Infrastructure Definition Infrastructure is the physical foundation of a community. It consists of community resources that include roads, schools, fire and police buildings and hardware, libraries, the distribution systems that provide natural gas, electricity, water, sewers, telecommunications and broadcast system access. Road, water, sewer, and school infrastructures in our community are administered and owned by public enterprises as are the police and fire departments. This arrangement is very common throughout the United States.

When essential infrastructure is owned and operated by public entities it becomes the public’s responsibility, through their elected representatives, to maintain and upgrade infrastructure to satisfy modern standards of performance and safety and to accommodate the increased burden placed on infrastructure by growth. A survey of our community’s public infrastructure reveals a history of neglect and many inadequate and overburdened systems.

Schools, Roads, Water and Sewer The last new school in our community was built in 1964 when the school population was less than one third of what it is today. Forty two years later we have added one building at the high school, remodeled our elementary schools, and now after 8 years of dispute we will be rebuilding our middle school. The need for more elementary class room space will be satisfied with portable class rooms.We do not have the funds to hire more teachers so classroom crowding and large class sizes are now ingrained and permanent attributes of our public schools.

No new major roads to increase circulation and reduce congestion at busy intersections have been constructed in our community in over 70 years. The major roads today were all here seventy years ago when the coast side was a small coastal farm community. Today we are a large bedroom community and part of the powerful industrial complex known as Silicon Valley. The major access roads remain Highways 1 and 92, both of which are largely two lane full access roadways. Highway improvements on 92 are delayed and the HWY 1 tunnel project is years from completion. Although these improvements will enhance the reliability of these roads, the improvements will do nothing to increase traffic flows. The most significant improvement is the scheduled improvements to the intersections at Main Street and HWY 1 with HWY 92. However, this improvement is considerably smaller than the improvements originally recommended by CalTrans traffic engineers. Today there is no viable plan to solve the existing congestion problem every commuter resident of our community must face on a daily basis.

Twenty years ago the community embarked upon a major water system improvement, the Crystal Springs Project. The Coastside County Water District (CCWD) has yet to complete all of the improvements that were originally linked to this project. When the pipeline renewal projects are all finally completed within the next five years many of the major supply and treatment components of the water system will nonetheless require additional improvements. The Montara Water and Sanitary District has a permanent water connection moritorium and little hope of rescinding it soon.

Over the past 50 years water safety and health standards have been raised to protect the public health, but none of these mandated improvements were imposed with the funding to pay for them. The expenses for all mandated improvements will be paid for by community water service users.

If the community continues to grow at a rate of 1% per year for the next 20 years we will completely use up our water system capacity and will have no additional capacity for emergency requirements or reserves to mitigate the recurrent droughts that must be anticipated. Today less than 40% of the water consumed by our community is generated from local sources, the other 60% relies upon the San Francisco public water system which itself depends upon the northern California Hetch Hetchy water shed system. We have only one substantial water impoundment in our system inventory and that resource is in jeopardy of being entirely lost because the annual dredging required to maintain it has not been permitted for most of the past 20 years. Should we lose this water impoundment and water  supply, we will have to increase our reliance upon the Northern California regional water system and at a time when it too will be under enormous stress.

There is one bright spot in the public infrastructure, the new sewer plant. After years of debate the Sewer Authority Midcoast has finally built, at the insistence of the EPA, a modern sewage treatment facility. The EPA required its construction to provide the treatment capacity to process sewage and, in the future, prevent raw sewage from being dumped untreated into the ocean. We still need a storm water collection system and additional upgrades to the soiled water collection system to prevent the annual spoiling of the waters off our shoreline during the rainy season. When it rains our collection systems are overwhelmed and raw sewage finds it way into our local streams and ultimately into the ocean off our coast.

Today with a historic growth in population in California and the resulting increases in the cost of water and requirements for more of it, we have no water reclamation project capable of replacing or supplementing our water needs. Reclaimed water could offset the system burden imposed by golf courses, cemeteries, agribusiness, parks, and residential lawns, or it could be used to restore or create coastal estuaries. The substantial agricultural business interests in our community, a large employer of local labor providing jobs and wealth to people living here, uses approximately 30% of our local water capacity. A low cost, safe and reliable water product for this industry is essential to its continued existence. Without an expansion of the local water supply, that would include harvesting and impounding more of the community‘s abundant local water, we will see the cost of water for both commercial and residential users steadily increase. This could well create a job and wealth loss for our community.

Regional Responsibility Those of us who live in this community live here because of the beauty and quality of life it provides. That is made possible by our place in the larger regional economy and infrastructure. Our future success and the region’s depend upon everyone being good citizens and shouldering their portion of the responsibility for infrastructure. If we let our water and sewer infrastructure become marginal, substandard and degraded, we will inevitably be placing a greater burden on regional sources. Water is the most obvious example of this dependency. If we do not husband and maximize our local resources and infrastructure we will place a greater burden on the region making it and us less viable and desirable as a place to live and work.

Whether it is roads, water, sewers, or schools, each of these infrastructure components are a responsibility and requirement for a quality community and life style. If we continue to neglect these needs we will ultimately degrade our environment and decrease the region‘s ability to attract the enterprises and activities that have made northern California a desirable and exciting place to live and work.