South Tahoe may endure summer without water restrictions

Monday, May 29, 2000 | 11:12 a.m.

If so, it would be the first time since September 1997 - when MTBE was first discovered in two drinking water wells - that the South Tahoe Public Utility District would be able to make it through a summer without ordering water rationing.

Over the past three years, contamination from methyl tertiary-butyl ether has forced the utility to shut down 12 of its 34 drinking water wells.

But the utility hopes to have a new well at least partially up and running by July 4 to help meet summertime demand.

If so, mandatory rationing may not be needed.

"It's a definite maybe," said utility spokesman Dennis Cocking. "We're trying to prepare the public that it could happen, but with a little bit of luck we may be able to stave it off and keep it on a volunteer basis."

The utility normally supplies water to about 30,000 people through 12,500 connections. But as a popular tourist area, and the number of people served can more than double in summer.

The new $1.2 million well, with a capacity of more than 1,000 gallons of water a minute, won't be fully operational until summer 2001.

However, about 450 gallons a minute may be available from it this year. That might be enough with voluntary water conservation to get the district through the summer without requiring water restrictions.

"We're going to look at it from a week-to-week basis," Cocking said.

MTBE is a gasoline additive that has contaminated drinking-water supplies nationwide as it leaks from underground fuel tanks or gasoline spills.

MTBE, a suspected human carcinogen, renders water undrinkable at low levels of contamination, making it smell and taste like turpentine.

Because of South Lake Tahoe's problems with the additive, the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors earlier this year banned the sale of the gasoline additive in the southwest quadrant of the Lake Tahoe Basin.

It was the first county to have taken such strong action regarding MTBE, and Lake Tahoe is one of the only areas in California receiving MTBE-free gas.

The utility district has spent more than $2 million on MTBE-related problems.