Alta Kavanaugh, who lost her home to the 2018 Cranston Fire, is finally rebuilding. A water issue held up construction. Kavanaugh attended the Idyllwild Water District (IWD) July Board of Directors meeting and asked the district to pay the bill for the construction of a culvert so construction to rebuild her house could begin. She also asked the district to investigate the source of an additional leak as she estimates hundreds of thousands of gallons has been lost between the three leaks. Two leaks were found and fixed.
The district had American Leak Detection come out to the property two years after the district was made aware of the issue.
“I first moved out to Deer Foot Lane in 1980,” Kavanaugh told the board.
“In 2001, I took a job in the Bay area to further my pension. Teachers don’t get a huge pension, but this job was worth it, but I always kept the Idyllwild house.”
Kavanaugh’s plan was to retire in Idyllwild. “Well, that was the plan until the Cranston Fire hit and took three homes total down to the foundation and then two other homes were virtually destroyed.
“Anyway, we just passed the three-year anniversary on Sunday and I marked that with coming here, coming to Idyllwild and looking at the beginnings of the foundation of my new home. That’s how long it takes — three years to deal with insurance to get started on building.”
Grants through Young Idyllwild, Inc and Art Alliance of Idyllwild assisted those who needed it. Kavanaugh thanked the community and locals who have played a role in the rebuilding of her house.
“I want to give the Idyllwild Water Board some appreciation and I can give you a little bit.” Two leaks on Deer Foot were standing in the way of the excavator moving forward. She showed pictures of the amount of water that was coming down into her property, “which I was aware of. I think you were aware of. You were told a number of times that we believe we have a leak.
“It [Cranston Fire] almost took the whole town. So grateful that it didn’t.
“My neighbor is at the lowest point of the bowl. And my house, my property is a little bit higher up … Anyway, you hired the American Leak Detectors to come out. They located the leak. Fixed it — fixed two of them as a matter of fact. And the one on my neighbor’s property, it is still running to the tune of about ¾ of a gallon per minute. I saw it today. I couldn’t believe it — the amount of water that’s coming out of there — fresh, clean water. It took too long. It took about two years for the leaks on my property to get repaired. That’s too long to hire a company to come up and find the leaks.”
Nothing was found until American Leak Detection came out. “We are glad. We are all glad that they did. It was two years of a lot of persistence, and worst of all, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water ran off.”
She explained that come spring after the Feb. 14, 2019 storm that wiped out the roads to Idyllwild, her property still had a lot of moisture. She explained that in the 40 years she has had her home, her property has been very dry.
“None of us have a crystal ball. We don’t know what’s underneath the ground. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water has been wasted and now two of the leaks have been stopped. That’s excellent. The chronology was that after that winter, I got a call from my neighbor and she said, ‘It’s drying up over here.’ I want to get started with construction and hire Garrett [Garrett Woods of GNW Construction, who was also present at the meeting]. He’s building both of our houses, which is quite wonderful. Can’t say enough good things about them. They’ve been involved in the water because they couldn’t build. They couldn’t build.” Water just started coming once they started excavating. “Garrett found where that water was coming from. He put in drains on the neighbor’s lot.”
She received a phone call from her neighbor asking if she ever had water on her property May or June and Kavanaugh said no. The neighbor said they had standing water. That was two years ago. Kavanaugh mentioned huge bins that were filled with concrete on the street and the fire trucks all staged on Deer Foot Lane during the fire and the weight possibly compromising the pipes. She showed the board photos of the water streams going through her property.
“This was the first indication there was a big problem that would stop construction.” She said the estimation of water was about 10,000 gallons a month on her neighbor’s property and then about 5,000 gallons on her property.
“I’m hoping we will have some commitment to infrastructure in our community with our water and I know Deer Foot is not high on the list for those pipes being replaced. My house was built in 1958, so I guess that’s not old enough compared to some of the places up here. But if the pipes are compromised, you don’t know. My neighbor hired soil engineers. She hired a local environmental geologist. She spent a lot of money trying to figure out what’s going on here? What do we do?”
The geologist said a spring was not likely. It was mentioned it could be affluence that comes down from other houses. Kavanaugh told the board, he also said a leak is the most likely, but he can’t stake his reputation on saying that’s what it is. We don’t know until those pipes are properly looked at. That was his educated guess. That it was a leak.
“When Garrett called me and said we have water on the lot, my heart sank.”
“Mine did, too,” Woods said.
He sent her photos of what the property looked like. They trenched the property and as they dug down, there was more and more water. They ended up placing a culvert on the property in March. The culvert cost $2,700 to install. It diverted the water. She said American Leak Detection was there looking at the site a week later.
After Kavanaugh presented her story, General Manager Leo Havener responded.
“The only thing we know is it is not coming out of the pipe on Deer Foot,” Havener said. “Where it’s coming from, we don’t know. We know that the leaks on Deer Foot, we did fix.” Kavanaugh responded, “Two of them. Three of them since 2015.” Havener agreed.
Havener later said, “We found what we found and took care of that and then had American Leak Detection come out because we could not find the leak. They found it and they fixed it. But that one that’s running right now, we don’t know where that’s coming from. The only thing we know is that it’s not coming out of our pipes.”
According to Havener, American Leak Detection told the district the leak was not coming from a district pipe. “I am happy we checked that area,” Havener said. Kavanaugh asked to have leaks included in the monthly report. She also said she did not know American Leak Detection was coming and it would have saved the cost of installing the culvert.
Havener said, “You call them [American Leak Detection] and they will let you know sometime in the future we will be there tomorrow and that’s basically how that works.”
The newspaper contacted American Leak Detection to find out how appointments work. The company said you make an appointment and there is a window of arrival on the appointment day.
Kavanaugh said that Havener approached her after the meeting and said he would be in touch. She has yet to hear from him.