As the Water Partnership proceeds with completing Phase 2 of their 12-county regional water supply project, one representative said right now, it’s all about waiting.

The project, which has already been years in the making, could potentially take dozens of years, and even a ballpark figure of $150 million to complete.

Tye Parsons, vice chair for the Water Partnership for Northwest Missouri, said an engineering firm had been hired with funding from both the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Corp. of Engineers to look at the project from its entire regional standpoint.

Bartlett and West is that engineering firm, and they visited the group in mid-September to present a 50 percent progress report to Water Partnership members.

As much as Phase 1 looked at forming the idea of the 12-county water supply system, Phase 2 will take into account the feasibility of that idea, what will work, what won’t and will then fine tune the project’s details, Parsons said.

February will be an important month for the project, because important deadlines are approaching, and Phase 2 must be completed at that time.

Two subcommittees were formed during the September meeting; one for managerial structuring and another for public relations purposes. Parsons said the committees were formed so they could look at what is going to happen to the Water Partnership after February. The administrative contract will run out at that time with DNR, the Phase 2 final report will be completed at that time along with the feasibility study.

Parsons said the two subcommittees begin meeting next week to look at questions concerning the future of the organization — whether that’s the Water Partnership or an existing organization. Other looming questions include  who is going to manage the 12-county system, who’s going to be in charge of it and who’s going to pay for it.

“The Water Partnership team was really created as a type of advisory or as an exploratory group,” he added. “It was never really designed to manage or operate the 12-county system. It was created to look at the options and find what was the best course of action to address the problems of water in northwest Missouri. The big question right now then, is once we get to the point where we need to figure out how to build this thing, we’ve got to have some type of governing structure in place. There has to be a board and there has to be bylaws, and there has to be an organization of some type that’s actually responsible for running this thing.”

The subcommittee will also be hiring a contractor to complete a managerial study, which will also be presented before February, so that it can be included in the Phase 2 report.

Parsons said that managerial study will look at the different governing bodies, whether to go non-profit or for profit, how many representatives each city or county will be allowed and how to make up a governing board for the system.

The other subcommittee in charge of public relations has been formed to get ready for the next step, which is creating the public awareness of the project and making all of the monetary contacts necessary to receive funding for the large project.

“That is when we have to actually start going out there and asking for earmarks or writing grants or whatever the case may be,” Parsons said. “It’s this group that’s going to go out and be the ‘cheerleaders,’ or inform other people about the project. They will make the legislative contacts, and go out there and talk the talk and help get the idea across of what we’re trying to do with this whole thing.”

A year from now, Parsons predicts they will be halfway through Phase 3, and will be on their way to having an understanding of what the total project will cost and what funding options will be. He added that he hopes to have commitment from some of the different water users around northwest Missouri.

Parsons said the hard part about that is the fact that at this point, it’s a lot of wait and see.

“By and large everyone thinks it’s a great idea, and that it needs to happen, but at the same time when you talk about a project that’s going to take 20 years or 30 years, people are kind of cautious about saying ‘well yes, if you run a pipe by my house, I’ll definitely hook onto it,’” Parsons said. “They’re not as willing to do that as many times when you’re looking that far off into the future. Overall the response has been positive, and we’ve had great support from DNR — we hope that support continues.”

Phase 3 for the project will be the establishment of the administrative body of the governing structure and then figuring out how to pay for the project, Parsons said.

“There’s going to be so many different aspects to that fundraising part,” he said. “There could be tax proposals put on local ballots, there could be grants written, there could be federal earmarks, there could be state legislation — more than likely it will be all of those things because when you’re talking about dollars that high you’re not just going to get all of that from one source.”

The Water Partnership for Northwest Missouri project might not have been what Parsons thought it would be when he came on board through the Northwest Missouri Regional Council of Governments, but he said that after being shown the progress report of Phase 2 by Bartlett and West during their last meeting, it helped ease some nerves.

“Sometimes it can be frustrating because it takes so much time to do some things, but overall I think we’re making some progress,” Parsons said. “Actually it’s been kind of neat to see the feasibility study develop, and we’re finally starting to see some maps and numbers and some real tangible things. This is what the project could actually look like — so that’s been nice. That’s been the most beneficial thing so far — being able to see some real hard data on what the project would look like.”