Elmer City mayor responds to article

In response to “Elmer City seeks Coulee Dam’s financial help,” January 31:

On January 5, 2018, Elmer City requested a meeting with the new Coulee Dam mayor. Coulee Dam set the date of the meeting for January 16th at 10 a.m. and we agreed to meet at the Coulee Dam city hall. The purpose of the meeting was to have a friendly introduction to the Elmer City’s concerns. The topics discussed were connecting to the new wastewater treatment plant, previous billing errors and the threatened lawsuit.

Elmer City went to the meeting with the new mayor and asked him to follow the 1975 agreement. The agreement says Elmer City will pay a proportional percentage of any improvements and modifications. Everyone thought the meeting went well.

Long after the final plan approval, Elmer City received a Technical Memo from Varela & Associates, Inc., suggesting we should complete an evaluation of the lift station for the new 17-foot elevated connection. We retained an engineer to research the issue and received the results of the study in August. We immediately scheduled a meeting with the newly hired Indian Health Service (IHS) District Engineer. What was the IHS response to Coulee Dam’s request for us to pay for the new connection upgrade? It should have been included in the plan and poor planning is not an emergency.

Coulee Dam neither requested nor required Elmer City to participate in the financing of the new plant, but we do remember the meeting Mr. St. Jeor attended as a citizen. The meeting was to inform the public about the funding package attained by Rural Development. When asked why Elmer City hadn’t been included in the funding application process, Rural Development said we were not the loan customer. I don’t recall shaking my finger at that response, but I wasn’t happy.

Gail Morin

Elmer City Mayor