Recycled Water Pipeline Project Continues This Week

A recycled-water pipeline project, which will bring as much as an annual average of 820,000 gallons per day of recycled waste water to Danville and Blackhawk, is starting this week as workers begin excavations to identify buried utilities that may conflict with pipe placement.

The excavations are scheduled through October with pipeline installation scheduled to begin Nov. 4 and be completed by summer 2011.

The line will run along Camino Tassajara between Hansen Lane and Blackhawk Road as well as along Blackhawk Road from Camino Tassajara to Deerfield Way. There will be spurs off of those routes.

Recycled water will be available in more than five years to irrigate parks, golf courses, medians and schools in Danville and Blackhawk.

Construction management of the pipeline project is overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on behalf of DERWA, a joint powers authority formed in 1995 by the Dublin San Ramon Services District and the East Bay Municipal Utility District.

A recycled water treatment plant was built in 2006 next to a Dublin San Ramon Services District waste-water facility in Pleasanton. Since then, pipelines, pumping stations and reservoirs have been built in Dublin and San Ramon. Recycled water started to be used in 2006.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District sent out construction notices to about 10,300 residential and business addresses, beyond just the pipeline project area, in Danville and Blackhawk in mid-September.

Notices will also be sent to Danville residents within a 500-foot radius of the project boundaries, including businesses and homeowner associations, seven days in advance of any work, said Michael Stella, senior civil engineer for Danville.

In about a week, signs will be put up on Camino Tassajara and on Sycamore Valley Road to inform motorists about the project and by mid- to late-October, changeable message boards at each end of the project will list dates and times of lane closures, said Stella.

Once the recycled-water project is complete, the town intends to resurface the pavement on Camino Tassajara and Crow Canyon Road as part of a construction contract that began last year. Eastbound lanes on Camino Tassajara from Sycamore Valley Road to just before Crow Canyon Road have been repaved. 

A contractor will return in the summer to finish repaving the roads impacted by the project.