I have been asked many times since early last week how the Trump Administration’s executive orders have affected PRWA and its work.
Some of the orders have severely impacted our USDA REAP subcontractor, Zero Emissions Northwest, causing the company to furlough employees. We are hopeful these payments resume soon so they can get back to work helping farmers and small rural business owners on our behalf. The ZEN folks are a talented bunch and fantastic to work with.
How do these orders affect PRWA’s work moving forward? We continue. We will have to adjust how we do some activities, but we most certainly will continue. Our NWRIS work will continue. We are finalizing documents for our six pilot communities and will be reaching out to them later this week and into next week to explain the program and expectations and ask if they would like to opt in. For those that do, the work will commence. We will also continue working on our other rural initiatives. One such effort is pulling together a high-level group of people from Washington, Oregon, and beyond to begin building a plan for water projects on a regional scale for philanthropic and investment funding vehicles. This is especially timely and the group is excited to do this work.
We are forging ahead and will continue to be helpers and advocates for Washington’s rural communities. We will do our best to continue improving the quality of life in our small towns and cities and sharing how important it is to the entire state to have thriving rural places and people. It may be harder to find funding for some of the projects we undertake, but we have smart people working for PRWA and we are not easily deterred. We continue.
Take care,
Jody
