Brooks has long been eyed for new business and residential development.

Located a couple miles north of Salem and Keizer along Interstate 5 and Highway 99E in unincorporated Marion County, there are advantages the area has such as access to roads, lower property taxes and lots of undeveloped land.  

The communities of Brooks (the area to the east of I-5) and Hopmere (west of I-5) had a combined 1,567 employees despite having only 543 residents, according to an October 2021 report.

But water – mostly the lack of it – and sewer have hampered development for decades in Brooks.

Business owners talk about the inability to have enough water for sprinkler systems. Building anything substantial requires drilling a well, expensive chemical fire suppression systems to meet building codes or putting in multiple fire doors.

And there aren’t many funding sources for that kind of infrastructure improvements in that area.

Marion County has allocated $9.8 million for drinking water improvements in Brooks and $5 million to the sewer system of the $67.5 million it is being given by the federal government from the American Rescue Plan Act.

“This is a generational investment,” Marion County Commissioner Kevin Cameron said. “So looking at water and sewer for economic development.”

Water has always been tricky for Brooks.

The only well in Brooks that serves customers is owned by Chemeketa Community College and is located at its Brooks campus. It’s had ownership since 2008 when it was given the well by Marion County Fire District No. 1.

The water district is not large: it had 17 customers as of 2019. Most homeowners and businesses in the area have their own wells, which is a choke point.

“One of the things that has been a problem for businesses in the area is that there isn’t a community water system,” said Daniel Sullenger, vice president of Brooks-based Oregon Bath & Kitchen and board president of Willamette Valley Christian schools.

In 2018, the antiquated pump at Chemeketa needed to be replaced, and Marion County had to come up with the money to do so.

Housing developers have sought to tie into the system, but haven’t been allowed as it doesn’t produce enough water.

When Willamette Valley Christian, a private school in Brooks, built a new gym a few years ago, it was done with non-flammable construction, meaning the building was made entirely out of metal.

That adds to construction costs.

The sewer service in the area is somewhat better. It connects old septic tanks to a lagoon by Covanta with about 250 pumps. But that system has been in place since 1991 and hasn’t been updated since.

The issue that comes up in studies about the Brooks Hopmere area conclude it needs water and wastewater improvements in order for the area to meet the projected demand for population and for the expansion of businesses.

The largest employer in the area is NORPAC, a vegetable processing facility in Brooks now owned by Oregon Potato Company. Other large employers include May Trucking (200 employees), Pilot Travel Center (100) and Curry and Company (40). Chemeketa also draws about 500 students to its Brooks campus.

The Oregon Department of Transportation is studying the Brooks Interchange for a potential project that would expand the interchange and widen Brooklake Road over Interstate 5. The concepts for the project are estimated to cost $57 million to $87 million, according to an ODOT presentation.

ODOT hasn’t identified funding for whatever project goes ahead in the area. Marion County’s goal is to have whatever improvements in the area done before it does.

“There’s just a lot of opportunity in that particular area, and you can’t go too much further out because now you’re getting into EFU land, you got to preserve that as well as find a place where we have the industrial,” Cameron said.

“And most of this stuff that I think you’ll see expand up there is going to be agricultural industrial. It will be processing, it will be those types of thing, but you got to have water for it, you got to have sewer for it, so it’s a long term project, but I’m glad that we’re doing it.”

Of all of the studies done on the area, a price tag hasn’t been put on the needed or desired water and wastewater improvements. The combined $14 million likely won’t pay for all of the water and wastewater improvements needed in Brooks. But it’s a start.

“We always know that if we can get to a certain point, you can go after the next dollars to do it,” Cameron said. “The longer it takes, the more it goes up, right? But you got to keep going. We did the study, the water study, and then we asked for a little more in-depth there. We’ve been working on it with our existing economic development dollars, making that a priority.”

Marion County said it is allocating over $26.4 million from its ARPA funding for water and sewer or septic projects for cities and service districts. Those include:

Most of those projects had been long planned, but the municipalities didn’t have any funding to go forward.

Sublimity Mayor Jim Kingsbury said the upgrade will add a water tank on Boedigheimer Road and add a booster pump to make sure it provides enough water pressure in case of fire.

“It’s something, it was in our master plan, our water master plan, and it absolutely would have been a rate payer paid upgrade,” he said. “That was an upgrade that had to been paid by ratepayers for the city. It actually saved the residents of Sublimity $1 million.”

In other projects Marion County is funding with ARPA funds, the county is spending $9 million to upgrade the county’s radio system, part of which was destroyed in the 2020 Labor Day wildfires:

That would go towards the proposed $4.2 million development of turf fields at the regional park.

Marion County Commissioner Colm Willis said when he was first elected as a commissioner in 2019, he became aware of a soccer program through 4-H when people involved in the program told the commissioners about it.

Though that soccer program no longer exists, the need for fields on which youths can play still exists.

“As we were thinking about what to do with our ARPA money, one of the things that came up was the ability for kids to have a place to play, and for this type of program to continue where your ability to play sports isn’t dependent on how much money your parents make,” Willis said.

In the plan, Keizer Rapids Park would end up with two turf fields, along with bleachers and lights in undeveloped park property.

Bill Poehler covers Marion County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him atbpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com