District 3 Supervisor Ted Novelli addresses attendees of the Oct. 9 Volcano Community Services District meeting, which will see an expanded five-member board next year.

Photo by: Richard Gorremans

Terry Grillo

Richard Gorremans

Jane Norcross

Next month, Volcano's 100 full-time residents will see a small change in their ballots for the local community services district board.

A community services district is a governance option created to serve residents of an unincorporated area. As Roseanne Chamberlain, executive director of the Amador County Local Agency Formation Commission, pointed out at last week's Volcano CSD meeting, "A special district is just a small step away from the abilities and power of actual incorporation."

A recent Senate bill mandated all special districts maintain five-member boards. Since its formation in the early 1960s, the Volcano Community Services District has maintained a board of three.

Meeting the new requirement will mean an uncontested election for the three candidates running to serve the expanded board. The candidates for the three available CSD positions include one appointed incumbent - Richard Gorremans - and two new faces - Jane Norcross and Terry Grillo.

Grillo is a fourth generation Volcano resident. He said it was the complaints of his great grandmother regarding the rusty color in her laundry whites that initiated the water system in Volcano today. He views working on the Volcano CSD board as "democracy in its purest form."

"If we don't take care of our business and exercise our democracy," he added, "someone else is going to come in and do it for us and we may not like the results of that."

Grillo hopes to reduce pump station expenses through solar power, examine the viability of a community leach field and introduce the water agency's purple pipe project for irrigation purposes.

Gorremans, originally from Oregon, relocated full time to Volcano from Sacramento in 1996. Self employed, Gorremans applied for the appointment three years ago, he said, because "community involvement and being able to step up to the plate is important."

He's hoping the next four years will provide opportunities to raise the level of community involvement. In his time on the board, he said the CSD worked to create partnerships with the county and the Amador Water Agency, saying those efforts have improved the district's outlook and self-sustainability.

Water management for the district's residents is a major focus of the CSD board. With a current inventory of 67 hook-ups and only 14 developable lots within district boundaries, growth will not rate the No. 1 challenge to the new board, but having adequate and sustainable water might.

Volcano, established in 1848, has utilized the Cleveland Channel, intersecting at Union Flats by the Cleveland tunnel, as its primary water source since the turn of the 20th century, according to Doug Ketron, a Volcano resident and local mining engineer. The tunnel, part of the Cleveland Mine in 1930, was initially sought as an ore producer but never produced an ounce of gold. After waging but never winning a daily war against waist-high snow melt, the mine's owners eventually gave up. The resource unleashed by their tunneling, however, has proven to be liquid gold to the small community.

On more than one occasion, the water source has been compromised by other mining claims that resulted in the formation of the community services district in 1962. The Mokelumne Gold Mine dewatering in 1987 actually shut off the gravity-fed water supply to the town. This obligated the CSD to sink two 900-foot wells that produced 11 gallons a minute and a treatment plant because of poor water quality. Not too long after, the mine went broke and the channel water returned to the tunnel as it had flowed for almost a century.

A recent water supply study on the channel indicates flow rates have dropped from 60 gallons a minute to approximately 32. The two wells are in place as a backup, but standing alone they will not produce enough water to serve the community. A connection moratorium has been in place since last year as a result of the unstable conditions.

Another facet of the CSD includes oversight of the town cemetery. A lack of established authority to provide services could be hammered out in this next board's term.

The final candidate, Norcross, was asked by current Chairwoman Nancy Bailey to help sort out the authority over the town cemetery, saying she was, in effect, challenged to "step up to the plate."

"I haven't done any community service in a long time," Norcross said. "It's my turn."

President of the Volcano Community Association back in the late 1980s, Norcross said she understands what it means to serve. Norcross relocated from Oakland to become a full time resident of Volcano in 1974, calling the small community "my own little slice of heaven."

She said she was looking forward to the challenge of a cemetery inventory and being able to allow the remaining 50 plots to be managed and maintained legally and effectively.

Recently retired California Public Utilities Commission judge Meg Gottstein fills the fifth slot on the CSD board. She and Bailey will be up for re-election in 2010.

Although the five slots are legally elected positions, Volcano CSD board members are volunteers who receive no compensation for their service.