Helicopter hauls pipes into San Lorenzo Valley Water District treatment plant

BOULDER CREEK, Calif. (KION) 88 large surface water collection pipes were flown by helicopter from downtown Boulder Creek to the water treatment plant, Tuesday.

The road along Highway 236 is too narrow to squeeze the 40 foot pipes through. By using a helicopter the Water District was able to move the piping in just 52 minutes.

“It's hazy out there. It's still smokey,” pilot with AirLift Glenn Davis said.

Those are conditions Smith and his crew are used to. They spent the last few days fighting wildfires in Oregon in the Vietnam era Huey Helicopter.

“We'll do a little maintenance and then back to the fires,” Smith said.

More than seven miles of piping was destroyed by the CZU Lightning Complex Fires.

2,500 homes in the Boulder Creek area were without drinkable water until Monday night. Now it's only 500 homes, including everywhere west of Highway 236, and parts of the Brookdale area. 300 homes still have no water at all.

“I’ve been taking showers at friends in another town,” Boulder Creek resident Gabriel Petersen said.

All of the test results so far show no contamination in the water. More test results are still pending to determine if the melted pipes and water tanks contaminated the source in the fire damaged areas.

The piping brought in Tuesday will be the temporary fix for the four million gallons of water lost.

“We are still asking people to conserve in the Boulder Creek area, and this pipeline will help restore that storage we hope by September 12 to have most of that storage back. We’re putting emergency pipe lines in to pump water into those tanks,” water district manager Rick Rogers said.

The San Lorenzo Valley Water District estimates there's $11 million in damages.