PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND …

 T he Lee Vining Public Utility District (LVPUD), like many other Mono County Public Utility Districts (PUDs), is understaffed, underfunded, and underperforming. This has largely gone unnoticed by the county until now, when a proposed $20 million Highway 395 rehabilitation project scheduled for Lee Vining exposed some serious inadequacies in the district’s infrastructure. 

“It has been determined that this infrastructure is leaking, which is causing damage to the highway and poses a risk for catastrophic failure of the public utility district’s system,” said Mary Snyder, Mono County Special Projects Staff, in a presentation to the Mono County Board of Supervisors on November 5. 

What was once a long-term concern — replacing outdated infrastructure — has now become an immediate priority. However, LVPUD lacks the resources to make these critical upgrades, according to a staff report presented on November 5.

With only about 100 service connections, LVPUD has limited capacity to raise funds through rate increases. The report notes that as of June 30, 2024, the district’s unrestricted fund balance stands at approximately $725,000. 

Early estimates for the infrastructure project suggest it will cost $1.8 million. However, with a 30% contingency, the total cost could rise to $2.4 million, considering construction won’t begin for another two years. 

Given these figures, the county will likely need to bear the bulk of the cost. The Mono County Board of Supervisors ultimately voted to support and guarantee funds for the infrastructure replacement on November 5. 

“I’m confident that we’ll be able to identify funding for it,” said Mono County Supervisor Bob Gardner at the meeting. 

Supervisor Jennifer Kreitz was less optimistic. 

“I think we, as the board, have to understand that if there isn’t grant funding, what we’re essentially saying is that the county will need to grant the funds,” she said. “I don’t think we can do that for all the PUDs in Mono County that are in similar situations.” 

Kreitz requested changes to the language of the document to limit the county’s potential liability. 

Paul McFarland, incoming District 3 Supervisor who serves on the Lee Vining PUD board, emphasized the urgent need for infrastructure improvement. 

“We’ve replaced sections of pipe under the highway repeatedly over the years, and anyone who drives through town can see the patchwork from the work we’ve done,” McFarland added. “What this project allows is for all that work to be done at once.” 

On November 5, Mono County Supervisors authorized staff to approve a cooperative agreement with Caltrans, under which Caltrans would include the infrastructure update as part of the Highway 395 rehabilitation project. This would require the county to make a financial commitment to guarantee the funds upfront. 

 By incorporating the work into the Caltrans bid process, Caltrans will manage the bidding and contracting, which McFarland said will reduce costs for both LVPUD and the county. 

The infrastructure work will not delay the highway project, and construction is still tentatively scheduled to begin in Summer 2026, said Michael Lingberg, Public Information Officer for Caltrans District 9. 

In a follow-up action on November 12, Mono Supervisors authorized a separate agreement with LVPUD to cooperate in securing funding for the project. 

This meeting comes about a month after the Mono County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) met to assess the Municipal Service Reviews (MSRs) for several public utility districts, including LVPUD. 

Public Utility District MSRs are required to be conducted every ten years, but many districts in Mono County haven’t had their reviews updated in more than 15 years. 

And in that October 10 meeting, when LAFCO got the reports back, they were of mixed quality, ranging from adequate to extremely poor. 

“I don’t quite know where to start, other than I was shocked, appalled, and very disappointed in the reports,” LAFCO Chair Tom Cage said at the meeting. 

McFarland, who also serves on the LAFCO board, said in an interview that there were so many errors in the Lee Vining MSR that he had to stop trying to edit it halfway through. 

Even more troubling were the findings in the reports: Lee Vining has only two water tanks (the report only mentioned one) and lacks a secondary water source, which could be catastrophic during a crisis. 

“The storage capacity for the system provides less than two hours of 1,500 gallons per minute of fire flow during maximum-day demand,” the report states. “All community water systems should have at least two sources of drinking water for system redundancy.” 

Simply put, a wildfire could drain LVPUD’s water supply. But addressing these issues requires time, money, and staffing — resources that LVPUD evidently does not have. 

“It took us six years to get approval for a groundwater characterization study [for a second water source],” McFarland said during the LAFCO meeting. “In that time, the cost of the study went from $250,000 to $1.5 million. And that’s just for the study—the administrative hurdles and costs associated with getting these done for a special district with no staff are nearly impossible to overcome.” 

The Bridgeport and June Lake Public Utility Districts’ MSRs were also reviewed in the October 10 meeting and revealed their own inefficiencies—both in the quality of their reports and their actual performance. 

“All three of these agencies show deficiencies in different ways,” Cage said. “But they were all consistent in having no long-term plans, finding it too expensive to do small repairs, and being underfinanced.” 

The June Lake MSR, for example, used financial data from 2018. But aside from outdated reports, June Lake also has aging infrastructure, with many of its pipes dating back to the late 1930s. 

“To re-plumb three miles of water line in June Lake would probably cost $7M,” Cage said in an interview. “It’s not something that can be funded overnight.” 

The broader issue facing these Public Utility Districts is the declining availability of volunteers for public service roles, McFarland said. 

He attributes this to the increasing demands of modern life—people are busier, work longer hours, and have less time for community involvement. 

As a result, the aging volunteer base is struggling to recruit new members, particularly for roles that now require more specialized skills and a greater time commitment. 

The county has created a new staff position to support special districts and ensure they have the capacity to meet regulatory requirements and sustain services, which should help address this issue. That position has yet to be filled, though.