Where: Lincoln County, Washington
Problem: Small water systems often lack resources and economies of scale to serve their communities
Solution: Rural Community Assistance Corporation provides a framework for regionalization.
At the request of the Washington State Public Works Board, Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC), in partnership with Lincoln County Economic Development Council, developed and facilitated a series of three workshops for rural drinking water systems in Lincoln County Washington to provide information, education, and opportunity to explore a regionalization framework. Eight municipalities participated including Town of Reardan, City of Davenport, Town of Creston, Town of Wilbur, Town of Almira, City of Harrington, Town of Odessa, City of Sprague and one for-profit public water system Seven Bays. The communities range in size from approximately 200 to 1,000 residents.
Regional collaboration is not a one-size-fits-all approach—each community is unique and the best option for that particular community/region needs to be explored and requires community buy-in to be viable. The first workshop focused on the basics of regionalization, what it is and what it is not, common issues and potential solutions, history mapping, and community visioning. The second workshop focused on governance structures plus and minus, drinking water system information, collaboration opportunities, context mapping, SWOT analysis and the development of their vision statement. The third workshop provide time to revisit the vision statement and common issues, learn about decision grids, name stakeholders and establish a consensus goal to develop an asset management plan. All of the communities are now working together and independently to map their assets.
The group also wanted to develop a mutual aid for emergencies response plan, which RCAC staff helped them to write. By December 2019 six of the nine communities had approved the plan.
The group meets every other month to discuss this and other goals they can address using the framework that RCAC presented, which will help them to become more sustainable.
