Nickelsville Water

[chrisma]

I visited Nickelsville for the first time yesterday, to deliver some water and some ice, and just see the place for myself.

I noticed that there is a large building next door that appears to be disused. I inquired with a couple of residents if they had considered approaching the property owner about negotiating a water connection for NV, while they wait for the city council to make a decision about NV getting their own hookup to city water. No one I talked to had thought of this.

I did some research last night, and with the help of Tracy at WSB, was able to discover the probable owner of the property. He is also a West Seattle business owner. Tracy was independently researching this same question.

Now I don’t want to publish any more information without getting explicit approval from Tracy, but I am interested in working with the community that has been supporting NV here, in making an approach to the owner about at least temporarily supplying water to NV (assuming that building has functional plumbing and potable water).

I know there are likely some other hurdles to address to, such as who is going to pay for the water, if it can be provided. I don’t know what NV’s resources are for this, but even if it ends up being community supported, that still seems a better use of resources than a dozen people driving all over the peninsula with 100+ gallon jugs.

So the first thing is to talk to the owner, and the thing about community is that someone here may actually know this person, or know someone who knows him, and I think that might be better than me, random stranger, trying to make contact with him about this issue. I’ willing to do that, but thought I’d put it to the community first.

So NV advocates and WSB’ers: I’m asking for your thoughts and suggestions about doing moving forward with this.

What do you think?

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[charlabob]

Did you get any response? I think it’s a great idea. It would be efficient and cost effective (especially if we can negotiate a deal.) A/C what do you think?

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[chrisma]

I posted a 2nd thread with a more accurate title, but not very much response. I’m happy to give the information to the community and let them decide what to do with it, and I have emailed Scott at NV with the info in this post.

My only thought with making this public was that is might be helpful to get some community input to see if we could find someone who might know the owner, or know someone who knows him.

Maybe that’s belaboring the whole thing though.

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[DLTooley]

I hope I can help!

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[Jiggers]

Hey proudpuge..any ideas?

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[chrisma]

@DLTooley: Email me through my username link and I can tell you what I know.

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[miws]

Jiggers FTW! ;-)

Mike

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[elikapeka]

Chrisma, if nothing works out with the property owners, another thought I had was the old fire station 37 on 35th? If the water is still on there, maybe the city would be amenable to letting NV fill up containers there – or there’s a station at 16th and Holden, perhaps there would be a way to work something out with them? There would still be the matter of transporting it, but just a thought.

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[angelescrest]

I LOVE that idea, E! How to realize it? I will try to get the NV brass to ask…

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[elikapeka]

I don’t want to step on any toes or get too many people pulling in different directions, so I think your idea is best – just pass on any ideas to them and let the NV structure handle it amongst themselves. Kudos to you and to Chrisma for doing so much to help.

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[chrisma]

Thanks, elikapeka.

I gave the contact information on the property owner to several of the folks at NV, but have not heard anything from them about whether they intend to pursue it or not. I’ve heard second hand that there is some hesitation there about asking the neighboring businesses for anything. I don’t really know much of the history and politics around NV at this site previously (I was living in Portland at the time), so perhaps there are good reasons for that.

I have truly no idea how the property owner would countenance such a request, and despite asking several times, I have no sense of whether the residents of NV could pay for the water service anyway. I suppose a community effort could be made to cover those costs (probably less expensive than having a dozen people driving all over the peninsula every day to deliver 100+ gallons of water), or maybe even the city could help out, I don’t know. It seems like all of that should be discussed before approaching the property owner.

I happen to be out of town at the moment. If nothing has been done with it by the time I’m back, I may take it upon myself to contact the property owner, assuming another solution hasn’t already been found.

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