By Tonya Strickland -- The countdown continues for the Top 10 Stories of 2009 selected by the Tribune editorial staff.The Nacimiento Water Project — the county’s largest public works effort — heads into its final months of construction in 2010. But even as residents and businesses prepare to use the millions of gallons of drinking water that the 45-mile pipeline will carry, one city is still figuring out how to pay for it, and the fallout from three construction deaths continues.

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