By JOHN McCALLUM
Editor
Cheney's City Council gave the green light last Tuesday to the first phase of construction at the Terra Vista development. Phase one is an 89-unit subdivision going in on 26 acres of land east of Cheney-Plaza Road south of Alki Street and north of the Bonneville Power Administration line.
But like it has in so many other council and planning commission discussions, the issue of water supply played a central role.
Cheney officials calculate the city has about 300 equivalent residential units (ERU) of water supply capacity. An ERU is the average amount of water a single-family home uses each day – about 100 gallons – with apartment units averaging about 0.63 ERUs per day.
With 89 homes at Terra Vista, 142 scheduled at the Golden Hills development on the city's north side, and another possible 192 apartment units for The Grove, also planned for Terra Vista, Cheney could soon see this capacity tapped out.
In presenting the Cheney Planning Commission's recommendation for approval of Terra Vista Phase One, Community Development director Tom Richardson said he was comfortable with the new subdivision even with the potential strain on the city's water supply.
Most water usage comes in the summer months when residents irrigate their lawns and gardens, something that would tend to skew the actual ERUs consumed over the course of the year.
“The chance that all these lots will be built on for this irrigation season is nil,” Richardson said.
The city is also actively pursuing other supply measures, including the drilling of an eighth well, hopefully beginning as early as this summer and brought online sometime in 2008. Richardson said the new well should be up before the planned residential lots in the city are built out, consuming the remaining ERUs.
“If something should happen to Well No. 8, though, we should re-evaluate before the next irrigation season,” he added.
“Is there any possibility that Well No. 8 could be a dry hole?” Councilman Mike McKeehan asked.
“There's every possibility,” Cheney public works director Don MacDonald said. “But we've been using the best available science to determine the best location, which our hydrologist has provided.”
MacDonald added that the Department of Ecology has given Cheney permission to look at a couple alternate sites, and the city can take other measures to reduce strain on the water supply, such as state-mandated conservation.
The city has also recently rehabilitated Well No. 4 to be used solely to irrigate three parks in the southern part of the city.
“I don't think green lawns and pretty flower beds is necessarily a waste of water,” Councilman Tom Trulove said, adding that he thinks Cheney is closer to the edge regarding its water supply than it was a year ago, and may need to consider regulating development more.
“I don't think we can plat another plat without taking a serious look at this thing,” Trulove said.
In the end, the council voted unanimously to approve the first phase of development at Terra Vista.
Also approved at the May 22 meeting was a $470,000 contract with Shamrock Paving for water main replacements and road resurfacing of several Cheney streets this summer. The work will be paid for by money from the residential street and sidewalk account and Spokane County Community Development Block Grant funding.
Also, a $21,059 contract with Applied Solutions was approved for upgrading the telemetry software used by water department personnel to monitor and/or control the operation of the city's water supply system.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected]
Reader Comments(0)