Ranchos gets new water tank

Four-year-old plans for a shopping center across from Liberty High School finally changed 40.2 acres of fallow farmland — by adding a 175-foot water storage tank.

Madera County supervisors approved rezoning the land as “community commercial” in late 2014 on the condition, among others, that the developer would install the 500,000-gallon tank for the use of the Maintenance District-10A water system in the Madera Ranchos.

G.C. Brown Developers in Clovis began work Dec. 11 on the tank and its plumbing, which connects it to the district’s water system, on roughly 0.7 acres along Road 36 on the southeast corner of its commercial land. A building permit hadn’t yet been secured for the large shopping center on the north side of the same parcel.

If completed as previously conceived, the “Liberty Village” shopping center may feature a drug store, gas station, convenience store, two fast food restaurants, and a library.

The tank, being erected at the developer’s expense, is expected to mitigate the center’s impact on the local water system.