City administrator provides Ephrata water update

EPHRATA — The city of Ephrata is working to upgrade its water systems on multiple fronts with a new water tower, redrilling two wells, regained water rights and upgrades to the city’s wastewater treatment facility, according to City Administrator Ray Towery. That includes recently installed freshwater and gray water infrastructure to take water to the new Grant County Jail and to take reclaimed water to the Port of Ephrata.

“They’re going to put water in it in the next couple days to charge it and get it moving,” Towry said regarding routing water to and from the jail site. “The pipe is in the ground for water. They also have the sewer pipe. They also have the purple pipe for the reclaimed water.” 

Reclaimed water is water from the city’s wastewater treatment plant that has been treated and is deemed usable for things like landscape irrigation. Towry said the city was able to join in on Grant County’s project to get water to the jail so that purple pipe could be routed to the Port of Ephrata as well. 

In discussions between the port and the city, various industrial uses of reclaimed water have been discussed and the addition of the purple pipe from the wastewater treatment facility to the port makes the site more attractive for industrial users. 

The project to establish a new water tower near Columbia Ridge Elementary School is underway and contracts for its construction have been awarded, Towry said. The project’s scope has evolved over time as the city learned about options to increase capacity affordably and realized that two different projects needed to be established rather than one. The city had initially looked at a project that would have built a new water tower while also creating better water pressure for the southwest side of the city — where Columbia Ridge and Columbia Basin Hospital are located. However, after examining the bids received for that initial project the Ephrata City Council opted to reject them.

Instead, Towry said, the city saw that it was necessary to split the project up into two pieces, the construction of the water tower and the water pressure improvement project.

“It allows the companies to bid on what they actually do,” he said.

Essentially, a company that builds large water towers for city-sized systems doesn’t necessarily do the work that upgrades water systems to improve pressure in a certain zone of a city. While seemingly related, they’re two different sets of expertise, he said. 

With site improvements and doing the work when the timing won’t cause service issues for residents, Towry said the water tower project will be done in roughly 18-22 months. The tower’s capacity was also upgraded to allow more capacity that will provide better service for residents.

“On the tower piece itself, we were going to get 76% more storage for a 29% cost increase,” he said.

The water tower project was awarded to T. Bailey, Inc., for about $9.7 million, including the increased capacity, according to city council meeting minutes. The water pressure project was awarded to POW Contracting for about $2.6 million.

Upgrades and maintenance work are also happening at the city’s wastewater treatment facility, Towry said. While the city has worked to maintain the facility, it is decades old and is in need of modernization.

Two city wells, Well 6 and Well 10, will be redrilled and have their pumps upgraded to more modern and efficient models in the coming months, Towry said. One of the two had lain dormant for some time and the city’s water rights had expired. The city worked with the state to reestablish the water rights. Once that was done and the sites for the two wells were examined, it was found that redrilling the wells and putting in new pumps would be the most efficient and dependable option for the city. 

The added water rights will see the city through for some time, and the city is working to add to them.

“We’ve got enough capacity with our water rights to meet our demand over the next 20 years. We’re really comfortable with that, but just because water rights can be difficult to come by, we’re trying to get a 50-year plan set up to ensure that we’ve got water rights to meet the needs 50 years out,” Towry said. 

R. Hans “Rob” Miller may be reached at editor@columbiabasinherald.com.

    Towry