Local representative working on bill draft supporting statewide assessment of municipal water, sewer infrastructure

(Rock Springs, WY) – Wyoming Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander, is working with a legislative committee and multiple state agencies to draft a bill proposal supporting a statewide assessment of municipal water infrastructure in Wyoming.

The information should help lawmakers develop a policy defining the state’s role in assisting local governments with infrastructure improvements, Larsen said. 

Inflation

Traditionally, municipalities in Wyoming have been responsible for maintaining their own water and sewer infrastructure, Larsen explained to the Wyoming Legislature’s Select Water Committee during a meeting earlier this month. 

But lately, many Wyoming communities – and smaller towns in particular – have struggled to pay for those infrastructure improvements, largely due to inflationary pressures that have driven up project costs, Wyoming Water Development Office Director Jason Mead said.

“What they’re charging for water rates (and) the cost to actually replace infrastructure just aren’t matching up,” Mead told the committee. “So there’s a budget shortfall.”

And of course, Wyoming is mostly made up of smaller communities, Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality Water Quality Division Administrator Jennifer Zygmunt pointed out. 

“(That) really is important to keep in mind,” she said. “Eighty three percent of our public water systems serve populations of less than 500 people.”

For communities that small, “there’s no economies of scale,” Office of State Lands and Investments State Revolving Fund Program Manager Shawn King said, so it’s even more difficult to cover the current inflated cost of infrastructure repairs without raising utility rates – and “nobody wants to raise rates, because nobody wants to pay more.” 

“(There is) community pressure,” King said. “People don’t see the value in having water and sewer – they just kind of come to expect that it should be offered and be available.”

Small towns are also less likely to have the staffing or expertise needed to secure alternative sources of funding for infrastructure projects, King added. 

State’s role

Meanwhile, Larsen said, municipal water and sewer systems continue to age across the state, and “without the capacity to replace that aging infrastructure in a timely manner … we are falling further and further behind.”

“So, my question to my legislative colleagues is: Does the state have a role in this situation we find ourselves in?” he asked. “And my argument is, ‘Yes, because of the uniqueness of our small communities and this idea of Wyoming being one community with very long streets.’”

In order to more clearly define the state’s role, however, Larsen said it will be necessary to understand the current “condition of the assets.”

That’s where the statewide assessment of municipal water infrastructure comes in.

“I think that this is the gap that really gives stability and conformity across the state,” he said. “Once you get those assets identified and the condition of those assets listed, then we can better develop our policy and identify the funding stream that would be appropriate.”

State agencies are already working on a plan to develop a “statewide inventory” of municipal infrastructure, Zygmunt said, beginning with a pilot project that has already assessed the needs of six Wyoming communities and helped those communities develop ongoing operation and maintenance plans and “sustainable financial plans.”

The pilot project will help the state estimate “what it’s going to take – both in terms of time and money – to develop these (assessments) for all of our drinking water systems,” Zygmunt said.

“That is our next goal, and our key recommendation that we have in these infrastructure discussions,” she said. “(We want) to help all Wyoming communities develop asset management plans for both drinking water and wastewater. … This will get us what we need in order to have a comprehensive assessment and a database system where we can see what we have in Wyoming and know what condition it’s in. It’s that road map that we need – from where is Wyoming now, where do we need to go, and how are we going to get there.”

Funding is already in place to support a statewide assessment of drinking water systems, she noted, but “we don’t have a funding source that’s eligible for the wastewater systems.”

“That’s one thing that we are looking for,” she said. “Because it certainly would be more efficient if we could have a contractor do asset management planning for a community and do drinking water and wastewater at the same time, rather than two separate rounds.”

Larsen said he would work with committee members and the state agencies to put together a bill draft for the committee to consider at its next meeting, which is scheduled to take place Nov. 4-6 in Casper. 

Regionalization

Wyoming Water Development Commissioner Clinton Glick of Fort Washakie expressed support for the statewide infrastructure assessment during this month’s meeting, asking whether the process could include a “push” for water system regionalization in some areas of the state.

“We (could) actually put it on there showing that … it costs each town this much to run, but if we combined them all, it only costs each town a little bit of money, and that maintenance and operations could be combined and it would cost a lot less per municipality,” Glick said. 

Larsen agreed that, in Fremont County particularly, “it makes a lot of sense to take in Fort Washakie, Ethete, Pavillion, Lander, Hudson, and Riverton” and place them “on one system,” allowing for “redundancy of water sources and of treatment facilities” serving communities that are “not that far apart.”

“That’s part of this whole conversation in getting conformity across the state for efficiencies,” he said. “I think that it’s worthy of the conversation.”