‘It’s a three-way win’: City, school district and farmers unite in land deal for growth

OTHELLO – In a three-way agreement, community leaders in Othello traded and purchased land to build new infrastructure in the area with a goal to grow the rural town.

“It was kind of like a three-way win,” said AJ Ochoa, owner of Terra Gold Farms.

AJ and Jodi Ochoa, owners of Terra Gold Farms; Pete Perez, superintendent of the Othello School District; Shawn Logan, mayor of Othello; and others from the City Council, came to an agreement to build essential infrastructure, including a new water treatment facility, school, dog shelter and dog park.

Logan said this initiative is to help continue the growth of the community, taking into consideration the large youth population in the area.

“We realize we are a young community,” Logan said. “We have a lot of families, a lot of kids. Forty percent of our population is under the age of 18, and our average age in Othello is 25 if you can believe that, but it’s all true.”

Securing future water supply

One of the key parts of this agreement is the city’s purchase of 77.12 acres for $4.2 million in March for a water treatment facility to ensure quality water in the area.

The Othello City Council members approved the purchase of 77.12 acres for $4.2 million in March. Logan said the property once belonged to the Othello School District, before they traded the land with the Ochoas for a new piece of property.

The Ochoas then sold the property to the city of Othello.

“It’s important to realize that this community is going to grow beyond the size it is, and continue to maintain our industrial workforce,” Logan said. “We produce 15% of the nation’s frozen french fries here in Othello, through our two processors, McCain Foods and Simplot, and they use a lot of water to process french fries.

“We needed something sustainable, and we needed to have a plan, and that was something that we didn’t really have a good plan for, not only to sustain our current level, but also to take in the growth that we have occurring now in Othello. That’s something that we’re looking for long term sustainability for the next 30 years-plus.”

Logan said this has been in the works for the past eight to nine years, after they got a visit from the Washington State Department of Health. He said they identified 11 small, subdivision Class A water systems around the city of Othello that get their water from one well.

“People in Class A water, they all share the cost, and they were having trouble with them, because they could see that the aquifer levels in the Wanapum aquifer were being drawn down,” Logan said. “The department wanted them to connect, or they would pay for a study to find out how much it would cost to connect all these water systems to the city’s water supply.”

When the Health Department conducted the study, it found that Othello didn’t have enough water to supply the residents in those subdivisions.

As a result, the city began working on a new water source by using surface water from an irrigation canal east of the city, rather than relying on groundwater pumping.

“We’ve done two pilot tests, spent about $8.2 million and we found out that we can treat that water to Class A drinking water standards,” Logan said. “We can inject it into the aquifer to store it and pump it out later, and we can also use it directly into our water supply.”

Logan said the water treatment facility will require 24 acres.

“I think that it will help the city grow as far as getting more water for the people, more water for the factories that are there and increase the water capacity of the whole town for all the future uses of whoever wants to use it,” AJ Ochoa said.

“As far as the Ochoa family, we’re trying to help the city grow, trying to help the schools grow, so the community can flourish,” he said.

Possible high school plans

Superintendent Perez, who was part of the three-way agreement, said working toward a new school for the rural town has also been an eight-year journey.

He said the district had land inventory but felt like it wasn’t the right place to build a school.

Instead, they were looking into a way to move into some additional properties the last couple of years, but in the last year and a half that conversation became a serious consideration.

“The last three or four years we focused on trying to find a willing partner in the community. And as we sort of made the rounds with local farmers and landowners, I think word got out to the town and to the Ochoas that we might be interested in looking for a win, win, win for the city and for the landowner and for the school district,” Perez said. “That conversation got going pretty intensely with the Ochoas, and we spent the last year and a half specifically with them.”

The reason for the expansion is that Othello High School is approaching its “useful age” as defined by Washington state standards.

“It’s 30 years post remodel and in 2029 it will be eligible for a state match so there’s potential, if the community would support it. And there’s an identified need that in 2029 we would be in position to consider doing something with our high school,” Perez said.

Although they have positioned themselves for the possibility of a new high school, he emphasized they haven’t formalized any of those conversations yet.

“We have some regional school districts, Quincy in particular, Prosser Grandview High School, that have new facilities, and oftentimes, when our families and our students go to those school sites, they say, ‘Wow, that’s a beautiful new high school. What about us?’” Perez said.

“So I would say most of the energy is around a new high school, but we haven’t formalized any of those conversations yet, with a facility committee, or anything like that. That’s work to come in the next year or two,” he said.

Investing in the youth

Along with the new water treatment facility and a potential new high school, Logan mentioned that, because the city was unable to purchase just a portion of the 77.12 acres and had to buy the entire property, it plans to use the space to build a dog shelter, a dog park and possibly other future city projects.

“We’re looking at a new swimming pool with the plans, if the community wants a swimming pool with all of these amenities,” Logan said. “Our existing location is not going to be large enough, so we might end up putting a swimming pool there.”

He said their current outdoor pool has been around for 17 years but last year, it closed down due to safety concerns and the city is studying the cost to fix the existing pool.

Still, he recognizes that with the rural town’s large and growing youth population, the space wouldn’t be enough to serve the community’s future needs – something central to the work he and the City Council have been focused on.

He said that over the past 11 years, they’ve prioritized creating free amenities and activities for families, with a strong emphasis on supporting the community and investing in its youths.

“We are going to engage in a public process, so there will be social media opportunities, posts, surveys, surveys in the public, live surveys at major events, so that we can show with sketches and 3D sketches,” Logan said.