There's good news and there's not-so-good news about funding for the long-delayed completion of the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System in Southwest Minnesota, Southeast South Dakota and Northwest Iowa.
While the U.S. House included an additional $25 million for rural water projects in the Energy & Water Appropriations Bill it passed Wednesday, it's uncertain how much with be allocated for the project--and its share is unlikely to be enough to complete the water pipeline.
The Worthington Globe reported in House bill increases funds for rural water program:
If approved in the FY14 budget, Lewis & Clark and five other rural water projects would vie for a portion of this $25 million. The Bureau of Reclamation would make those funding decisions. Any additional funding would be on top of whatever is included for Lewis & Clark in the FY14 Budget — the Senate version includes $3.2 million, and the House version includes $3.05 million.
“If additional funding is made available, it hopefully would be enough to allow Lewis & Clark to get pipeline about halfway to Luverne, while also delivering water to one of Rock County Rural Water District’s two connection points,” Larson said. The pipeline currently ends at the Iowa border.
Lewis & Clark is currently 65 percent complete. The 20 local members and three states have pre-paid 100 percent of their non-federal cost share ($153.7 million), so the schedule to finish construction is entirely dependent on federal funding.
The remaining federal cost share in September 2012 was $201.3 million. By comparison, the remaining federal cost share in September 2010 was $194.3 million. The $7 million increase in two years is the result of federal funding not even keeping pace with inflation.
At the Marshall Independent, Steve Browne reported in LCRWS still in drought mode that the delays have cost member cities in other ways:
As originally planned, four members in Minnesota - Worthington, Luverne, Lincoln-Pipestone Rural Water and Rock County Rural Water - would have 100 percent of their water needs supplied by the system when completed.
When funding dried up, Luverne was forced to spend about $700,000 for two new wells and a reclamation basin.
Larson said if LCRWS gets the $7 to $8 million in federal dollars, the most optimistic projections for this year provide for, it might be able to begin construction on enough pipeline to get half way to Luverne, possibly enough to hook up with Rock County Rural Water (RCRW).
One town in Iowa is considering withdrawing from the project, Sioux Falls ABC-affiliate KSFY reports in Sheldon to make "Lewis & Clark" decision by the end of August:
Sheldon, Iowa should have started receiving water from Lewis and Clark last year.They are not. To keep their water wells in good shape, they depend on rainfall.
And despite heavy rains in the spring, it did not help the way Sheldon had hoped.
"We were hoping that the spring rains would recharge our wells but that's not the case. Our water production is still down quite a bit." City Manager Scott Wynja tells me, as a result...the city of Sheldon is now under a water watch. No car washing, no plant watering, no non-essential use of water...in an effort to conserve as much of it as possible....because there is not much there right now.
And Wynja tells me, sometime within the next seven weeks, the city will decide if they are going to stick with Lewis and Clark...or abandon the project and try something else. "We need to have a hard discussion as far as where we're gonna go from here. Is there an alternative solution by working with Lewis and Clark to make that connection work? or do we have to work with another rural water system to see if we can make some type of inter-connect?"
None of this would be an issue is Lewis and Clark construction had stayed on schedule and federal funding had stayed constant.
All 20 Lewis and Clark communities and their states have paid their pipeline construction costs upfront.
But instead of having a dependable source of water....in Sheldon...all they can do is hope for more rain to build up their water wells. "If we don't have some additional rainfall this summer, over the course of the next two to three months, we're going to have some real concerns going into the fall, the winter, back into the spring of having enough available water for our community."
One option Sheldon may exercise: connecting their water systems into one...if not two...near-by rural water systems in the area.
Why did federal funding fail to come through? Funding for the project, which enjoys bipartisan support from federal and state lawmakers in the three states, was first jeopardized when President Bush slashed funding. Members of the area's congressional delegations responded by requesting earmarks for the project; when earmarks became a political football and were banned, securing the money became more difficult.
The project is necessary because the groundwater in the area is naturally undrinkable by people and livestock. Some wells produce water that smells like rotten eggs and farm animals fail to thrive if they drink it.
Photo: Pumps for the completed section of the Lewis and Clark Regional Water system.
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