Where’s the growth?

In spite of the Great Recession and slow population growth in Amador County, the Amador Water Agency continues to pursue the Gravity Supply Line, an expensive project sized to deliver three times as much water to the Upcountry as the current system. The agency has spent more than $1 million on the GSL.

AWA says the upcountry will need more water to provide for future growth. But the facts show that local growth has been slow for some time now. And no other local agencies are planning for a tripling of the upcountry’s population in the next 20 years.

What are the key facts about local growth?

• As early as 2005, the trend line for population growth in Amador County was in decline.
• As of 2006, the trend was significantly downward.
• In 2007, growth was in real decline, and in 2008, the real estate bubble burst.
• Since 2000, Amador County’s population has grown by only 8 to 8.5 percent (total -- not annual). No one is expecting a big housing boom in the region anytime soon.

Yet in 2007, the AWA was telling everyone that the county was going to see significant growth and needed to add water capacity. At the same time, the agency didn’t have a strategic facilities plan available for public review to show what would be needed and why. It also didn’t have a realistic, multiyear financial plan to show how it was going to pay for new facilities. It still doesn’t. In contrast, the Calaveras County Water District has both.

With growth so slow, the agency has stopped talking about needing the GSL to provide for it. Now they describe the project as being needed for other reasons, mostly invented to justify moving forward on a project that clearly isn’t needed today. And they haven’t scaled the GSL back to a less-expensive, more realistic size based on more-reasonable, updated growth projections.