Row water district taps five for board.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

DORENA - Less than 15 months ago, worried residents convened a hasty meeting to confront the prospect of losing their longtime public water supply.

Thursday night, residents of the same rural community will gather to swear in a board of directors for their new Row River Valley Water District.

The public meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at Child's Way School in Culp Creek. Lane County Commissioner Faye Stewart will swear in the five - Dorena general store owner John Kirk and residents Jim Eckstine, Jackie Gwaltney, Rick Harden and Linda Sexton. Refreshments and an informal question-and-answer session will follow.

Area residents organized the district to take over operation of a water treatment plant that Cottage Grove is slated to close. For decades, more than 100 households, plus businesses and two schools, had bought drinking water from a city line running 26 miles along the Row River Valley from the Layng Creek water treatment plant to downtown Cottage Grove. The valley residents figure that taking over operation of the plant and lines is their best bet at securing affordable drinking water.

"We don't have a huge amount of information in terms of water rates, but we'll try to provide some general information," said Kirk, owner of Kirk & Family Mercantile. He has served as chairman of the group that successfully organized the district after the city of Cottage Grove notified area residents in April 2006 that it planned to discontinue decades of water service to the area next year.

The city service dates back nearly a century, to construction of the city's first water facility, the Layng Creek water treatment plant. Rural property owners along the river were allowed to tap into the line and buy the high-quality water in exchange for giving easements allowing city transmission lines to pass through their land.

By the time the Cottage Grove City Council voted to close that plant rather than pay an estimated $28 million to repair it, nearly 110 households and businesses, along with Child's Way and Dorena Elementary schools, were drawing from the water line.

An engineering study funded by Cottage Grove on behalf of the water district organizers suggested that the Layng Creek plant remains up to the task of serving both the existing 110 users and others who live along the Row River, Kirk said this week.

"We intend to make the water available to about 350 households," Kirk said. "We've already heard from a number who have approached us, asking about hook-ups because the water in their wells not as good as they'd like."

The high quality of water from the Layng Creek plant is attractive to well users in nearby areas where the ground water has arsenic plus contaminants from mining and mill operations, he said.

"The biggest advantage is that they'd get served with clean, affordable water that they don't have to pull out of a well and treat themselves," Kirk said. "It's a good supply from a clean watershed."

The engineering report showed that the district probably would have to spend about $4 million on improvements - mainly to repair the miles of existing transmission lines.

"We're concerned about the condition of the transmission lines, but condition and size of the plant appears ideal for what we want to do, because we're a much smaller system," Kirk said. "One of our first tasks will be to go through the bid process and select engineers to get started on those improvements."

The district intends to approach funding sources, such as the federal government, to help pay for the improvements, Kirk said.

"We are already in the grant-writing process," he said. The district also can tap into compensation of $10,000 per connection the Cottage Grove City Council approved when it voted to terminate city water service to the 110 affected households. At most, that would provide only $1.1 million of the needed $4 million, though.

Whatever expenses are not covered by grants and by city money might have to be shouldered by ratepayers.

The new district expects to assume ownership and operation of the Layng Creek plant by mid-2008, after Cottage Grove completes expansion of its newer, larger Row River Treatment Plant just east of town. The new rural district will serve a region stretching from the Lane County Park at Baker Bay on Dorena Lake 23 miles east to Layng Creek Road.

Kirk credited Lane County officials and his Row River Valley neighbors with the relatively rapid formation of a new water-providing entity.

"I have to give much of the credit to Faye Stewart and the county staff - specifically economic development coordinator Michael McKenzie-Barr," Kirk said. "They have done a wonderful job of supporting us as we went through the labyrinth of items we had to know about and deal with. And Paula Taylor, the staff person for the Lane County Boundary Commission, was just superb as we went through the boundary formation process.

"We also had a huge number of people up in the Row River Valley - both those losing water service and those with good wells - who volunteered to help run down information and get work done. People here are just very community-minded."

NEW DISTRICT

What: First meeting of the Row River Valley Water District Board

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Where: Child's Way School, 37895 Row River Road