The North County Recreation District’s board of directors recently approved moving the district’s new pool project into its second phase, which will see both pools constructed as work is completed on the building housing them.
The decision to move into the next phase was made after $2 million was raised over the last year in support of the project and the district now needs just $1.5 million for equipment to complete the $15 million project.
Two large donations helped to complete the funding package for the second phase of the project, which North County Recreation District (NCRD) Executive Director Barbara McCann said should be complete by the end of this year, along with the building.
Adventist Health contributed of $500,000 towards the project, specifically earmarked for the new facility’s therapy pool. The therapy pool will be accessible for any patients needing physical therapy and NCRD staff are working with Adventist and Nehalem Bay Health District personnel to develop a program to best utilize it.
Another gift of $1 million was also recently pledged, although the details of that donation have not yet been made public.
The Pool Company will be undertaking the pool construction and connecting the pools to already-installed pipes that will be connected to equipment in the project’s third phase.
Initially, NCRD had planned to build the project in one phase, but cost escalations caused by inflation pushed the project’s budget from a projected $10 million to $15 million, outstripping the $12 million raised by the district. This led to the decision to split the project into three phases to avoid further budget growth.
Not all the news is good for the project, however, as NCRD has been working through a violation of wastewater permitting procedures with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
Last fall, during construction, McCann and other members of the project team realized that the construction site was greater than one acre in size and therefore required a wastewater permit from DEQ for the construction process. The team had failed to obtain the permit sooner because they had believed the site would be less than an acre, obviating the need for permitting, and project engineers submitted a permit application to DEQ in December.
However, that application indicated that the project had not yet broken ground, and when a DEQ inspector visited the site earlier this year, an enforcement action was started regarding the conflicting project dates. McCann said that the initial investigation has been completed by DEQ and that the matter is now with their enforcement division.
McCann stressed that even before submitting the application, contractors had been taking appropriate steps to mitigate silt and other runoff into the Nehalem River throughout construction. There is no deadline for DEQ to make an enforcement decision but the district will have 20 days to respond to their decision.
As work continues on the first phase of the project and begins on the second phase, the team at NCRD are turning their focus to closing the final $1.5-million funding gap. An outdoor event for the summer is in the works, though project consultant Thomas Fiorelli said that this round of fundraising would be primarily geared towards corporate and other institutional donors.
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