IID Board moves forward with memorandum on The New River Improvement Project
The Imperial Irrigation District board members held their regular weekly meeting on Tuesday and on their agenda was a memorandum of understanding.
That memorandum is on the New River Improvement Project, News 11 was at the meeting to cover the developments.
At the beginning of the meeting an emergency item was discussed regarding the recent storm damage.
“In this service area within the imperial valley county area we did have over 100 power poles, estimated, go down, both transmission and distribution. We did have various outages, various outages throughout the county and a lot of them we were able to get them back, especially the critical ones we were able to get them back on as soon as possible,” said Robert Amparano, Emergency Management with IID.
The meeting then continued with various other topics being discussed, including the new river improvement project.
“Assembly bill 1079, by Assembly member Perez in 2009 required that the California Mexico Border Relations Council to develop a new river improvement project strategic plan,” said Antonio Ortega, Governmental Affairs Officer, with the IID.
Fast forward to 2016, the plan is to move forward with a project in three phases.
“It is consistent of three areas, it a trash screen at the border or right at the port of entry. There is an encasement portion which is that first stretch from the port, or right at the crossing in Calexico, the new river. And then the third portion of this project is a pump back water system from the Calexico city’s wastewater treatment plant,” explained Ortega.
That pump would pump water back through the new river channel for the purpose of a green space or green park.
“Assuming that phase one and two are completed Cali PA, through the regional water board has requested that the city of Calexico, Imperial Irrigation District and the County of Imperial help pay for the O and M cost,” added Ortega.
That cost would be $50,000 dollars per organization, annually. The board motioned to approve the memorandum with a 90 day out if need be.
