On 12/10/21, our current Water Manager’s contract expired.  Simultaneously, Big Bend entered a new contract for water system supervision and maintenance.  The new contract is a mutual aid agreement with the City of Gold Bar, that will contract their Public Works Manager, Rich Norris, as our Water System Operator.  Mr. Norris is a Level II Operator, and has many years of experience working with water systems like Big Bend’s.  This new contract will allow Big Bend to benefit from the equipment and resources available to the City of Gold Bar, as well as other entities with which they have a mutual aid agreement. It will not in any way put the Big Bend Water System under the control of the City of Gold Bar.  It simply allows Big Bend on-call access to their multiple personnel and repair equipment fleet on an as-needed basis, at rates far below those charged by private contractors in the Valley.  It also fulfills WA State’s regulatory requirement that every water system have oversight by a licensed water operator professional.  The Board is very glad to have been able to obtain this contract from the City of Gold Bar, and believes it will be a great benefit to Big Bend.  If you have any questions, please call the Big Bend Messaging Line, or email bigbendtalk@gmail.com.

We all love the beautiful area of Big Bend where we live. The predicted summer weather conditions make it essential that we all become good stewards of our land, homes and community by:

Big Bend and Cadman continue their cooperation through the Wellhead Protection Committee. Cadman’s annual water quality monitoring reports have shown no change in the quality/quantity of the groundwater used at their gravel operation. Big Bend also has probes in our wells to monitor similar water quality parameters.

Gravel operations are expected to increase significantly at the Gold Bar site in years ahead due to the closure of several older sites. Careful monitoring of the groundwater will be very important to ensure the integrity of Big Bend’s wells is retained. Cadman’s 2018 Monitoring Report is posted on our web site.
 

Work on Big Bend’s water system continues on many fronts. The probe used to collect water samples has been reprogrammed to improve collection of data. The pump was recently replaced that runs the soda ash feeder to our water system. The older pump was 10 years old and not repairable. Soda ash is needed to reduce the pH of Big Bend’s water to reduce the potential for reaction to solder used on older water pipes and faucets.

Big Bend is also investigating options to have a contract with an on-call contractor who would be available for water system emergencies and repairs to our distributions lines. Work continues implementing the projects in the Water System 5-year Plan approved last year. And thanks to Board Member, Scott Hoskin, for stepping in this spring to manage our system when both Dick King and Kim Peterson were out of town.
 

The annual homeowners meeting traditionally, are held on a Saturday in July. Due to Covid-19 all public meetings are on hiatus.

 

 

Sincerely,