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QuickTake:
The small community near the coast has an aging water system prone to leaks. The local water district is struggling to find upwards of $25 million for upgrades.
About 40 Mapleton residents gathered in a school gymnasium to hear about the future of their community, nestled in the forest 15 miles inland from Florence.
They ate baked potatoes and chili cooked by high school students for a community service project, and chatted with friends and neighbors at the gathering Monday, Oct. 12.
The unincorporated community of about 500 people includes families who have lived here for generations. Along the way, the community has faced hardships: closures of retail and food establishments have whittled down the business community over the years. A landslide destroyed wate-system equipment several years ago.
At the community gathering, residents met to talk about another challenge, one that threatens its long-term viability. A looming $25 million challenge hangs over this rural community: That’s the estimated amount of money Mapleton needs to upgrade its water and sewer infrastructure, a decades-old system that is one leak away from becoming even more expensive. Of that amount, the water district has chipped off about $6 million from the total, leaving $19 million of needs.
In recent years, Mapleton residents have seen the problems compounding. Boil orders and even orders to temporarily stop using water have forced residents to come face to face with the realities of the old water lines.
In a small community, the options are limited. Even federal grants typically require matching funds. With needs in the millions of dollars, that poses a dilemma: pay for the water system upgrades with a loan to cover the local matching requirements in grants, or wait for the problems to worsen.
And federal cuts have limited or eliminated programs that provide rural communities with local matching funds, officials said.
“There’s no free money out there,” Art Donnelly, a member of Mapleton Water District’s board, said in an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield. “So what that means is that anytime you get a grant, you’ve got to come up with a local match.”
At the community meeting, members of the Mapleton Water District laid out the challenges, asked for input and invited the community to offer ideas.
Like other rural communities with infrastructure built more than 70 years ago, Mapleton’s challenges offer a glimpse of what the future holds in rural communities struggling to keep their infrastructure running — a tool necessary to grow and retain residents, businesses and industries.
“Our parents and grandparents invested in the future by building those systems,” Donnelly told the group. “The responsibility to update that infrastructure and invest in Mapleton’s future is now falling on us.”
On a tour with a Lookout Eugene-Springfield reporter shortly before the meeting, Donnelly showed a section of town where a grant is covering the costs of laying in new pipe. Along the way, he came across Vanessa West, who was passing out flyers about the event to remind residents.
Donnelly noted that some of the problems, like water shutoffs for residents, have improved in the last two years. Yet Donnelly also warned: “We are one bad pipe rupture away from being right back there again.”
‘We’re asking for your help’
At the meeting, the group heard from water district officials and other elected officials, including Ryan Ceniga, the chair of the Lane County Board of Commissioners, and outgoing state Rep. Boomer Wright, R-Coos Bay, who isn’t running for reelection.
Ceniga said the county’s budget and funding is tight, though county staff may be able to help Mapleton find grants through other sources. Ceniga encouraged them to not give up.
“The people who put this water infrastructure in here really knew what they were doing,” said Ceniga, who worked in public works and water systems before becoming a commissioner. “That’s the legacy we want to continue.”
For the most part, residents praised the efforts, though they also raised questions about property values going down and the water district’s ability to attract and retain employees necessary to keep the system running.
They also raised issues related to the community’s overall environment. Pam Sievers, who manages Maple Lane RV Park & Marina, said she has concerns about a nearby property that is blighted with run-down vehicles and junk and how that reflects upon the community and the RV Park she manages with her husband.
“Our business has been greatly affected by that and we are one of the top ratepayers for water and sewer in Mapleton,” Sievers said. “The success of our business is also the success of Mapleton. We’re asking for your help.”
The path forward
At times, the water district has had to cut corners. Due to a leak, the district sealed off both ends of a water line that ran under Highway 36 to avoid a worsening problem that could have potentially ruined the highway.
“Do you have the money to fix that?” Donnelly said. “No.”
One strategy is congressional direct spending allocations – which can be authorized by members of the state’s congressional delegation. Those allocations are different from standard grant applications to federal agencies, which require funding matches.
In an interview, Donnelly praised both U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle for their work to help get funding, which takes time with the appropriations process.
After the meeting, Donnelly said he was encouraged by the turnout and offered to volunteer for tasks like cleaning up property. He said the water district is committed to tackling its needs — one project and goal at a time.
“To have upwards of what was that, 30 or 40 people show up this evening, sit there for two hours and engage with us on these issues was incredible,” he said. “I feel good about that, and it makes me encouraged to believe that we could get more support from the community going forward.”
