Port of Mattawa moving forward with 2 grant projects
GABRIEL DAVIS | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 10 months AGO
An aerial view of the Port of Mattawa’s wastewater treatment plant. When operating normally, the plant treats waste from Wahluke Wine Co. and stores it in the lagoon, pictured on the right. Sale of the facility has been postponed.
FILE PHOTO
The Port of Mattawa has received $350,000 in funding through the Washington Department of Commerce to make improvements to the parking lot in front of the port’s event center, pictured.
Gabriel Davis is a resident of Othello who enjoys the connections with his sources. Davis is a graduate of Northwest Nazarene University where he studied English and creative writing. During his free time, he enjoys reading, TV, movies and games – anything with a good story, though he has a preference for science fiction and crime. He covers the communities on the south end of Grant County and in Adams County. | June 5, 2024 3:00 AM
MATTAWA — The Port of Mattawa is moving forward with two grant-funded projects this year after the Grant County Treasurer increased the port’s warrant limitations, according to the port’s Executive Director Gil Alvarado. Alvarado said the port has also temporarily paused selling its wastewater treatment plant.
Alvarado outlined the basic issue with the port’s warrant limitations and their impact on the port’s grant funding.
“I needed (the commissioners) to give me authorization to accept, basically a loan from the Grant County Treasurer,” Alvarado said. “What (the Treasurer’s Office) did is they increased our warrant limitations.”
Alvarado explained the process further.
“We write checks, basically, and the county treasurer issues warrants and basically pays those payments because they're collecting our taxes,” he said. “They hold the taxes and the revenues we deposit, they’ve got, let's just call it a Port of Mattawa fund, so then we write warrants from that fund.”
The port’s warrant limitations are not large enough to accommodate some of its ongoing projects, Alvarado said.
“The issue for us is a kind of a good problem to have,” he said. “We have three grants; specifically, all three of them are reimbursable only. And it's great that … we were all able to kind of put these deals together. I think what wasn't really looked at closely after I kind of took over is that these grants are reimbursable. Well, if you total those three grants, it's over $2 million. We don't have $2 million in our account, so to speak.”
The two grants and projects the port will be moving forward with this year are both through the Washington Department of Commerce. $350,000 in funding is for the third phase of upgrades to the port Event Center, specifically to improve parking lot safety, Alvarado said, as well as $600,000 for improvements to the port’s water infrastructure.
“In order to move on these grants, because they're important, and they're important to the community … every county has a finance committee, so I made a presentation to them,” Alvarado said. “I said, ‘Okay, we have these projects, we have these two birds in hand, we just can't finance them. So if the county was able to increase our warrant limits, then when we pay bills, then we submit those bills for reimbursement, then we pay the county back.'”
Alvarado said the Grant County Treasurer has increased warrant limitations with other special purpose districts, such as Grant County Public Hospital District 2, and there is a statutory process for paying the county back.
“This isn't anything that's outside the norm, and we have to pay fair market interest, just like if it were a loan,” he said. “I had gone out to private entities, banks if you will, but really, it's a lot more complicated for a port district to borrow money, so this was the cleanest and easiest way to do it, and with the Board of County Commissioners support, (the Treasurer’s Office) approved it.”
Now, Alvarado said the port can move forward with their grant projects.
“I can start going out to bid and request for proposals and all that,” he said.
Alvarado also shared an update on the port’s ongoing sale of its wastewater treatment plant, which has been put on hold after further investigation of the plant’s lagoon.
“It hadn't been cleaned for a while, so we were trying to figure out what the solids look like,” Alvarado said. “I hired a company that does sonar on lagoons to try to establish capacities, and I think it was a big eye-opener for us in that, basically, our lagoon is designed to hold 3 million gallons of discharge and basically half of it is full with solids.”
Clearing out the solids is only a temporary delay to the plant’s eventual sale, Alvarado said.
“We're still moving forward with selling it,” he said. “I think it's a matter of making these improvements so that when we do sell it, whoever the buyer is basically taking a system that is functioning better.”
Additionally, the Port of Mattawa recently attended the International Council of Shopping Centers’ commercial real estate tradeshow in Las Vegas in late May.
“I will tell you that for the next agenda, I'll have an executive session to talk about real estate matters,” he said. “I will say there are parties interested in some of the port's assets, which was pretty exciting.”
The Port of Mattawa’s next regular commission meeting is scheduled for June 10 at 5 p.m. at the port’s offices, located at 20140 Road 24 SW.
The Port of Mattawa has received $350,000 in funding through the Washington Department of Commerce to make improvements to the parking lot in front of the port’s event center, pictured.ARTICLES BY GABRIEL DAVIS
Work-based learning lets students build their own futures
MOSES LAKE — Work-based learning provides education opportunities for the workforce to receive hands-on training and technical education and prepare themselves to enter various industries. Educators and workforce development professionals from Eastern Washington discussed some the training they offer and the benefits of their programs. Next Generation Zone, an affiliate of WorkSource based in Spokane, provides job training opportunities for youth and young adults ages 16 to 24. Program Coordinator Kate Martin said there are multiple benefits to the program. “One of them is a paid work experience, and that’s where we reach out to area employers who are willing to take a young person and train them,” she said. “This is a short-term learning experience, so it’s typically about 240 hours; sometimes it could be longer or shorter. We’re the actual employer; we cover all of their wages, taxes, the L&I, and the employer just agrees to give them the experience and train them in whatever field it is that they’re wanting to go into.”
Serving schools: ESD superintendents reflect on operations, priorities
MOSES LAKE — Educational service districts are government-mandated agencies put in place to provide services to school districts across the state. ESD Superintendents discussed what they do and their priorities in operating their districts. ESD 105, led by Superintendent Kevin Chase, serves four counties, including Kittitas, Yakima and portions of Klickitat and Grant counties and provides support for 25 school districts – including Royal School District and Wahluke School District – and more than 66,000 students. “We help them collaborate with each other as well or collaborate with other partners,” Chase said. “(It’s) a lot of advocacy work, either regionally or across the state, or even federally, working on different issues that impact our education. And we provide very specialized services in certain situations in order to meet the needs of our students in our region and of our school districts.”
Columbia Basin Project making headway through Odessa Groundwater program
CASHMERE — The Columbia Basin Project is making gradual progress toward completion with particularly significant accomplishments for the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program in the last six months or so, according to Columbia Basin Development League Executive Director Sara Higgins. “When we’re dealing with a project of this size, advancement is kind of like watching paint dry, but yes, there have been (developments),” she said. “There are a lot of exciting things happening right now.” There are more than 300 miles of main canals, about 2,000 miles of lateral canals and 3,500 miles of drains and wasteways in the irrigation project, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation website. The CBDL advocates for the operation of those waterways and for the project to continue “build-out.”