Dingee Pressure Zone/Estates Improvements
EBMUD is planning to reduce the storage volume in Estates Reservoir and remove Dingee Reservoir from service to improve water quality and meet current seismic standards.
Older Facilities Require Upgrades
The work at Estates and Dingee reservoirs is part of a larger Central Oakland Hills Cascade (COHC) Pressure Zone Improvements Project, which includes 13 planned improvements over the next 20 years for water distribution facilities in the Oakland Hills south of Highway 24 and north of the Oakland/San Leandro border.
The Pressure Zone Improvements Project will:
- Improve water supply reliability through redundancy delivery systems,
- Improve water quality by increasing turnover in neighborhood reservoirs
- Avoid rehabilitation costs for facilities that could be removed from service.
Work at Estates and Dingee reservoirs specifically includes:
- Installing two concrete storage tanks (2.8 million gallon capacity each) inside the footprint of the existing Estates Reservoir basin.
- Removing Dingee Reservoir from service upon completion of the two replacements tanks at Estates Reservoir.
- Adding landscaping to areas where facilities have been removed.
Several alternatives were considered when designing improvements to the part of the water system that includes Estates and Dingee reservoirs, including rehabilitating existing storage facilities. The improvements described above were selected because they provide the most cost-effective means of improving water quality and seismic safety.
The Estates Reservoir site was identified as the optimum site for locating the new water storage reservoirs because it can accommodate both tanks, has fewer construction impacts than locating new tanks in the Dingee Reservoir footprint, has adequate space for construction staging, and maintains the existing Montclair Pumping Plant.
Schedule
EBMUD is in the process of hiring an architectural design firm to independently develop a plan that will minimize visual changes, in keeping with the architectural/aesthetic value of the existing facility. The architect will participate in upcoming community meetings; the next meeting is tentatively scheduled for February 2008.
A Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) will be available for community input in the summer of 2008. EBMUD’s Board of Directors is expected to consider the Final EIR for certification in late 2008. Design will follow with construction expected to begin in 2012.
The Pressure Zone Planning Program Study is available below as a PDF file that can be viewed and printed
through Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free software 
Facility Vicinity Map - (30 kb)
Pressure Zone Planning Program Study (3 MB)
If you have questions or concerns, please contact Michelle Blackwell at mblackwe@ebmud.com or (510) 287-2053.