Where should Lacey get its water as it grows? City Council weighs options
Lacey’s water resources manager delivered an eye-opening presentation about the city’s future water needs on Thursday and it ended with the City Council weighing two options: whether to spend millions to develop the brewery water rights it owns in Tumwater or to go in a completely different direction to supply the city with water.
The different direction is this: The city and its urban growth area are home to 10,000 septic tanks — septic systems the city wants to eventually convert to sewer hookups for environmental reasons. As the city goes through that process, it could treat the wastewater from those converted septic systems to potable standards, then store it in the aquifer for future use, such as in the summer when demand for water is high.
“Reclaimed water can more than replace the water available from the brewery water rights,” said Peter Brooks, the city’s water resources manager.
If the city didn’t pursue either option, Brooks estimates the city has enough water to last 60-70 years. After that the city would not be able to issue new water connections to developers, he said.
If that sounds familiar, that’s because the city has been here before.
About 15 years ago, Lacey found itself in a similar position and stopped issuing water availability letters to developers in its urban growth area. The city later worked out a water supply agreement with Olympia, then Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater snapped up the water rights that had been attached to old Olympia Brewery in Tumwater after a failed attempt by a business to bottle water at the former brewery.
The brewery closed in 2003.
Brooks told the council that the city, in its quest for more water rights at the time, even considered acquiring water rights from Lakewood in Pierce County and building a pipeline to Lacey.
“That’s how desperate we were getting,” he said.
Now, the council has to decide whether it wants to develop its brewery water rights and enter into a new interlocal agreement with Olympia and Tumwater, or sell the rights to either city and pursue the reclaimed water strategy.
Lacey’s share of the brewery water rights is 761 acre feet per year — the volume of water it would be allowed to pump in a year — or about 2,100 gallons per minute, Brooks said.
To access that water, Lacey would have to develop a well somewhere in the Tumwater Valley, treat it and bring it to Lacey. Brooks estimated that cost at $42 million.
The other challenge is that 761 acre feet per year is not a lot, meaning a future well likely would only be used to augment the city’s water needs in the summer, he said.
The reclaimed water strategy would be expensive, too, Brooks said, but the city wants to get those septic systems converted to sewer anyway. Under the reclaimed water strategy, the city would get nearly double that of the Tumwater option, between 1,100 and 1,700 acre feet per year, he said.
After his presentation, Deputy Mayor Cynthia Pratt agreed that the reclaimed water approach seemed more sustainable.
“To me this is pretty straightforward,” Councilman Lenny Greenstein added. “If they (Olympia or Tumwater) are willing to buy the water rights, it doesn’t make any sense not to sell the rights.”
The council took no action on the topic on Thursday. The discussion ended with Mayor Andy Ryder asking Brooks to continue to explore the city’s options before entering into a new interlocal agreement.
This story was originally published March 13, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
