Chuck Weinstock (left) and Don Furman of the  seven-member feasibility board recommending that Burton  buy its water system for $1.2 million.  Credit: Mary Bruno

UPDATE, August 2, 2022: Straw poll results are in: Seventy-two percent of Burton Water customers voted in the poll. Ninety-six percent of those respondents voted YES. “That’s almost 70 percent of all current Burton Water customers saying, ‘Let’s do this!’” says Burton Cooperative board vice president, Chuck Weinstock. With that show of community support, the Co-op’s interim board will now move ahead with plans to buy the Burton Water Company. There’s still plenty to do—securing a US Department of Agriculture loan, for example. But the board expects to hold a final vote on the purchase by year’s end. You’ll find more next-step details, reactions and insights in my Beachcomber article. And we’ll continue to follow the story right here. 

Last December’s post about the looming sale of the Burton Water Company ended in a cliffhanger: Would one the Island’s largest, oldest and most steadfast water providers slip out of local control? We are one giant step closer to the denouement.
Burton residents have had it pretty great for decades. Clean, safe water, on demand, from a system owned and operated by two responsible and benevolent neighbors: Island natives Jim Garrison and Evan Simmons. When Garrison and Simmons announced their retirement last year and put Burton Water on the block, the community faced a choice: Let the water company that had served it for a century be sold to an off-Island utility, or buy it and run it themselves.
For the last eight months, a volunteer collective—the Burton Water Cooperative —has studied the financial, operational and value-driven pros and cons of a purchase. On July 8, the Co-op’s seven-member interim board sent its findings , along with a recommendation and a Straw Poll to Burton Water’s 400 customers: “Considering the Co-op’s thorough analysis, combined with the unique nature of the system and the rare opportunity to gain local control over our water supply, the Co-op’s Board of Directors recommends purchase of the company at the seller’s asking price of $1.2 million . . .”
The outcome of the Straw Poll will reverberate for generations. “This is a 100-year, a 400-year decision we’re making this summer,” says Co-op vice president, Chuck Weinstock. He is not overstating the case. Community ownership can be a challenge. Ask any condo association veteran. But we’re talking about water here, a substance we literally cannot live without. Who better to control such a vital resource than the folks with the most skin in the game?
It’s not an easy decision. Buying the Burton Water Company will require a one-time, upfront investment of cash from every household—$1,000 to $5,000, depending on the eventual financing arrangement—and an ongoing commitment of time from the community volunteers who will cycle through the Co-op’s member-elected board. But those sacrifices will be worth it. Here’s why:
Control
Burton Water customers, even the more well-to-do ones, may balk at spending an extra $1,000, or $5,000, or whatever the initial buy-in cost winds up being, for a service (water) they already have. To be clear, there will be a flexible installment option. “If someone who wants to be part of the Coop has a documented financial hardship, we’ll figure it out,” says Chuck. But when Burton customers consider whom they would most trust to manage and safeguard the water that keeps their families alive and healthy and their property values secure, even five grand (maybe paid in monthly installments over five years) sounds like a bargain. Other benefits of community ownership include long-term control over rates—rates that would reflect the cost of operations and not the need to turn a profit or reward shareholders—and the ability to retain Nick Simmons, Burton Coop’s operator. Skilled water operators are in very short supply. Nick Simmons is one of the best. He has made it clear that he has no interest in working for an off-Island utility. It’s now or never, Co-op treasurer Don Furman reminded the 80-plus attendees at a July 20th community meeting: “If we don’t reach a deal with [owners Jim Garrison and Evan Simmons] we probably won’t get this opportunity again.”

Culture
As part of its due diligence, the Burton Co-op board interviewed board members and operators from the Island’s other community-owned water providers. Four of our seven large water purveyors (Westside, Dockton, Heights and Maury Mutual) are community-owned and have been since they were formed in the early twentieth century. (Water District 19 is a quasi public water district under King County; Burton and Gold Beach water companies are privately held.) “There’s a [community-owned] model here that has existed for decades—and it’s worked,” says Chuck, sharing one of his chief takeaways from those conversations. “That was reassuring. We’re not inventing something.” On the contrary, a member-owned Burton Water Company would align with a longstanding Island tradition of neighborhoods providing and protecting their own water supply. “It’s a little bit like, this is how we actually do water here,” says Chuck.

Community
Water is like democracy. Bad things happen when we disengage. Like citizenship, membership in a community-owned water system demands participation. That’s why the Straw Poll results are so critical. Like the Co-op board, community members have to be willing to roll up their sleeves. Board secretary Lisa Fitzhugh was a jaded leadership specialist when she joined the Co-op effort. “I spent most of my career in and out of government and I’ve been pretty disillusioned lately,” she says. But Lisa was inspired by the people serving on the Co-op’s interim board and on the committees that dug into the details of governance, finance, operations and membership. She was struck by their competence and by the sheer breadth of their expertise, from engineers and hydrologists, to finance and organizational experts, to folklorists. But she was blown away by their attitude. “[They] weren’t vying for power, or trying to dominate and overlord,” she says. “That’s unusual. I felt, wow, we have a lot of potential here.”
“Cooperative ownership is a 100-year-old concept that doesn’t really happen anymore,” says fellow board member Ben Lee. Like Ben and her other Co-op colleagues, Lisa Fitzhugh hopes to resurrect it. “Especially for things like natural resources,” she says, “it’s a model for how we could do things in the future. What an opportunity we have here for a small community to learn how to self govern, starting with this idea of controlling its own water.” If Burton masters self governance, it will help to “normalize” the approach as an alternative to “the corporatization paradigm we’re in.”

Survival
There is another, dark-side upside to a community-owned Burton Water. At some point in Chuck’s 100-400-year time horizon, a disaster will likely befall the Pacific Northwest. Earthquake, volcano, tsunami, wildfire, pick your peril. It’s inevitable, and when it happens the island will be isolated for weeks, months, maybe even years. Islanders will have to rely on each other. Having a cadre of local water specialists on duty, who are not only prepared and willing to respond in concert to the community’s needs, but personally invested in the solutions, will save lives. (Think of how VashonBePrepared stepped up during Covid.) That has to be better than relying on a middle manager somewhere in Omaha or an 800 number that never quite leads to a human.
The Straw Poll is not the final vote. It’s the Co-op board’s attempt to gauge the Burton community’s appetite for ownership. Just the same, it marks a critical, go-no-go milestone. “We’ve got some idea of where some individuals stand, based on conversations with neighbors and at the [Burton] coffee stand,” says Ben Lee. “But we don’t really know where the whole community is.” They’re about to find out.
It takes an engaged community to manage a water system. With that in mind, the Co-op board agreed upon two thresholds which must be met before it will recommend moving ahead with a purchase. First, 60 percent of the Burton Water community (240 households) must respond to the Straw Poll. Second, 60 percent of those respondents (or 144 households) must say YES to a purchase. Straw Poll voting closes on July 31. Come August 1, we’ll know whether the community-purchase option is dead or alive. Fingers crossed.