Weston gets new water system

Steven Wood a civil engineer from Sunrise Engineering discusses specs on the water tank with Braxton Taylor from Patriot Construction last week.

October 5 could be a big day in Weston, Idaho. That’s when the community of nearly 500 will see their 500,000 gallon water tank become operational. The construction project began in July and should be finished October 5, said Civil Engineer Steven Wood. Wood works for Sunrise Engineering in Smithfield, which oversaw the project.

Weston, Idaho, will hopefully change to their new $1.1 million, 500,000 gallon water tank this week.

Weston is located approximately 10 miles southwest of Preston. There were 175 residential connections and seven commercial connections, including two city parks and a church, listed in the 2016 Weston City 20-year Culinary Water Facilities Plan.

Wood said the $1.1 million project was funded by three sources: Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, a federal Community Development Block Grant and the Army Corp of Engineers.

The cement structure is on a hill east of the city and there is a little building further down on State Hwy 36 where a pump station is fed by one spring and two wells. The gravity flow will give residents plenty of water pressure.The storage tank will mean the town could grow, as insufficient water has limited its ability to incorporate more houses. Wood said the water storage facility should accommodate about 300 homes.

Weston Mayor Greg Garner said the water tank was not without controversy. The town had an old 200,000 gallon tank that required filling before it could be used.

“I checked around and nobody else was doing it that way,” the retired U. S. Army systems analyst said. “I had the engineers show me the science and math behind the proposed water tank and it made sense.”

“With the new water system we were able to shut down one pump house. It will save the residents a substantial amount of money,” the mayor said.

Garner said when he was looking for funding, he found there were are lot of agencies out there with money willing to help.

“You just needed to have someone find them.”

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

1 Comment

  • Ben October 3, 2018 at 10:29 am Reply

    Article missed the mark, water rates have went up for Weston Residents over the last years, with no more water than in the past. Really there are some community members that want to develop land and make money on the backs of residents. I believe development should be paid for by the ones developing. The impact fees for building should be higher, to fund the cost of these new projects. Weston residents should see same rates with a little increase, and those developers, wanting to build should pay costs associated with new constraints on water systems. It should have been built into system to collect money from development and new water hookups, to fund new projects like this. The residents especially commercial will pay the majority of costs for this project with no benefit, they will still see the same benefit at a higher cost. Developers will win, community members on council with ties to developers or land that will be developed will make money on the backs of long time residents. sad.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

I agree to these terms.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.