Mail delays already being reported

Some Olivehurst and Plumas Lake residents are reporting delays in their mail service, just weeks into a planned transfer of mail sorting from an Olivehurst facility to one in West Sacramento.

Those residents, and a Yuba County supervisor, said such patterns are exactly what U.S Postal Service officials said wouldn't happen when they announced plans for the Olivehurst center closure earlier this year.

"I was like, I really need this stuff," said Amy Gallagher, who moved into an Olivehurst house with her boyfriend two months ago and panicked when her unemployment check, among other mail, was three days late.

While her boyfriend is serving overseas with the U.S. Air Force, she said, she is managing the homefront.

"I'm trying to take care of everything on my part, and I can't," Gallagher said.

Several other residents in south Yuba County reported similar problems, with Social Security checks, bills, Netflix movies and the regular assortment of junk mail coming days later than normal over the last week.

On a forum on Plumas Lake Life, several people expressed frustration, with one saying postal officials at the Olivehurst office told the poster the mail volume had dropped from 1,500 pieces a day to 500 since the changeover to West Sacramento. That process is set to be complete by late October.

Gus Ruiz, a spokesman for the postal service, said external testing done since the changeover began didn't show a negative effect on service to customers.

"We'll continue to work through any anomalies that are out there," Ruiz said, adding the official overseeing the transition has been informed of the report of delays.

"There might be some blips as part of the transition process, but it's certainly not a trend," Ruiz said.

Olivehurst-area Supervisor Mary Jane Griego, who helped lead the charge against closing the facility, said reports of mail delays were a familiar, sad song.

"It's déjá vu all over again," Griego said, referring to a previous shutdown of the sorting center in 2005. When customers complained of delays, the Postal Service reversed course and reopened the center.

"I know it's been a struggle for West Sacramento to get their own mail out, even before they added ours on top of it," she said.

The transfer affects all postal customers whose ZIP codes start with "959," an area encompassing Sutter, Yuba, Butte, Sierra and Nevada counties.

Griego said the county is setting up a website to collect mail service complaints from Mid-Valley residents and others affected, part of an ongoing campaign to get Postal Service brass to change course.

She said postal district officials still haven't complied with other requests the county's made, such as turning over a copy of a report on the environmental impact of closing the facility. Griego and others maintain the added traffic from shipping mail further distances should be considered in terms of air quality.

"We looked at this issue inside and out, and we saw it would be very difficult for them to do this in a timely fashion, given the logistics," Griego said of mail delivery from West Sacramento.

At the Olivehurst post office Tuesday afternoon, customers picking up or dropping off mail said they'd noticed delays in service, but so far hadn't been inconvenienced by it.

"The bills have been a couple days late," said Michael Martinez of Plumas Lake. Chimed in wife Linda Martinez, "The later they send those, the better."

But Gallagher, who's since started a new job, said she'll be paying closer attention in the next few months.

"When you've just moved into a house, every piece of mail is very important," she said. "I'm going to be making sure I'm getting the mail I'm expecting."