Pinehurst water issues beginning to improve
Some good news out of Pinehurst as Pinehurst Water District (PWD) chairman Bruce Rumpel announced that as of April 7, all of the residents in Pinehurst who were without water due to frozen pipes now have running water.
However, this winters freezing has left its scars on the system.
PWD has identified three broken water lines that the city will need to fix once the ground is completely thawed.
21 residences and five businesses in the city had been without water due to the frozen pipes since January 15, forcing many to find other avenues for drinking water such as buying bottled or hosing over from a neighbor.
The PWD held several meetings with entities like the Shoshone Board of County Commissioners (BOCC), the United States Department of Agriculture, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, and several other local, state, and federal entities with the goal of getting the citizens of Pinehurst access to clean, flowing water.
Since February 16, the city has existed under a perpetual state of emergency as city officials and the BOCC attempted to find the means to get the situation resolved.
The declaration of emergency is required for the PWD to be eligible for available grant funding.
To keep the city eligible, the BOCC essentially set up an auto-renewal process so that Pinehurst could stay in the state of emergency while the grant monies are being sought and distributed. Nancy Mabile, representing the Panhandle Area Council (PAC) and the Idaho Department of Commerce has been in the process of writing two different grant proposals to get the city the funding it needs. The grants that Mabile has written are proposals for a $100,000 imminent threat community block grant and a $150,000 Emergency Community Water Access Grant (ECWAG), The PWD has also pledged $20,000 to help with the project as well.
Both grants require specific information regard the damage that has been difficult to come by due to the nature of the frozen ground.
The decision to remain patient while the funds are being sought out has been an important one for the city, since there has been little to no idea of what the extent of the damage was/is until now.
“If we start digging now, we are going to break lines that currently aren’t broken due to the heavy frost,” PWD chairman Bruce Rumple said during a previous meeting.
During a public forum last month at the Pinehurst/Kingston Lions building, Mabile reported that she was submitting the grant proposals by the end of that week (reported on March 21).
As of right now (April 9) there have been no responses concerning the approval or rejection of the grant proposals, but according to Rumpel, that should be sometime this week.
“No we have not heard anything from the Idaho Department of Commerce or the USDA,” Rumpel said, “they said it could be a couple of weeks so by the end of next week like April 13 or 14 we hopefully will hear something.”
Dan Remmick, an engineer with Century West Engineering was also at the open forum to discuss the details of the project. “It’s a pretty straightforward project,” Remmick said. “We will begin design work once the grant funds become available and we try to expedite that so we can get it out for bid.” Mabile’s proposals feature a project that would open for bid in April, actual work being done in May, and have it finished by the end of June.
This week, Rumpel and representatives will begin visiting every home and business that was affected to see if there were any additional problems caused by this crisis that they can address either right then and there, or when the work begins next month.