For many Mountain residents, the issue of an available water supply is
assured.

And if you’re looking for a source of this assurance, look no further than the
Rhododendron Water Association (RWA).

Currently, the association’s only water storage reservoir is a 100,000-gallon
redwood tank along Henry Creek built in the 1980s. And it was only a few
years ago when a giant Douglas fir toppled onto the tank sending the RWA
members scrambling for water.

To guard against such natural disasters in the future, the RWA is in the
permitting process of building a second reservoir. It will be a 130,000-gallon
concrete structure on property off Hofeldt Road in the Woodlands area.

“We acquired the property in August 2016,” Steve Graeper, president of the
RWA, wrote in an email to The Mountain Times. “The second reservoir will
greatly enhance our ability to provide water to our customers during high
turbidity events, natural disasters, or during times when we take the current
reservoir off-line for cleaning.”

Graeper added that “the new reservoir will be equipped with a power
generating turbine to significantly reduce our carbon footprint. We should be
able to generate enough power to offset any power needed to run the booster
pumps that will occasionally be needed to send water uphill into our
distribution system.”

Most of the time the system is gravity fed from the reservoir at the treatment
plant. But, when water is needed to supply the system from the lower
Woodlands reservoir, the pumps will be needed.

The power turbine will generate most of the electricity needed to operate the
pumps. When the pumps are not being used, the generator will send power
back into the PGE power grid, resulting in an offset to RWA’s electric bill.

Graeper noted that at the same time RWA is installing the Woodlands
reservoir, the association will also be installing a slow-sand filtration system at
the treatment plant.

“Currently, we are using very expensive cartridge filters to filter our surface
water source of any contaminants, (like) giardia and cryptosporidia,” Graeper
wrote. By implementing the slow-sand filtration, RWA could save $10,000 to
$12,000 per year in cartridge replacement costs.”

The capital improvement budget for both projects is $650,000. RWA has been
granted a low interest loan at 1.72 percent from the State Drinking Water
Revolving Loan fund and Federal Infrastructure Finance Authority, according
to Graeper.

If the Rhododendron CPO’s boundary expansion (see January
story: http://tinyurl.com/hesltag) is successful, Rhododendron could qualify
for a partial principal loan forgiveness and or grants that could significantly
reduce the loan principal for the expansion by 10 to 50 percent.

“However, regardless if the boundary expansion is approved or not, RWA is
moving forward with the capital improvement projects,” Graeper added.