update: Meeting was rescheduled to Friday, 29th from Thurday, 28th There will be a Winery Committee meeting on Friday, August 29th at 7:00pm, in the clubhouse. The goal of the meeting is to organize and prioritize the comments from our consultants so that a written response can be drafted for approval bat Tuesday's board meeting, with Thursday's Board meeting as a fall back if additional changes are required.

Earlier this summer you received a request in the newsletter to conserve water. This special mailing is to inform you that it is urgent to do so for the next several months.

Cuesta relies on water stored in reservoirs and stream flow diverted from Woodhams Creek to meet our summer water needs. Woodhams flow typically supplies about 45% of our summer demand, with the remaining demand being made up for from water stored in the reservoirs. We are not permitted to divert water from Mindego Creek to supplement our water supply and to recharge the reservoirs until October 1st, and we cannot perform this diversion unless there is at least 1 cubic foot per second of flow. We started the summer with full reservoirs, but stream flow in Woodhams Creek is lower than normal, reducing the total supply of water available to Cuesta over the summer months. Furthermore, lower than normal flows in Mindego last spring and through the summer indicate that we will not be able to divert water from Mindego on October 1st and likely will have to wait until the first heavy rains to do so. Taken together, this means that reservoir supplies are not only being depleted faster than normal, but we have to rely on reservoir water for far longer than we normally do – until at least December and perhaps longer if we do not get good rains in December. This will stretch our water reserves to the limit.

The attachment below contains a selection of historical winery articles from the Guild Gazette.

There will be a community meeting about the winery on Wednesday, August 20th from 7pm to 9pm at the Cuesta clubhouse.

put water information here.