Cheney City Council candidates disagree on seriousness of city’s water problems

After a summer of watering restrictions, candidates for Cheney City Council hope to improve water accessibility in town.

Candidate Paul Schmidt said when he worked as an administrator for the city of Cheney 11 years ago, he thought the local government was making gains on providing enough water to meet both development and drought conditions.

“A lot of the residents are concerned we’re growing faster than our water resources can handle,” Schmidt said.

He said if elected, he hopes to help solve the issue by looking into water treatment facilities to reuse more water.

Candidate Tim Gainer said he believes that the water problems in Cheney have been exaggerated by city officials including the mayor, and some of the restrictions put in place over the summer were unnecessary. He said if the city managed water better, it might not be an issue.

“The council and the mayor are saying that Cheney has a water shortage, and so they’ve been restricting our water usage over the last couple of months,” Gainer said. “But talking to people behind the scenes, not trying to get anybody in trouble, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

Cheney Mayor Tom Trulove disagreed.

“I don’t think Gainer knows what’s going on,” Trulove said.

Trulove said early this summer one of the city’s eight wells had a mechanical failure and went out of production. He said there was plenty of drinking water, and the city is working on tapping into wetlands and a reuse project to increase water availability, but during the summer, the city needs to limit water use on irrigation to make sure there is enough to go around.

Water has been an issue in Cheney for the past several years, with factors such as reservoir depletion, drought and development all contributing.

Schmidt said one of his other priorities if elected to the City Council was maintaining a positive relationship with Eastern Washington University.

“They are such a big factor in the community,” Schmidt said. “We just need to continue that and then find common ground where you can look at those areas that benefit each other. The last thing you want to do is oppose each other on items.”

Gainer said he hopes to improve both the city’s relationship with the university and downtown at the same time. He said he would like to encourage more businesses to come to Cheney to make staying local more attractive to students, instead of students going to Spokane to shop.

“If we could bring some more businesses into Cheney and keep those student dollars here,” Gainer said, “everybody would be happy.”

Gainer has spent the majority of his life in Cheney, graduating from high school and spending a few years at Eastern.

Schmidt moved to Cheney in 1986 and originally grew up in Maddock, North Dakota. He has worked around the state in various city administrator jobs.