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Business View Magazine
110 Business View – October
Infrastructure
Wonderful Place to
Live, Work and Play
Public works focused on infrastructure repair
and replacement
The City of Walla Walla, WA
W
alla Walla’s population has grown steadily
in each of four 10-year increments since it
stood at 23,619 for the 1970 U.S. Census.
It ticked up 8.5 percent by the time the census was
done in 1980, and rose another 3.4 and 12.1 in two
subsequent population counts on the way to reaching
31,731 by 2010.
It was incorporated as a city in 1862, and city leadership
over the years has been particularly effective in dealing
with infrastructure issues like drinking water treatment
and wastewater processing. The wastewater facility is a
full-reclamation plant, in fact, which in Walla Walla’s case
means that the effluent generated at the plant during
summer months is sent to irrigators for use.
But the track record for innovation isn’t so good on
the city’s water lines or roads.
“The infrastructure on the front end and the back is
really quite impressive,” said Ki Bealey, the city’s director
of public works. “It’s in between that it’s pretty darn
rotten. A lot of failing water lines and failing sewer lines
and failing streets.”
To combat those issues, the city kick-started an
initiative in 2010 – the Infrastructure Repair and
Replacement Program (IRRP) – to ramp up water and
sewer rates to help tackle the most immediate issues.
Those funds, which will ultimately yield $4 million to
$4.5 million per year, are the spur for much of the
existing renewal work being done within the network
of streets, water and sewers.
Feedback from city residents in 2011 reflected a desire
to make streets a priority, so Bealey and his staff have
gone about constructing a “prioritization matrix” that
factors in road condition, daily traffic rates and other
infrastructure elements while coming up with a top 25
list of projects to handle.
The matrix and the full-fledged monetary benefit
