(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors this (Tues.) morning heard an update and voted to approve the latest payment on the first phase of the Francis Sites wetland project. John Wills of the Cleanwater Alliance told the supervisors while all of the funds for the first phase of the project have been raised, they are falling short on the second phase, which has a total estimated cost of $550,000. He says they have about $360,000 of that raised, for a shortfall of roughly $180,000…
“We have not heard from the RCPP grant that was submitted a month and a half ago. That was supposed to have been announced on the 7th of December. They have not announced the award selections yet and so we don’t know about that grant. We’re looking at some other funding options. I’m confident we’re going to get that $180,000 from some place, but I would like you to start thinking about if it would be something you would be interested in putting, you know, additional amount of money towards.”
Supervisor Pam Jordan said they’ll be meeting later this week with the County Auditor to start looking at where the needed funding could come from.
The supervisors also today (Tues.) heard a request from Iowa Lakes Regional Water for the county to sign a letter of intent allowing the entity to install water main in county road ditches in the event they are unsuccessful in getting easements from private property owners. CEO Randy Van Dyke says they are putting in larger 8 inch water mains coming out of Clay county into Dickinson county to meet growing demand…
“In the summer time we have between a 400 percent to 500 percent peaking factor with our members that use water in Dickinson county, so there’s always a need to continue to import more water into Dickinson county.”
Van Dyke said the water will be supplied through treatment plants Iowa Lakes Regional Water operates in Clay county, as well as one near Osgood in Palo Alto county. He says they need the letter of intent for easements due to new regulations to receive funding assistance from USDA Rural Development…
“Iowa Lakes Regional Water has the right of imminent domain, but my bosses, our board of directors, chooses not to use that for public relations reasons. We just use voluntary easements and then we ask the county board of supervisors in the event that there’s some outstanding of this one mile of pipeline of eight inch, if we’re not successful in getting the easements. The initial communication that we have from the property owners looks good at this point and time but the USDA Rural Development needs to have this letter on file so that we can begin the project and continue with the engineering, order the materials, and get going with the project. And I’m sure that in the next 60 to 90 days we’ll have those easements secured. But if we do have to put some of the pipeline into the road ditch this is just the intent that the county board of supervisors will help us out with that one mile of eight inch.”
The supervisors voted unanimously to authorize the County Engineer to sign off on the letter of intent.
