At a special meeting Tuesday, the Amador Water Agency Board of Directors voted to let the Gold Rush Ranch Water Supply Assessment stand as originally written.

"Statistics may be defined as a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty," said American economist and statistician W.A. Wallis, and the AWA Board and staff have been grappling for weeks with water supply statistics and the uncertainty of future conditions.

The special meeting was a discussion, continued from the July 9, 2009 AWA Board meeting, of the Agency's Water Supply Assessment (WSA) for the proposed Gold Rush Ranch and Golf Resort that the Board approved in January of 2008.

At the start of the meeting, AWA Board President Terry Moore proposed a motion to launch discussion: "The Amador Water Agency will take no further action on the matter of revisiting or amending the current Water Supply Assessment for the Gold Rush Ranch and Golf Resort."

The WSA was performed by an independent consultant and estimates the county's water demand for the next 20 years. Sutter Creek Planning Commission and City Council will use the assessment to analyze the impacts of the Gold Rush Project on local water resources as part of the environmental impact studies required for new development.

AWA District 1 Director Bill Condrashoff has disputed some of the findings of the assessment. AWA engineering staff twice re-examined the assessment in detail, as did an outside engineering consultant, with all studies concluding that the county's existing water supply is sufficient to meet the estimated demand of the Gold Rush project plus future planned growth.

Condrashoff and AWA Manager of Engineering and Planning Gene Mancebo presented various statistical approaches to evaluating current water use in the county, the uncertainties of future water use, and the planned water needs of the Gold Rush development. For over an hour, a full house of community members added a public perspective for the Board's consideration.

When the motion was ultimately called, Moore asked for a roll call vote, noting that, "this is an important vote." Directors Don Cooper and Gary Thomas voted "aye" along with Moore, Condrashoff voted "no," and Director Debbie Dunn was undecided and abstained. The motion carried.

As a result of the issues raised by consideration of the Gold Rush project WSA, the Board also discussed and unanimously approved holding a public workshop to continue educating the community, AWA Board, and other local land use decision-makers on the policies and procedures for water supply assessments for new development.