SAN FERNANDO : Emergency Repairs OKd for Reservoir

One of the two San Fernando city water reservoirs damaged by the Northridge earthquake has been targeted for emergency repairs by the City Council.

On Monday night, the council authorized the city public works director to hire a consultant who will design the repairs to the reservoir, which has leaked as much as 600,000 gallons of drinking water since Jan. 17. Bids to do the repair work will go out in a few weeks, and the work is expected to be done by the end of September, Public Works Director Mike Drake said.

Within a week of the quake, divers inspected Reservoir 3A at 13655 Foothill Blvd. and found the sealant that closes the gap between concrete slabs at the bottom of the reservoir had broken.

The City Council also authorized a study of the older Reservoir 4, next to Reservoir 3A, which suffered cracking during the earthquake. Engineers are to determine if that reservoir should be repaired or replaced.

Repairing Reservoir 3A, which was built in 1991 and holds 2.5 million gallons of water, is expected to cost about $200,000. Fixing both could cost as much as $2.75 million, city officials have estimated. Reservoir 4, built in 1962, holds 1 million gallons of water.

The issue of repairing the reservoir was raised at Monday night’s meeting by Councilman Doude Wysbeek, who said that about 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of water had been leaking from Reservoir 3A every day. He was concerned about the loss of water which city pumps have drawn from the ground and the worsening of the damage through corrosion and erosion.

Drake said that even when Reservoir 3A is emptied and repaired, city residents will not notice an interruption in service because they will still have the use of Reservoir 4 and will also use the slightly more expensive water from the Metropolitan Water District.

San Fernando also has two other reservoirs that were not damaged by the earthquake.