Lind community comes together for stormwater planning

Members of the Town of Lind gathered at the Lind Senior Center to hear presentations about the planning of the Lind Stormwater Project and offer their opinions and insight regarding problems the town faces.

Approximately 20 community members arrived to meet with members from Stantech and the Department of Ecology (Ecology) on Wednesday, Sept. 26 at 7 p.m.

After a brief introduction to the project community members divided into three groups to listen to the presentations. Station one was directed by Meredith Noble who is a funding specialist for Stantech. Station one covered the project overview.

Station two, directed by Janel Bistrika from the Department of Ecology, covered the funding information for the project as well as the environmental consequence of the project and financial impact.

Station three, directed by Alan Gay, covered the stormwater alternatives that were under consideration for the project.

At the end of the meeting community members were requested to fill out a survey about which projects would be the most beneficial practices for the town.

The Stormwater grant offers up to $5 million in funding for communities. Lind qualifies as a hardship community, which would mean the town would have to pay $150,000 for each $1 million in grant funding. The payment of the $150,000 would require a rate increase of $2.80 on sewer rates. Currently Ecology has $66 million dollars available for funding of stormwater projects.

After each presentation community members were asked for their input on various stormwater solutions for the town.

Concerns that were raised by citizens included maintenance of any new stormwater management systems as well as the existing ones already in place. Bistrika told community members that to make the project competitive the grant application would need to focus on the quality of the water entering the coulee from the town and how these projects would help improve it as a priority rather than just the impacts of the water on the infrastructure of the town.

Nobel also told community members that Lind is in a unique position as the only community of its size to have already received planning funding for the project and that is ready to apply for project funding.

Many community members shared photos from around the town where water from storms had eroded the dirt and gravel and deposited it further down into the coulee.

Some of the solutions presented to community members included the installation of storm water cisterns north of the town above the tennis courts to collect water flowing down into the coulee from the CRP fields. This water could then be used to irrigate the school grounds.

Another option that was presented was permeable pavement for parking areas. Permeable pavements would allow water to be transported into the ground rather than flowing out of the parking lot and into streets.

During discussion community members were concerned about how well permeable pavement options for parking could be maintained with the amount of dirt being washed down. They were concerned that eventually any permeable parking options installed would eventually stop functioning as designed.

At the end of the meeting Mayor Jamie Schmunk asked community members to contact Gay or Nobel with any further information they may have and requested letters of support from the community be sent for the project. She also thanked community members for their input and helping them understand more of the problems faced by the town.

Another meeting will be held in about one month to inform members of the community about the status of the application.

The application has to be turned into the Department of Ecology by Nov. 7.

Noble was excited about the project.

“My goal is to see Ecology want to show this project off as an example of what an Eastern Washington stormwater solution looks like,” she said, “because they don’t really come more challenging than this, you’ve got a basalt layer, you’ve got a big slope, you’ve got major problems to resolve on a low budget with minimal maintenance.”