The City of Libby is hoping to secure extra funding, in addition to $1.1 million already allocated, to replace 2,500 feet of water piping in the Cabinet Heights area.

The more access to water the area has the more development will be incentivized, the City Administrator Samuel Sikes said, in the Feb. 6 and Feb. 21 City Council meetings.

The city’s piping between the city water plant and Cabinet Heights doesn’t have enough capacity to provide an adequate water supply for fire suppression. This led to a moratorium on new hookups to the 6-inch water main, which is still in use, being issued in April 2022.

The water plant has a 12-inch line coming out, which is reduced down to six inches for 2,500 feet and then the 6-inch line becomes eight inches and serves the golf course, Sikes said. The city has plans to replace the main constraint on the water supply, a 2,500 foot section of six inch piping.

“The original figure of $1.1 million to replace the line has been increasing almost daily,” Sikes said. The city is currently working with the USDA Rural Development to authorize the use of asset replacement funds on current loans, Sikes said.

The city engineer, the street supervisor and the mayor have met to document where all the current water services currently exist. There are options in the event the city can’t afford to replace the full 2,500 feet of 6-inch piping, Sikes said.

“What we’re trying to do is build about 14 to 20 homes and get fire flow up there in case a house catches on fire,” Sikes said.

Currently a fire hydrant would run dry because of the lack of water. In the event of a fire the city has prepared a water tender to shuttle water back-and-forth between the city and the moratorium area.

The city plans to take the 6-inch line and replace it with a 12-inch one, but how much they will be able to replace is still unknown. Either way, the city needs more water pressure for fire suppression flows and enough water to supply existing homes, Sikes said.

$1.1 million in funding have been designated for this project from the city Capital Improvement Plan and American Recovery Plan Act. The city currently has loans from the U.S Department of Agriculture and Rural Development from when the Flower Creek Dam was replaced, Sikes said.

“With that loan the city was required to place money into an asset replacement fund to make sure the dam and systems were maintained properly,” Sikes wrote in a recent email.

Within the next month the city hopes to have their plan to increase the pipe diameter approved by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. In the near future, the city also hopes to obtain approval for the use of approximately $100,000 from the U.S Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to replace the entire 6-inch line.

“It was written or unspoken for years that you couldn’t build any more houses over there,” Sikes said, of the pipeline that would have developed negative pressure if it were overused.

If the city makes the full length of line 12 inches there are developers looking at the area, and enlarging the city’s project may spur faster development, Sikes said. In that way, this project can help solve housing issues, Sikes said.

“If we can't get there, we're gonna be able to back it off. We’ll put it out to bid in two sections, one to take care of the bare minimums, and one to extend that out just a little bit more. Whatever we have cash on hand for, because Libby is trying to be really financially stable and we’re trying not to borrow money,” Sikes said.