LAPINE, OR -- LaPine is set to receive more than $8 million as part of the new Federal Rural Development Fund in order to upgrade the City's wastewater management system.
Public Works Manager Jake Obrist says the system will be expanded into the Cagle and Glenwood Acres subdivisions. "We're doing water and sewer improvements. On the water side, we're going to be doing a new well site and 500,000 gallon reservoir, new transmission lines, the whole works. Some of the sewer improvements are, we're doing all new main lines into those areas, doing an expansion of our wastewater treatment plant, and several new lift stations."
The US Agriculture Department has granted LaPine $3.7 million dollars to complete the project, and loaned them another $5 million, to be paid back over the next 40 years. Other grants have come from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the town of LaPine, with more grants anticipated.
Obrist says this will be a significant infrastructure project, helping hundreds of LaPine residents. "We're going to expand our services into two areas in town, what they refer to as Cagle and Glenwood subdivisions, which takes in another 275 customers. I know DEQ and Deschutes County have done quite a lot of testing up there because the groundwater is so shallow up there and being on City infrastructure would solve a lot of those issues."
Wells in the Cagle and Glenwood Acres Subdivisions have shown elevated levels of nitrates due to residential septic seepage, and this upgrade should eliminate that contamination issue.
Obrist says the overall project will cost about $25 million and is at the very beginning stages. "We've got an RFP open for design and engineer for the project, so we anticipate hiring somebody in the next month or so for that, and then it's going to be for the next nine months to a year, we're going to be designing the projects, getting it ready so we can go out for construction for the bidding process on that. So, ideally, construction could start in 2019. That would be optimistic."
The plan calls for the wastewater project to be completed at the same time as the town's water system improvements, which were funded by a previous USDA loan and grant.
