The small coastal enclave of Bolinas was without water Saturday night after its public utility district shut off supply to the entire town due to a “substantial water leak” within the system.
The Bolinas Community Public Utility District told residents in a post on its website to start filling up containers with extra water and expect to be without running water for the evening. The utility said that a contractor was on site by 6 p.m. Saturday and was working to repair the leak as quickly as possible, though the district didn’t say where the leak was. Water was expected to go off around 6:45 p.m.
A proudly hippie township 13 miles north of San Francisco in unincorporated Marin County, Bolinas is home to some 1,200 people — a number that’s stayed low for years, largely due to limits on access to water. In 1971, the utility district’s board of directors declared a water shortage emergency that created a moratorium on new connections to the municipal water supply.
Leaks have been prevalent this spring around Bolinas. Minutes from the district’s February 2026 meeting show the utility dealt with major leaks on residential roads that flooded landscaping, and also required the district to call its emergency contractor, Piazza Construction.
Bolinas gets its water from two reservoirs and the Arroyo Hondo Creek. As of February, both reservoirs were full. In 2024, the district connected two new wells to its water distribution system in an effort to build out its emergency water supply.