On the water front

This week’s top story, “The $3 million question”:

The poker table just got more crowded . . .

The “poker game” that Grays Harbor County and the City of Ocean Shores has been playing over water for the last decade now turns out to be part of a much larger scenario, involving Federal money.

Last week, the Department of Health announced its “Draft Intended Use Plan (IUP)” to use $41 million in Federal stimulus money, targeting safe drinking water.

 Ocean Shores made the draft funding list, to the tune of $2,993,202. This represents roughly half of the cost for Ocean Shores to build a new water treatment plant. City Council quickly voted 4-2 to go ahead with the project, bypassing (for the time being, at least) the option of purchasing water from the County’s new Hogan’s Corner wells.

Now comes the tricky part . . .

According to Ocean Shores Mayor Dean Bunkers, there are several scenarios:

-The DOH could award Ocean Shores the entire $3 million as a grant (“loan forgiveness”).

-Half of the $3 million could be a grant, with the other half a 1 percent loan.

-Ocean Shores could receive even more than $3 million in funding.

-Ocean Shores could receive nothing.

According to Carolyn Cox, public information coordinator at the DOH: “The $2.9 million for Ocean Shores would be principal forgiveness, so long as the city can document that it meets criteria for economically disadvantaged communities. That means they wouldn’t have to repay the principal, just a small (1 percent) loan fee that can be repaid over five years.”

She stressed “this is a DRAFT list” that will not be finalized by the State Public Works Board until Tuesday, April 7. “We will accept written public comments until April 6.”

The DOH definition of a “disadvantaged community”:

“. . .  at least fifty-one percent of the customers are at or below eighty percent of the county median household income as defined annually by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.”

After spending the last week doing research, Bunkers has all but given up on this best-case scenario. “We are not going to qualify as a disadvantaged community,” he said. “We are in a distressed county, so we would get the 50 percent loan forgiveness of $2.9 million. The  other half would be a loan of 1 percent.”

(The DOH guidelines: “If the water system is located in a distressed county, the project will be awarded a loan with principal forgiveness for one-half of the loan amount. Distressed county means a county that is designated by the Washington State Employment Security Department as distressed, based on unemployment rates.”)

Of 27 projects on the draft funding list, Ocean Shores came in at No. 27.

If one of the many projects that did not receive funding could make an argument stronger than Ocean Shores’,  “we could still fall off” the list, Bunkers said.

Then again, he mused:

 “If somebody in front of us fell off the list, there’s a slim possibility we could get qualified for the whole $5.8 million.”

So the poker game now involves dozens of water projects. The County, which already had a low-interest loan for its project, is not in on this hand, in which the Department of Health is the dealer.

“We don’t know what the wild cards will be,” Bunkers said.

Though he is prepared for the worst-case scenario (no funding), Bunkers feels Ocean Shores’ hand is strong: “We do have all the basic permits. We can even contractually move forward at the next council meeting.”

Bunkers will be atttending a public meeting on the issue on Friday, April 3 at 10 a.m. at the DOH Tumwater office (243 Israel Road SE).