Springing Into Water Industry -- Waitsburg Wants To Develop New Industry

WAITSBURG, Walla Walla County - Would you wet your whistle with water from Waitsburg?

It's a question leaders in this small Southeastern Washington town are asking as they look to nearby Coppei Springs as a possible source of economic development.

They envision a plant filling thousands of bottles of water a day.

Besides wheat, Waitsburg doesn't have a lot to sell. But 10 miles out of town, Coppei Springs feeds Coppei Creek with cold, pure water - more water than Waitsburg will ever use.

So far, bottlers from California, Montana and Utah have responded to the town's initial marketing efforts, raising collective hopes for new industry in this town of 1,250.

"The community is just ecstatic," said Jim Kuntz of the Port of Walla Walla, which is helping market the springs. "Water is one of their biggest assets. Let's try to sell it."

Ken Cole, a second-term city councilman, has taken the lead on economic development for his picturesque farm town on the edge of the Blue Mountains.

"Waitsburg doesn't have a whole lot of industry or anything else," Cole said. "I think (a bottling plant) would be a whale of a shot in the arm.

"We'd have a source of revenue going into the city that would be partially used for economic development of the town."

Some day, Cole would like to see a dilapidated 1860s flour mill turned into a winery. Another candidate for possible restoration is the town's ancient, unusable jail, a brig cut from an unknown battleship and stored in an unlocked garage marked with the words: "Keep Out."

"We have a lot of interesting things in Waitsburg if we could just get people to stop long enough to look," he said.

The Port of Walla Walla, which has been Waitsburg's primary proponent with water bottlers, owns land that could be used for a water plant.

"I don't ever see us short of water," Cole said, a situation with remarkable potential given that water often is the currency of development in the West.

With wheat prices hovering at or below production costs recently, the idea seems increasingly attractive.

Water plants are fairly automated, however, and one here probably would create no more than about 10 jobs. Still, 10 new families in town could be good for everything from churches to businesses.

The trend of the water business seems to be on Waitsburg's side.

Between 1988 and 1998, annual bottled-water consumption in the United States doubled to 12.1 gallons per person, according to the International Bottled Water Association.

Coppei Creek is fed by five springs with a total flow of about 500 gallons per minute, and the town uses about 200 gallons per minute.

Coppei water has 40 milligrams of dissolved solids per liter, well below the 150 milligrams bottlers set up as an upper limit, said Don Katsel, the town's public-works director.

"It's incredibly soft water," he said.