Marin Water Pipeline Plan Assailed (Updated)

Editor's note: Marin Municipal Water District Board President Cynthia Koehler had not yet responded to a request from Patch for comment before this article was first published. She has since issued a statement to Patch disputing most of Richmond Mayor Tom Butt's assertions in an article published on Monday that can be read here.

MARIN COUNTY, CA — A proposed pipeline that would import an estimated 12.5 million gallons of water daily from the Central Valley to Marin amid historic drought conditions is not sitting well with an East Bay mayor who believes the plan presents quality-of-life issues for his city's residents.

Richmond Mayor Tom Butt in a series of newsletters has taken aim at the proposed approximately eight-mile pipeline that would run across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

The Marin Municipal Water District has already allocated $2.2 million towards the proposed $65 million project that could deliver water to the North Bay county by next summer, The Marin Independent Journal reports.

The MMWD serves more than 190,000 residents, mostly in southern Marin.

In Butt’s estimation, the pipeline is being rushed without proper oversight at the expense of quality-of-life concerns for Richmond residents, and it won’t even bring that much water to a community that has failed to plan for water shortages that have been foreseeable since Marin experienced a drought emergency in the late 1970s.

“Visual, traffic, noise, air pollution and other major adverse impacts on the City of Richmond and its residents are being ignored, as are alternatives and mitigation measures, in the rush to proceed and adoption of an ‘emergency’ statutory exemption under CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act),” Butt wrote in an Oct. 18 newsletter.

“Richmond is expected to suffer the consequences of poor planning and lack of water conservation by the 14th richest county in America.”

Butt in an Oct. 20 newsletter wrote that “Marin is not serious about the drought. They are still watering lawns and filling swimming pools and will be until at least December. After the 1977 drought, they were warned to plan for the next one, but they did nothing.”

Butt said the proposed pipeline would deliver just 8 percent of the MMWD’s annual water use, and that just 40 percent of that supply has been secured.

The Richmond mayor wants the proposed pumping station moved from the proposed location of Castro Street and Tewskbury Avenue to an industrial site.

“Any new pump station must be sound-isolated from residential areas,” Butt said.

“The City of Richmond and its residents must be compensated for the inconvenience of the proposed street excavations for new pipelines.”