A rural town in southeastern Washington has been selected to take part in a new pilot project to address critical water infrastructure needs.
“We’re losing gallons of water from pipe leaks,” said Charles Hill, city council member in Starbuck.
With an aging population and limited revenue, Starbuck – a town of fewer than 200 people along the Tucannon River in Columbia County – faces mounting infrastructure challenges, particularly in its water and sewer systems. Jody Opheim, executive director of Partners for Rural Washington, a nonprofit that supports rural communities across the state, said the pilot project, called “Rural Opportunity, Advancement, and Resilience,” will help Starbuck and eight other rural towns secure funding and technical assistance for critical improvements.
Palouse, another Eastern Washington town, also has been selected to complete a comprehensive upgrade to its wastewater system.
Opheim estimates at least 24 months of completion for most of the projects.
“We’re looking at different ways of financing these projects, beyond the big federal dollars,” Opheim said.
Opheim said they are working alongside the Washington Department of Commerce, Association of Washington Cities, Washington State University Extension and the Washington U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development office to help meet the rural towns’ needs.
She emphasized that while participation doesn’t come with guaranteed funding, each community will receive expert and technical support at no cost.
“Our project managers will herd this process, manage this process, do follow up, make connections, facilitate and then where there isn’t other technical assistance available to look for funding sources,” Opheim said. “This is very much a group effort. It’s a big lift, but we’ve got lots of good core partners and affiliates that we will bring to that community table.”
Staci Nelson, grant services director for the nonprofit, said the group has worked with Starbuck before and identified the water system as a top concern.
She explained the town has two water tanks, one built in 1965 and the other in 1986, which are where their drinking water comes from.
“They need to have the interior of their water tanks re-coated and so we’re going through that process of helping to try and find some resources for them,” Nelson said. “And in addition to the water tanks, they have pipes that need to be replaced due to their leaking.”
Hill said the rural town has lost more than 12 million gallons of water in the last year because of the leaks in the pipes. He expects that number to increase as pipe leaks continue.
He also noted that one of Starbuck’s wells has stopped functioning.
“We do hear from people that there’s pieces of metal, you know, rustic pipe in their water downstream of where some of these leaks are, because the pipes are completely corroded,” Hill said. “I’ve also seen it in some of my water here.”
“It has been an emergency,” he said.
He said that many wheat farmers rely on the town’s water system to care for their livestock, irrigate crops, and water orchards – further stressing the need for immediate action.
“There are a lot of people, a lot of farmers, that use the water in town for their cows,” Hill said.
Nelson said Palouse, a town of about 1,000 residents, is facing similar major water quality upgrades to its wastewater system – a project estimated to cost $23 million.
The cost is largely due to the town’s proximity to the Palouse River, where any water quality issue could lead to contamination, she said. The project has a 2030 completion deadline.
Tim Sievers, mayor of Palouse, said the town needs to meet regulations regarding their wastewater discharge. Palouse’s clean effluent flows into the Palouse River, but the temperature is too high during certain periods of the year, which causes environmental implications for the river ecosystem, he said.
“Secondarily, we have a regulation coming down with our 2030 permit about the levels of dissolved organic nitrogen that is in our effluent. So we’re taking steps to address those concerns from our environmental regulators,” Sievers added.
Critical rural infrastructure upgrades often are overlooked, Nelson said.
“For us to be able to continue to support those smaller communities, it makes the entire part of Eastern Washington, as well as the state of Washington more successful,” Nelson said.
Sievers said the partnership for Palouse will be an important step forward in continuing to grow the rural town.
Hill said they are optimistic and hopeful working with the nonprofit, after years of feeling the town has been “left out” of community development needs.
“Many of us wear multiple hats. One of our farmers volunteers his tractor to cut and dig up the ground to replace a pipe. I’ve been on the council for a little over two years now and I don’t get paid. I mean it’s all volunteer work,” Hill said. “We need help.”
Monica Carrillo-Casas is a rural reporter through the WSU College of Communication’s Murrow Fellows program who is directed by The Spokesman-Review and Spokane Public Radio.