Yachats and SW Lincoln PUD agree to explore if and how the city can become a long-term water customer

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews

The city of Yachats and Southwest Lincoln Water People’s Utility District have agreed to start discussing how Yachats might become a regular, long-term customer of the sprawling district immediately to its north.

Although the Yachats council wanted to explore the topic with Southwest Lincoln more than two years ago, an actual meeting did not take place until Yachats mayor Craig Berdie met in late April with Southwest Lincoln board chair Roxie Cuellar. Berdie then met with the PUD board May 3 to explain Yachats’ goals and see if it was willing to begin more detailed discussions.

They are.

“We sell water; Yachats wants water,” Cuellar told YachatsNews this week.

The process now will be to gather technical information from the water district and from Yachats, have engineers develop a feasibility study, and then begin negotiations.

The outreach from Yachats comes after years of various council members saying they wanted to improve the city’s “water security” amidst growth and climate change but doing little about it other than approving a 20-year water master plan in 2021.

The master plan by a Salem engineering company suggested the city focus on the Yachats River as its next water source. But that is highly improbable – and very expensive – because the river is a home for endangered coho salmon, would require miles of pipe and its lowest flows occur during the late summer when Yachats needs its most water.

So instead of looking south, Yachats is turning north.

Formed in 1945

The Southwest Lincoln district was formed in 1945 to serve a 1½-by-8-mile area between Yachats and Waldport, now including portions of that city as it expanded south. Voters approved becoming a Peoples Utility District in 2017, which is governed by a five-member board.

Southwest Lincoln has four sources of water – Dicks Fork, Big, Vingie and Starr creeks — and two treatment plants that can produce 700,000 gallons of water a day. It has total storage capacity of 1.95 million gallons of water and 1,330 customers, including 77 commercial accounts. Its largest customers are the Angell Job Corps Center, Tillicum Beach campground and Waldport Middle/High School.

Yachats has two sources of water – Reedy and Salmon creeks – and one treatment plant that can produce 450,000 gallons of water a day. It can store 1.7 million gallons of water and has just under 1,000 customers, including 20 commercial accounts — six of which account for 35 percent of all water consumption in the city.

Yachats is looking for more water and Southwest Lincoln is looking for more revenue as it seeks to upgrade both 26-year-old treatment plants and spend more than $6 million on water lines and failing valves.

“We sell water,” Cuellar said. “That’s the source of our revenue … and we have miles and miles and miles of pipes.”

Berdie and the Yachats council discussed the outreach to Southwest Lincoln during its regular meeting last week, the first time it had been discussed publicly at any length.

Berdie told the council that he told Cuellar and the Southwest Lincoln board “Yes, we want to be your customer – and to be more than an emergency customer.”

“Philosophically, we’re willing to pay a premium over their current rate, but we’re not a piggy bank,” Berdie said at the council meeting.

Southwest Lincoln’s water rates are a bit lower than Yachats’.

The two water systems are already linked at the north edge of Yachats by a pipe that is intended to supply water to the city during emergencies.

The question for Yachats, Berdie said, “Is how much water do we need and when.”

The question for Southwest Lincoln, Cuellar said, is what system improvements – especially any treatment plant upgrades or expansion – it would need to add Yachats as a customer, what would those cost, and what would it charge.

Cuellar said Southwest Lincoln also wants a long-term commitment of 30- to 50 years, “not just until Yachats fixes its water issues.”

Gather data first

Both entities agree that the first step is to gather data via Yachats water treatment supervisor Rick McClung and Southwest Lincoln general manager Tui Anderson.

“We do believe we have enough water … but we need to confirm that,” Cuellar said.

There’s already a good relationship there because McClung has been working one day a week for Southwest Lincoln for much of the past year after its state-certified water treatment manager retired.

Once the data seems complete, Cuellar said Southwest Lincoln plans to turn to Civic West Engineering of Newport to develop technical plans before starting negotiations via its attorney with Yachats.

That should finish up next year, both Cuellar and Berdie said.

“The intent is to give them more capital by being a customer and for us to have water during Yachats’ low-water times,” Berdie said. “It will be a slow process, but eventually we should be able to get to something.”

• Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com