Where:
Deer Island Village, Columbia County, Oregon

Problem:
Small water systems lack the technical, financial and managerial capacity to manage their systems.

Solution:
Rural Community Assistance Corporation provides technical assistance to ensure compliance with regulations.

Deer Island Village is a mobile home park in Columbia County, northwest of Portland Oregon. It’s a very small community, with a 100-person population. The system has 62 connections.

Rural Community Assistance Corporation staff had worked with the system in the past, so when the system received an alarming letter from the state of Oregon, management reached out to RCAC again. The system had received notice of four significant deficiencies in its most recent water system survey, which includes an onsite health and sanitary inspection. The system management and board had never had deficiencies before, and they were at a loss for what actions to take to correct them.

RCAC Rural Development Specialist Jason Carman worked with Deer Island Village MHP to correct all four of the significant deficiencies. Assistance included drafting the corrective action plan and responding to Oregon Health Authority (OHA) within the required time limits. He then worked with the system to address the deficiencies within the agreed upon due dates in the corrective action plan. He also left the system with a regulatory deadline based Standard Operating Procedure document. This document is customized to the system and focused on assisting it with independently meeting the regulatory deadlines in the future and working toward sustainability so it can provide its customers with safe drinking water.