Creston Reservoirs

Varela brings fire safety, water quality and overflow protection to this eastern Washington town

The Town of Creston, Washington’s municipal water system suffered from low pressure and a lack of fire protection storage, especially for the Creston school. With only 100,000 gallon capacity and old leaking steel distribution systems and AC mains, the entire reservoir and distribution lines needed to be replaced to bring the town’s water system to adequate capacity and pressure. The old reservoir directed overflow to a drainage way that would flow through town and cause damage.

Engineering and implementing necessary improvements was a major financial undertaking, stretching the resources of this small town of less than 300 residents. Varela helped the Town of Creston acquire grant funding to pay for replacing a large portion of the distribution system so that the system could sustain higher pressure. We also helped assemble a second funding package of $1.3M which consisted of 66% grant and 34% low-interest loan to pay for the construction of two 250,000 gallon reservoirs.

Reservoir Details

The two new reservoirs are Mt. Baker Silo concrete construction type with a total volume of 500,000 gallons. The project included sophisticated piping and valving that enables the reservoirs to fill from the top and empty from the bottom, mixing the water and maintaining excellent water quality.

Each reservoir operates independently of the other, allowing Creston to take one reservoir out of service for maintenance without affecting service to customers.The project also included a reservoir overflow containment pond to alleviate excess water flow damage.