got his hands on every part of it, all of the way. The windows I recognize. The roof tiles I recognized.
Very interesting. So it's just the kind of guy that you would want to have on your water district board. How many people on that board, anyway?
[00:10:13] Speaker B: Russ, there are five members each elected by the voters to represent the area.
It's not exactly the same boundaries as the supervisorial districts, but close, like district two, has only about 800 water users throughout that district. The voters there, even though you're not getting the CCWD water or the water treatment, you have the opportunity to vote for somebody to represent you on that water board.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: And now if there's a drought, there has to be a disaster preparedness plan that is being implemented by calaveras to pay for the water tankers and such if there were fire. Right.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: Try to broad brush explanation here. There is a requirement that the state imposes that we have to have a disaster response plan that would incorporate all of the agencies, the county, the sheriff, all the fire districts, ambulance service, even people that take on responsibility for hauling animals out of harm's way. They all attend these frequently occurring meetings, and we have to keep that disaster response plan in place. As far as the response to your question about drought, the state also imposes curtailment percentages. And even though we have abundant sources of water, we still comply with what the state tells us, that we should try to cut back on water consumption so that there's water left for you folks downstream with all, everything.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Thank you very much. He's referring to Nancy and I living in the Bay area and he living up in the foothills of glorious calaveras county. So let me ask you this. With everything going on in the world, why in the world did you select going in the direction of being an official with the water district? What drove you to do that?
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Well, Michael, my leaning toward public service started many years ago when I lived down in Modesto. I was born, raised there, first of all, started off with an involvement with a citizens advisory committee. The purpose of it was to make yourself available for complaints against building officials, and every county has to have that. And so since I was a builder, I wanted to be able to help out fellow builders if they ran across somebody, an inspector, that was being overzealous. So that went from there. I went to the Santa Claus County Planning Commission, and all of this was driven by, really, it may sound very Pollyanna ish, but I just want to serve the community and make it better. And I have the skills and abilities that I have been able to do that. When I moved up to Calaveras County, I got involved in kind of drafted to be involved, since I had planning experience on the seven years on the planning commission in Stanislaws county, there was an organization called the Copperopolis Community Plan Advisory Committee, and I chaired that for ten years, until finally we submitted a plan for what we hoped would be the development standards for Copperopolis. Interestingly, that was done in 2099. Not 2099, but 1999, and it's still a work in progress, getting closer to being adopted. But anyway, I was on, like you said, on the supervisor, the board of supervisors. I left the country for some time. I went to Somalia, saw the world from a little bit different perspective, came back, got on the CCWD board. And everything that I have done in my prior involvements has been really to help me be a better district director for the water district.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: We're speaking with Mr. Russ Thomas, president of the Calaveras County Water District. A great guy that you'd like to have on any board to represent the people. He's very much pro people, but he does a great job. Whether or not he's a county supervisor or he's on a planning commission on the waterboard, it doesn't matter. He's one of the kind of guys that you want to ride the river with, if you would, and also learn how to water your house if you're in Calaveras county, so to speak. So with that in mind, what do you like best about Calaveras County?
[00:15:16] Speaker B: A lot of us refer to life in Calaveras county as being life like it used to be. We have 49,000 people in the county. That's about 400 people per square mile. So that's a pretty enviable density, I would say. And that's the best thing I like about it.
There's three stoplights in the whole county, which that's probably too many anyway. A lot of people would think, well, that must be a pretty backward area, but we have fabulous opportunities for recreation the arts are alive and well here. I've even started singing with the Columbia big band. Lately.
[00:16:09] Speaker C: I'm as helpless as a king of the tree and I feel like I'm clinging to the cloud I can't understand I get to see just holding your hand.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Been fabulous. But other people like snow skiing or water skiing on our abundant lakes here. Some of the people that have been out here visiting us lately, they look up at the sky and they said, my God, you have stars out here.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah, we used to go up and then we'd go ski and then we'd come down the hill from the ski resort and hang out and enjoy life. But it's a lot quieter.
I wouldn't say backward, but it's nice. They're actually grown grapes.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: A lot of grapes.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of grapes. Yeah. That really did change a lot in the last 1520 years, I would imagine.
[00:17:10] Speaker C: Look at me.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back.
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[00:18:19] Speaker A: Now back to our show.
Tell us about recycled water, Russ. How does that all work?
[00:18:26] Speaker B: It's a requirement that we have to process our wastewater. And fortunately, we've got some water treatment facilities that are close by to golf courses. And a lot of the water that we treat can be treated to a level that allows the water to be broadcast throughout the golf courses. Saves money for the operators of the golf courses, and it gives us a place that we can not necessarily dispose of the water, but it's just a convenient way for us to get it out to useful purposes.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Absolutely. Useful purposes being the operative term, I would imagine. So. CCWD provides fresh treated water to the customers and they provide sewage services to 5000 roughly households or customers. And they also provide recycled water for golf courses. Landscape but I am told that the recycled water is actually probably cleaner than the treated water that you actually drink.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: I think chemically you could probably prove that point. Psychologically it might be a little bit more difficult to prove. But each time we go to state association of water Agencies in California, the aqua group, they've got bottled water that has been provided by agencies that do treat the water to potable levels. And you drink it just like everybody else.
There's no differentiation in taste at all.
I guess as we get more and more demands on water and face.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: The.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: Predicted decline in water availability, we'll all be drinking processed water eventually.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: I would really prefer to have CCWD water as opposed to my own well, because you made a really good point. It's more economical and most people don't view it as that at first view, but it really is. By the time you put in your well, put in the equipment to get it out of the ground, pay the electricity on an ongoing basis, CCWD water is probably pretty reasonable.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: Well, it is sometimes difficult to make people understand that, but if they went through the numbers to see that it's thousands and thousands of dollars for a well, and likewise for the water for your septic system, as compared to about $14,000 that we would charge for a water meter on a lot that you want to build a house on in Copperopolis or any other area of the county, paying $14,000 for far more than just the meter, you're paying your prorata share of your ownership share of 350 miles of water distribution lines and 150 miles of sewage or treated water collection lines, all of which, or much of which has been in the ground for many decades. And that's a constant problem for us to go out and patch leaks and stuff, but we're constantly working on that.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Quite a force you have there to maintain the actual system. How many people does the water district employ?
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Currently we have 77 allocated positions and probably about 72 or three filled positions right now.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: And so how often are these meetings held?
[00:22:06] Speaker B: We have meetings.
The regularly scheduled board meetings are the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month, at 01:00 in the afternoon. But each of the board members has additional responsibilities for committee meetings that they have to go to really enjoy serving on the engineering committee, along with director Jeff Davidson. Both of us are builders, so that's in our might say our wheelhouse of experience. So I think the interaction between the engineering department and the engineering committee is really quite good. Anyway, you got to come in. You can also go online to ccwd.org and find out when those meetings are occurring. And you can listen, and you can even raise your hand and participate with the meeting. The ongoing portion of the meeting.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: I remember going up there, and the big deal was they were building the new town there in copperaus with different restaurants. And it actually has a hotel there.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: I believe it's a very fine hotel that they've done a fabulous job there. And that's serving not necessarily an overlooked need. It's just a need that nobody had come along with the resources to put that in. But there's all kinds of car groups that come there and spend the weekends. And I don't know, the social aspects of living in Calaveras county or visiting in Calaveras county are really quite enjoyable.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: When you were the singing supervisor of the county, I believe that you or an other couple of supervisors were very paramount in putting in that new town of copper. It was just broke ground, I think, when I first was aware of it. And then it became something really cool. And there's some really nice restaurants in there.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: I agree completely. And that started far in front of. Or my involvement in that whole concept got predated. Actually knowing each other back to the days when we had the Copperopolis community Plan advisory committee. We needed a central location for that kind of activity. Because we didn't have anything except the old town and a small shopping center. So we all said, if something happens, it should happen right there. And lo and behold, it's there. So it's pretty gratifying to drive through there.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Now, you mentioned the old town. There is a saloon there still, I believe. Right. Tell us about that, Ross.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: It's a saloon that claims to be one of the oldest operating places where you can kind of wash the trail dust down. It's called the old corner saloon. And interestingly, it has recently been acquired by an entrepreneurial young man in the county. Or in the Copperapolis particularly. His name is Ira Eades.
It's called Ira's old corner now. And he's really up the offerings there quite a lot. He's got a lot of very great things going on there. Fabulous food. And in a very historical atmosphere, I would add. So you want to ride a mechanical bull, just come up on. I don't know what night they have that, but you can do it there.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Well, you know my background. I wouldn't probably hesitate to get on that bull. So if you were to say what you like the most in one, two sentences about Calaveras county. Being that you've been there for a long time, what would those few things be?
[00:25:51] Speaker B: I like living in an area that has a historical significance, and on the east coast, they've got all the elements and battlefields and stuff associated with the Civil War we've got in this area. The most significant thing that's ever happened was the California gold rush. And I think that, frankly, we don't give as much acknowledgement to that. But I love bringing people out here to the ranch and showing them foundations of houses that were existing in this little valley 100 years ago. I'm pleased that I have moved to a county where I can save my building materials for 25 years and prove everybody wrong, that I was never going to build a house. But I did it, didn't I?
[00:26:41] Speaker A: You sure did, and I'll never forget that. And to see what you built your new home into is just wonderful. Well, we've pretty much run out of time, and I have to say it's great talking with my good friend. We could talk for probably two, 3 hours and throw crackers in the barrel in front of the old general store.
[00:27:00] Speaker C: Look at me.
I'm as helpless as the king of the tree.
And I feel like I'm clinging to a cloud I can't understand.
I get Misty just holding your hand.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: But I'd like to thank you for being on the show and what a wonderful time I've had. Mr. Russ Thomas, president of the Calaveras county water district. Thank you, Russ, for being on the show. You've been listening to real estate and more interesting people like Calaveras county water district, topics of the day of watering your house, and of course, we talk about real estate. Listen to on demand real estate and more shows at Michael Hatfield homes.com radio. The real estate and more show is podcast on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, and most major podcast platforms as well. Tune in next week and until then, have a very blessed week.
