Grants Pass spent nearly a decade — and hundreds of thousands of dollars — planning a new water treatment plant. But now, the city is rethinking its strategy after losing a critical piece of its funding.
A cornerstone of the city’s financing plan was a grant from the federal Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. That money was expected to cover roughly half of the $135 million project, according to Jason Canady, the city’s public works director.
Grants Pass’ application was accepted in 2022 and was slowly making its way through the grant system when the Federal Emergency Management Agency cut the BRIC program in early April.
“We were ‘selected’ but not ‘approved,'" Canady said. "In fact, they had just moved our application to the person in FEMA that was supposed to push the ‘approved’ button."
Funding for the plant is now uncertain.
“We're looking at every option,” Canady said. “Right now, we are busy scrambling.”
He said the city is figuring out what the cost of borrowing might be for the project and whether or not current water rates are sufficient.
“When you have a community like Grants Pass in Southern Oregon, it's not like we have unlimited resources,” Canady said.
Grants Pass decided to replace its water treatment plant because it was at risk from natural disasters. City officials argued a new plant would be less costly than repairing damage from an earthquake or flood.
“The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” the agency said in a statement. “It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”
Medford had anticipated more than $34 million from the BRIC program to expand pump station capacity and storage reservoirs for its drinking water system. Now, those plans may be delayed.
“We are currently working to understand what the impacts [are] of the loss of the BRIC funding and what our next steps will be, but it could include delays in projects or issuing more debt,” Medford Water said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Port Orford in Curry County is now without a $6.6 million BRIC grant to replace aging water pipes and meters. That project description says the upgrades would have kept an adequate water supply for the city during drought, wildfires or earthquakes.
