Junction City's water crisis continues as officials work to upgrade wells - KEZI TV

Junction City's water crisis continues as officials work to upgrade wells | News | kezi.com
Junction City continues into its fifth week under a stage 2 emergency water notice.

JUNCTION CITY, Ore. – Junction City has been in a stage two emergency water notice for five weeks as the city’s water production is still well below its capacity.

City Administrator Jason Knope Junction City relies on four wells for water, but all four are underproducing.

“We went from being able to pump 2,200 gallons a minute from our wells down to a little over 600 gallons a minute,” he said.

Water demand is high in the summer, so officials have not been able to fully pull and inspect the wells to know what’s causing the supply issue. They said they’ve investigated several possibilities but came up empty. They’ve scheduled one of the four wells to be pulled and inspected, and eventually all four will be evaluated.

“We’re going to be taking the actions this winter when the water demand isn’t as high to make that final determination and make what repairs, or if there’s deferred maintenance that hasn’t been done to take care of that as well this winter on our four existing wells,” Knope said.

Since 2021, Junction City has been working on two test water wells, the Alderdale and Raintree wells.

Work on the Raintree well has already started to get it producing water. The city started the water rights transfer process for both wells in April 2023, and the work is anticipated to be done by the end of August 2023.

Junction City is working with USDA Rural Development on a $1 million grant for the Raintree well. The grant is intended to be awarded by the end of October. Once the engineers get the approval of the grant, the project will be awarded within two months, and the project should then take approximately six months to complete.

Both wells are estimated to cost approximately $1.3 million each to develop for the city's use, but the Raintree well is the only one with funding and is expected to be in service in 2024.

The city aims to correct the issues and/or expand the wells to restore the production capacity of the wells back to 2,200 gallons per minute.

Junction City resident Randy Fletcher said he’s ready for the problem to be fixed, and with new housing developments and the population expected to grow, a solution needs to be found.

“Just as a homeowner, just as someone who lives here, we just want that issue to be fixed,” Fletcher said. “It’s really not acceptable, I mean we need to have capacity to meet peak demand.”

There is still no end date to the stage two emergency water notice in Junction City, Eugene.

Fletcher said one more problem that Junction City needs to address is communication.

“The biggest problem is communication; people don’t know,” Fletcher said. “The only way that I personally know that this situation is improving – the water levels in the tower are increasing – is because I’ve taken the time to go down to the meetings. Not everyone has time to do that.”

There is still no timeline for when residents can expect the stage two notice to be removed or reduced, but officials said the community's compliance with the water regulations is making a positive impact on water security.