California IN BRIEF : FREMONT : Water District Saves With Rubber Dam

A giant airbag, billed as the tallest single-span rubber dam in the nation, is being used to collect rainfall to replenish a ground-water reservoir. “When we get an advance weather report that rain is on the way, we can inflate Rubber Dam No. 3 in two hours and get ready to save as much water as we can,” said Phil Utic, operations manager for the Alameda County Water District. The district serves 265,000 people in Fremont, Newark and Union City. The 291-foot-long dam, built by a Japanese firm in 1989 for about $5 million, is 13 feet high. Fully inflated, it can create a 50-million-gallon lake for pumping into nearly a dozen former quarry ponds and 20 wells throughout the area.