RCSD ORDERED TO ACT ON GYPPO APPLICATION
Breaking News! The Humboldt County Superior Court has ordered the Redway Community Service District (RCSD) to make a decision on the application for water service that the Gyppo Ale Mill has had in since January. The deadline will be September 19th! We are exceedingly excited about this news. This entire experience dealing with the service district has been extremely frustrating and pain staking slow. We have been doing our best to keep our chin up but to be honest our passion has started to falter and this news very much revives our vigor.
We are crossing our fingers that at this point, the RCSD will approve the application. We feel good about this because at the last board meeting, general manager, John Rogers indicated that the district has been providing between 30k-35k feet of water a day to CalFire. It wasn’t clear if this was cubic feet or gallons but if it is cubic feet this is over 220,000 gallons of water a day! But the good news about this and I’ll quote Rogers directly from the Redwood Times article, “So far that had not caused any specific difficulties for us in terms of our ability to keep our water tank full and maintain our safety standard and available supply for Redway,” Fantastic news! Just to put it in perspective, we estimate that we will need 30k gallons per MONTH. A small fraction of what CalFire is using a DAY! We still find it baffling that they will not provide us water service.
We are jumping with joy about this but if you have followed along through this journey with us, you’ll know that we have jumped with joy before. There are two members of the RCSD board that do not want our project to come online. These board members promised us that if we could provide a legal contract with a different wastewater facility to take our brewery wastewater, they would provide us with water. We did just that only to run in to more hurdles, i.e. a possible building moratorium that was found to be unnecessary and a painstakingly slow reworking of their new service application.
Southern Humboldt and Northern Humboldt we know we have asked a lot of you and have in the past promised that it was the last but we must take it back and again ask for your support. We need to have Gyppo Ale Mill supports, craft beer supporters, locally made supporters, community heart supporters to join us at the meeting that will take place when a decision on our application will FINALLY be made. In the past, having the public there to show their support goes a long ways in persuading this board to allow this brewery to come alive. The date and time of this meeting is yet to be determined but the second we know, we will pass that information on to you. Please check back regularly for updates. We ask that you help us spread the word and bring a friend to this meeting!
Furthermore, if you are up to the task, please consider writing the RCSD board NOW and let them know how you feel about the Gyppo Ale Mill brewery and what it can do not only for our community but our economy. Write in your own words or copy and paste the template below. The email address is redwaycsd@gmail.com.
We thank, thank, thank you for your continual support. You are what keeps us going and inspires us to continue this uphill journey.
Cheers!
Julie Peacock & Josh Monschke
RCSD EMAIL TEMPLATE
Dear Redway Community Service District Board and Staff,
We kindly request that you approve the application for water service that Josh Monschke & Julie Peacock of the Gyppo Ale Mill submitted in January of this year. If the RCSD is capable of supply CalFire with over 220,000 gallons of water per day, 30,000 gallons of water per month should not be an issue. The capacity is clearly there.
Why allow this project to come online? Southern Humboldt is on the precipice of change. It is up to the current community to help lead us into a direction that is socially, environmentally and economically responsible. By adding the craft beer industry to southern Humboldt we add revenue and additional tax base along with good paying employment opportunities. Craft breweries are known for their community involvement and product donation. In California alone the craft beer industry gave over 200 million dollars of in kind donations in 2013 to non-profit organization. The Gyppo Ale Mill already has a history of doing this and their doors are not even open yet.
Enough time, energy and money has been wasted by both sides, please put aside all personal feeling in regard to this project and let this brewery come to life.
Sincerely,