Posted on November 14, 2016
By Natalie Williams, Big Bear Grizzly
The Big Bear Municipal Water District is one step closer to securing a long-term maintenance dredging permit. The MWD lake improvement committee — composed of director Vince Smith and board president Charlie Brewster — discussed drafted environmental and engineering request for proposals at the committee meeting Nov. 10.
“Here’s the deal, the minute we have this document and somebody assigned to do the environmental, and somebody assigned to do the engineering, we’re filling out our permits and sprinting to LA on the train,” MWD General Manager Mike Stephenson said.
The water district is working with the Army Corps of Engineers to pursue a 10- to 20-year maintenance dredging permit. This would allow the MWD to dredge to an established lake baseline without having to request individual permits each time.
The MWD will consider both cost and efficiency when selecting a proposal, Stephenson said. Whether or not to include a start date on the documents was a point of debate at the meeting. The staff and board members decided on a target date for completion of May 15.
Individuals who would like to conduct dredging are invited to do engineering work side-by-side with the MWD’s environmental work, but the water district has not seen any interest, Stephenson said. Please join us,” he said.
“So, we’re going to give the commercial guys and the private people the opportunity to parallel with us, get their own engineering, get their own approvals, it’s going to be a lot easier if they’re paralleling with us, but nobody is doing it,” Brewster asked.
“Accurate, sir,” Stephenson replied.
Moving forward, the MWD will not approve dredging projects without a proper design and maintenance components, Stephenson said.
Brewster and Smith are reviewing the request for proposal documents over the weekend, and the MWD will start seeking bids for environmental and engineering work Nov. 15.
“We’re going to wait for the proposals to come back, this committee will review the proposals, they will recommend one of the proposals of each document to the full board and they will approve it in public session,” Stephenson said.
For more information on the MWD, visit www.bbmwd.com.
Source: Big Bear Grizzly
