Power outage coming August 28th

PG&E has scheduled a power outage for our neighborhood on Friday, August 28, 2026, from 9am to 2pm. What does this have to do with the water company?

A lot, actually. We rely on electricity to power our well pumps, the filtration and chlorination systems, and the computer that keeps track of the amount of water in our tanks. All this equipment is in our neighborhood, so it goes out whenever the neighborhood power goes out. When the power stops, the wells stop. If the tanks are full (which they usually are), you won’t notice anything, because the entire system is gravity fed from the highest hill in our neighborhood. But the tanks won’t be re-filled until power is restored.

So, on Thursday, before the power goes out, please consider pausing your landscape watering until after the power comes back on Friday afternoon. That’ll help ensure we have enough water in reserve to fight a fire, should that be necessary. Showers, laundry, and dishwashing don’t use nearly as much water as landscaping, so no need to hold back there during such a short outage.

Generally a power outage is no big deal. When the power comes back on the computer reboots, and the wells come back online. But while the power is out, what if there’s an emergency? This is where your actions can make a big difference. When the wells aren’t pumping, it’s important to conserve water until the power comes back on. Otherwise, if the tanks are run low, there may not be enough water available to deal with emergencies.

If we ever have an extended power outage, we have the ability to connect a generator to Well 1, which will also provide power to the tanks up the hill (where the computer, network connection, and filtration and chlorination systems live) and allow us to keep the water tanks full. The work to enable this was lead by Board member Ed Thoma back in December of 2023. Thanks Ed!