Consultant outlines funding roadmap and options for Morrow County water projects

Nicholas Decote, a consultant working with Morrow County, told the Morrow County Clean Water Consortium that the group needs a short, staged funding roadmap to move multiple water projects from study to construction.

Decote said the first of three planned presentations was intended to align the consortium on basic funding terminology and the available federal, state and local options; subsequent sessions would focus on developing competitive projects and producing a funding-strategy report. "I'm Nicholas Decote. I go by Nick. This is my company's going on tenth year, doing mostly water and sewer infrastructure throughout Eastern Oregon," he said, introducing his approach.

The consultant described a range of options: pure grants, loans with principal forgiveness, state revolving funds for drinking and clean water, community development block grants and congressionally directed spending. He highlighted a capitalized revolving loan approach as a potential way to use public capital to finance repairs or improvements on privately owned wells and on-site systems, while acknowledging the administrative burden of underwriting many small projects.

Why it matters: federal and state awards typically require a clearly defined public-benefit project and an eligible recipient (for example, a public water system operator). Decote warned that vague applications can be difficult to change later — "it can take an act of Congress just to change the project" — and urged the consortium to pick defined project priorities to avoid losing earmarked funds.

Discussion and local details

Consortium members discussed a previously awarded set of federal funds that had originally been described as supporting a Morrow County drinking-water effort and that have been redirected to feasibility work in and around Irrigon and Boardman. Board members said roughly $1.2 million of an award was being focused toward feasibility and related work for Irrigon; at one point a speaker referenced a second-round figure of about $1.89 million and said local contributions of "a few hundred thousand dollars" were expected to supplement that sum.

Several members pressed on limits to how the money can be spent. One board member warned: "we're spending money on a well, but we don't know if that's what is gonna be the project," and asked whether local residents had been engaged before committing funds. Consortium staff said they had asked the EPA whether federal funds can be used to pay for privately owned wells; staff said EPA answered that federal awards cannot be spent on private wells and the money must be used by public utilities or other eligible public recipients.

On private wells and alternative approaches

Decote described the capitalized revolving loan fund as a promising but administratively complex way to help homeowners on private land. Under that approach, the consortium or a public entity would capitalize a loan fund with state or federal dollars, then administer loans, grants or reimbursements to homeowners for well rehabilitation, point-of-use treatment, or septic conversion. He warned that such programs require underwriting and loan administration capacity and that eligibility rules (income checks, reporting) vary by funding source.

Decote also reviewed examples and constraints for other programs commonly used to fund rural water upgrades: community development block grants (which require income surveys and have per-residence caps), Economic Development Administration grants, the state drinking-water and clean-water revolving funds (which typically flow to public water systems), and federal earmarks or state capital-request programs that can provide larger sums but require political steps and clear project readiness.

Next steps and timing

Decote asked the consortium to identify 3–4 priority projects or "case studies" for deeper funding feasibility work, saying he would marry funding options to the road-map engineering and geographic priorities being developed by GSI, HDR and other consultants. Consortium staff and consultants said Ronan (GSI) and local engineers will continue technical work, while Decote will prepare funding feasibility briefs and applications once projects are sufficiently defined. Several participants urged that community outreach and documented willingness-to-connect (hookup plans) be completed for grant applications that require evidence of resident buy-in.

Votes and procedural actions

At the start of the meeting the consortium approved the July 8, 2025 minutes by motion and voice vote. The motion was seconded and the chair announced the motion carried.

Ending

Consortium members agreed to return next month with more detailed case-study proposals and engineering scopes to let Decote and other consultants pair project-level costs with likely funding packages. The consultant said he would prioritize work that demonstrates feasibility and that positions the consortium for state or federal awards.