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Residents who live in the Remen Tract neighborhood — an unincorporated plot of land located within Pleasanton — have depended on temporary fire hoses connected to fire hydrants for months as their main source of water for their homes.
These temporary connections, according to neighbors and a city spokesperson, were installed as a remedy for a main waterline that broke in August 2024.
After previously notifying the residents, the city removed its fire hose connections last Wednesday — mainly due to safety concerns regarding the rest of the city’s water supply — leaving those six homes and residents without water.
“You can’t wash your dishes, you can’t flush your toilet, can’t take a shower, which doesn’t sound that bad but then when you have no way of flushing a toilet, it’s pretty gross,” Rob Schurhoff, a Pleasanton resident since 2003 who moved into the Remen Tract neighborhood in 2019, told the Weekly.
And what was more surprising to Schurhoff and several other residents who live in that neighborhood was the city informing them it will not be fixing their waterline, leaving many scrambling to figure out how or if they should pay for those repairs.
“We pay our bills to the city of Pleasanton, not to an outsourced water company,” Chris Habluetzel, another resident of the Remen Tract neighborhood, told the Weekly. “The city is just trying not to take responsibility and I think it’s a fight with the county, state and city. They’re just trying to point fingers … they’re trying to push it down on the little guy — us, the homeowners.”
According to city communication manager Heather Tiernan, on Aug. 13, 2024, a private waterline — a pipe that transports potable water from the city’s main water supply to individual homes — broke in the Remen Tract neighborhood.
Rhonda Hempy, who lives in the neighborhood but is not affected because she is on a different waterline, told the Weekly the waterline has broken multiple times over the years and throughout those years, the city has fixed it. But when it broke again last year, Hempy and her neighbors said instead of seeing repairs, they received a letter from the city informing them that it is now their responsibility to fix the pipe.
Since then, the city has provided a temporary fix; connecting fire hoses from several fire hydrants to those homes impacted by the broken waterline. The expectation from the city was that the residents would work on repairing the pipe in the meantime.
“All this time everybody has been getting their drinking water out of a hose,” Hempy said. “Today (May 1) one of the neighbors came over and took a shower at our house and they’ll probably be coming over to take more showers.”
According to Tiernan, those fire hoses were never meant as a long-term solution. She said because the hoses were above ground, if they ruptured or were damaged it could “put the entire (water) system at risk”.
“Fire hoses are not designed for continuous use as a permanent water line with the lack of the structural protection, durability and sanitary safeguards required for long-term potable water service,” Tiernan said. “Because the City’s water system is fully interconnected, a break in the hose could have created a pathway for contaminated water to enter the broader distribution system, potentially affecting water quality beyond the immediate area.”
She said that even though the city wanted to “make sure the property owners have enough time to make the necessary repairs”, the city had to cut off the water supply.
“The City removed the temporary water connections serving six homes in the Remen Tract on Wednesday, April 30 at about 2:00 p.m,” Tiernan confirmed with the Weekly. “The deadline previously communicated to the property owners to have their private line fixed was Friday, April 25.”
One of the six homes belongs to Karla Georgis, who lived at her home in the Remen Tract for over 40 years before moving to southern California. Georgis currently rents her home out and said she has never had any issues like this before.
“The city just can’t turn off water for everybody,” Georgis said. “What if you have a medical issue … and you have to have that water.”
She also said that neighbors weren’t notified that the city would turn off the water, despite Tiernan’s assertion that they were.
For Debbie Martin, who rents a different home in the neighborhood, the stress of not having water available due to her husband’s medical needs is very real. She said while they currently have a temporary space to live out of, when that ends they might have to go to a hotel.
Some of the unaffected residents have been sharing their water with neighbors, like Hempy who has been flinging hoses over the fence of the renters who live in Georgis’ old home. However, the residents are still left wondering who will take on the onus of paying for the repairs.
Tiernan said the reason the city isn’t taking on the financial burden is because, legally the city cannot use funds from its water enterprise fund — which typically pays for these types of repair projects — to pay for repairs on private land.
“The water system within Remen Tract is privately owned and just as the city does not maintain individual property owners’ water lines, it cannot maintain the private water lines within the Remen Tract,” Tiernan said.
She said the city’s responsibility ends at the boundary of the tract and, as with any other private property in the city, “the responsibility for maintaining and repairing private water lines lies with the property owners.”
“The City cannot legally use public funds — including water rate revenues — to repair or upgrade privately owned infrastructure,” she added. “This is consistent with the City’s policy for all residents: when a water line issue occurs on private property, it is the property owner’s responsibility to address it.”
Schurhoff, however, said the city’s argument doesn’t make sense and pointed to the city’s municipal code regarding water which, in part, states that “the territory served by the water system of the city shall be all territory now within the boundaries of the city and, at the discretion of the council, any other territory as the city may determine.”
In regard to the connections to the water system, the city’s municipal code also states that, “All service connections, meters, main extensions and installations paid for by applicants, and all other facilities furnished by the department or the city, whether located wholly or partially on public or private property of the city, shall be and remain the property of the city, and the department shall have the right to repair, replace and maintain the same.”
“It doesn’t matter whether or not we are in the boundary of the city of Pleasanton because it’s in the city municipal code that they serve whatever area they decide to serve,” Schurhoff said. “They decided to serve us sometime 75 years ago and for whatever reason they don’t want to fulfill their responsibility at this point.”
Other neighbors like Habluetzel also said that it doesn’t make sense that the affected residents have been paying their water bills for so long just for the city not to use those funds to pay for the repairs needed. He also said while they had the temporary hoses, he didn’t like the fact he had to continue to pay a water bill that didn’t quite correlate with how much water was being used.
While he and other residents continue to demand proof that they have to pick up the infrastructure repair costs — something Habluetzel said they haven’t seen yet — Tiernan reiterated that the city has been working with the residents to resolve the issue since it first came up last August.
“The City remains committed to working with the property owners,” Tiernan said. “The city has and continues to offer meetings with our engineering team that would expedite the work needed to repair the private water line.”
She said while the rest of the neighborhood is not affected by the broken waterline, the situation with the six affected homes is not the outcome the city preferred. However, she said the city had a “duty to protect the safety of our water system.”
“The city understands that the uncertainty of a permanent water supply is very challenging, but we have a responsibility to all 22,000 of our water customers to maintain the reliability and safety of our water system,” she said.
As of May 2, Tiernan said the city is working with one of the affected homeowners to coordinate the repairs. She said the city provided contact information for “city-verified contractors experienced in water line installation” and that the city is also considering offering a temporary water source while the property owners “work to permanently repair the water line break.”
Although Hempy said she doesn’t think lawyers will be getting involved, litigation is something that others are considering. “Oh yeah, we’re talking to lawyers,” Schurhoff said.
