Funds at a trickle as water pipes fail

VADER, Lewis County — Dennis Montgomery knows it's only a matter of time until more of the old water pipes buried beneath his town burst again.

Two months ago, two aging mains broke near City Hall. By the time Montgomery patched them up, the town had lost almost its entire reserve of drinking water.

And for the second time in four months, Vader's 600 residents had to boil water to make it safe to drink.

Yet there are plenty more of the old pipes still in the ground.

"We're just kind of waiting, biding our time till we get the funding to replace it," said Montgomery, the one-man Public Works Department.

"Sooner or later, it's going to go."

There's no guarantee that help is coming, because the problem isn't Vader's alone.

All over the state — and all over the nation — broken and leaking pipes have many poor rural communities facing similar health threats and economic hardships. It's been a problem that has been buried for decades. But a crisis point is finally arriving, experts warn. And there's nowhere near enough government money to go around.

As last Wednesday's rupture of a water main under Seattle's University Bridge showed, it's a problem affecting urban areas, too. But the experts say the difference for such towns as Vader is clear: They don't have the millions of dollars that big cities have to keep their systems running.

One federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) survey has estimated that Washington state alone needs at least $6.7 billion over 20 years to replace aging drinking-water pipes.

Nationally, the EPA guesses it could cost $300 billion over the next 20 years just for drinking-water pipes, and almost as much to replace failing wastewater lines.

"We have never been in this situation before, where such a vast system of infrastructure is aging like it is," said Ben Grumbles, an assistant EPA administrator in Washington, D.C. "Water is life, and infrastructure systems are the lifeblood of a community."

In Washington's small towns, they put it another way:

"You have to be glad you have water today," said Mayor Norma Joiner of Tieton, a farming town in Yakima County where 21 water mains broke over a five-day period in November. "But you wonder if you'll have it tomorrow — or even later today."

History is catching up with towns and cities that for decades have been relying on water systems built by previous generations.

It's estimated that more than a million miles of underground drinking-water pipes crisscross the country.

The oldest ones are thick, cast-iron mains from the early 1900s, which were expected to last 100 years or more. Metal pipe from the 1920s, '30s and '40s was thinner and expected to last about 75 years.

Most of the country is using pipe from the 1950s and '60s, most of it made of thin steel or "transite," a hardened mix of asbestos and concrete. Those pipes were designed to last 50 to 75 years.

"Do the math — all that pipe is going to wear out at about the same time," said Jack Hoffbuhr, who heads the Denver-based American Water Works Association.

He means starting now.

"Hardly a good pipe left"

While lots of cities are dealing with problem water systems, rural communities might have it the worst, Hoffbuhr said.

They tend to need more pipe to serve a smaller number of dispersed residents, yet they don't have much of a tax base to pay for upkeep.

Vader, in southwestern Lewis County, once was a robust town, but the clay plant shut and the sawmill burned down decades ago. Trains haven't stopped there in years. The high school is long gone. And in March, Vader Elementary School closed for good.

One day last month, Mayor Guy Chastain's sport-utility vehicle bounced over potholes as he took a visitor on a tour past the post office, both churches, a few abandoned houses and the town's only businesses: a cafe, a convenience store, a mini-storage place and an Italian joint open on weekends.

"You ain't never lived till you're the mayor of a small town and you've got no money to work with," Chastain said. "You probably have more money in your billfold."

He was only half joking.

Vader's 2007 budget is a little more than $620,000. Nearly 40 percent — $244,000 — is for the water and sewer system.

Last year, the town replaced a worn-out clay sewer line and repaved Main Street with $1 million in grants and loans.

What the town really needs is a sewage-treatment plant. But "there's no way 600 people can afford a $6 million sewage treatment plant," Chastain said.

In the meantime, the town's old drinking-water pipes are Dennis Montgomery's headache.

On this April day, Montgomery fired up a backhoe and dug a hole in the grassy alley next to Don Laudenbach's house, looking for a broken pipe that was making a soggy mess of the deputy mayor's back yard.

He reached into the hole and pulled out a hunk of clay pipe. His brow softened. It was a storm-water line, not a vital supply pipe.

The month before, Montgomery had gotten the call that water was gushing from a broken pipe around the corner from City Hall.

When Montgomery closed a valve to stop the flow, the pressure burst another pipe. The water level in Vader's massive tank dropped by about 250,000 gallons, "from 13 feet to 6 inches in no time," he recalled.

Montgomery connected new pipe to the old sections, but the repair was just a Band-Aid.

"But until we can afford to replace it, all it's going to be is Band-Aids," he said.

The breaks caused "backflow" contamination into the pipes. State health officials warned residents to boil their drinking water.

"It was horrible, carrying those heavy pots," said Nonnie Mahncke, a cook at the Little Crane Café.

Boiling water made it hard to do business, said waitress Linda Watson. "And of course, when we have no water, all people want are big glasses of water."

Vader's water woes are far from unique.

About 14 miles south in Castle Rock, Cowlitz County, Public Works Director David Vorse said he has been replacing about 700 feet of steel water main every year for the past 10 years.

"All the water mains are 50, 60, 70 years old, and they were never intended to last that long," Vorse said. "They're giving us our biggest grief."

He figures leaky pipes are draining 20 to 30 percent of his town's drinking water.

"That's a lot of water we're losing," he said.

East of the Cascades in Tieton, fall rains pushed the town's elderly water system too far. "We didn't have hardly a good pipe left," said Mayor Joiner.

With 21 water-main breaks, the town "looked like a war zone," she said.

Joiner declared a state of emergency and lobbied the Legislature for $4 million in emergency loans to help the town's 1,200 residents rebuild. But "we could have another series of breaks just as bad," she said.

More need than money

Tieton had seen it all coming. Last year, the city applied for government loans to fix its pipes. The requests were denied.

"On paper, I guess our troubles just didn't look as bad as others," Joiner said.

For cities such as Tieton and Vader, there are basically three places to go for money.

They can apply to a state fund that distributes federal money to help systems meet safety standards for drinking water. They can turn to a state Public Works Trust Fund that for 22 years has given loans to help cities and counties improve bridges, roads, and water and wastewater systems. Or they can go to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for other loans and grants reserved for rural communities.

But the money goes to solve far more pressing problems than aging pipes, said Rich Sarver, a manager with the state Health Department's Office of Drinking Water.

About 4,300 water systems are regulated in the state; more than 95 percent serve fewer than 1,000 customers each, Sarver said. Another 13,000 privately owned water systems aren't regulated because they serve fewer than 15 households.

Because of health concerns, funding priority goes to communities with trouble meeting basic standards or those with "long-standing public-health problems," Sarver said.

The USDA allotted more than $530 million a year nationwide in 2006 and 2007 for rural drinking-water and wastewater systems, said Gary Rhoades, executive director of Evergreen Rural Water of Washington in Shelton, part of the Oklahoma-based National Rural Water Association. That group is requesting more than $950 million for 2008 because, it says, the need is so great.

Of the $250 million currently budgeted for construction loans through the state Public Works Trust Fund, about 96 percent has gone to help fund drinking-water, sewer and storm-water projects, said Kelly Snyder, executive director of the Public Works Board.

In 2007 alone, $71 million in loans will help fund 19 water and sewer projects, Snyder said. But the board had to turn down more than $162 million in loan requests.

One of those applications was from Tieton.

"You really do feel everybody's pain," Joiner said. "I can now understand how hard it is to decide whose situation is worse."

In Vader, Chastain figures it's a long shot his town will get any loans to replace its pipes, and if it did, it would mean increasing water and sewer rates again. Though the town needs to replace its brittle, decrepit pipes, the expense is just too much for residents to take on themselves, said public-works director Montgomery.

"We need to do it but you hate to, because of the way people are living — paycheck to paycheck."

At the Little Crane Café, Watson doubts that will change soon. A businessman wanted to open an auto-wrecking yard across the highway but couldn't get water or sewer service extended to the property.

"This town's not going to survive on," she lamented.

"It's a nice little community ... but there ain't nothing left here to worry about anymore."

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com