Nearly two months after the Kincade fire was fully contained in northeastern Sonoma County, Santa Rosa is struggling with an after-effect of the massive blaze: its wastewater disposal pipeline at The Geysers was disabled for six weeks, backing up the Sebastopol-area plant with about 400 million gallons of treated wastewater.
[A] high-voltage line previously powered the city-owned pumps that deliver water about 40 miles from Santa Rosa’s Laguna Wastewater Plant to The Geysers as part of the city’s wastewater disposal system, in operation since 2003.
Without electricity from that line, Santa Rosa found itself sidelined for six weeks — without the ability to pump the 15 million gallons of wastewater it regularly sends per day on average to help sustain steam power at The Geysers, said Joe Schwall, the city’s deputy director of water reuse operations.
The fire did not damage the city’s pumps, according to Schwall, though it burned at least eight Calpine utility poles that link its system of more than a dozen geothermal power plants to PG&E’s grid. And the transmission line that went down the night the fire erupted remained out of service for about a month after the fire was contained, leaving the pumps without power even after Calpine replaced its poles.
PG&E projected the transmission line, and by extension, Santa Rosa’s pumps, would remain out of service until Jan. 22 as crews worked in the difficult terrain of the Mayacamas Mountains, often relying on helicopters for repair work.
But Calpine was able to find a workaround — rewiring its private system of lines without the downed PG&E line — to restore service to Santa Rosa’s pumps beginning Dec. 5, said Schwall, crediting the company for finding a solution.
“They apparently found a route that they don’t normally use to route the electricity through their lines to use,” he said
