While the pandemic has kept most of the City facilities inaccessible to the general public since March, City Staff and crew continue to work to keep the City running; ensuring clean and safe drinking water and sanitary sewer services.

Capital projects continue to move forward, and crews are on-site working on a variety of projects around the City. This summer will mark the largest expansion of the City’s water system in many years, whereby new 8” water mainlines will be installed in the eastern portions of the City, greatly increasing water pressure, quality, and fire suppression ability to the areas from Taggart Road to DeWitt Road. Combined with the waterline project, the new extension of Taggart Road (official name to be determined later) will get a smooth and robust asphalt top, opening the road to northern travel from the highway to Millrace Road without having to navigate the switchbacks along Taggart Road. The idea behind the road extension is to help with some of the safety concerns that exist at the intersection of Hwy 12 and Taggart Road at the minimart while trying to provide some infrastructure improvements that may someday lead to some new residential development in and around the eastern end of the City.

The City also continues to work on filling in the remaining gaps in our sidewalk system to make the City as completely walkable as possible. Crews will be out here around the first part of September to start work on a new sidewalk that will wraparound Willard Street, Lincoln, Kinnear, and parts of the E. 6th and 7th Streets. The project also includes a new short section along W. 7th from the Coppei Creek Bridge to Arnold lane as well as a section from the restrooms in Preston Park to the Playground equipment. Project will add a little over half a mile of new sidewalk to the City’s sidewalk system.

Lastly, the City continues to work with FEMA on flood control related repairs to the areas to the east of the highway 12 bridge that were heavily impacted by the flood event in February. With the added funds, we are hopeful we will be able to make some major improvements to the levee system in the near future as we finish up the Flood Mitigation Study with the Army Corp of Engineers and move out design/engineering to the construction phase of our agreement with them. Separate but related is flood control work being done by the Army Corp of Engineers to the Touchet River Levee upstream from the Highway 12 bridge to City’s Waste Water Treatment Plant in the next couple of months. Work will also include repairs to the washout area at the rivers bend upstream of the Highway 12 Bridge.

While it doesn’t appear that things will be going back to any resemblance of normal any time soon, I want to thank the people of our community for keeping our positive case counts down to the lowest numbers in all of Walla Walla County. I urge you to continue social distancing and wearing masks whenever you are out patronizing our local businesses.

As always, should anyone have any questions about the City, please feel free to contact me via email at administrator@cityofwaitsburg.com

Randy Hinchliffe

City Administrator