Ken Graham: From the Publisher

Columbia

Pulp is mov­ing ahead with plans for its new plant near Starbuck. There, the firm will take wheat and alfalfa straw and turn it into pulp, which will be used to make paper products.

The company hopes to begin operations by the end of the wheat harvest in 2015, and they plan to hire around 130 employees to run the facility.

That's all great news for the towns of the Touchet Valley. Prescott, Waitsburg and Dayton are all about the same distance from the new plant - close enough for a reasonable daily commute.

One hundred thirty jobs is huge for a county with 4,000 people and a region with less than 10,000. The benefits to our area will be many-fold: More customers for local businesses; more kids in our schools; more sales and property tax revenue to help pay for local government services.

And Economists always say that new jobs in a community create more new jobs in local businesses.

The jobs at the new pulp plant will pay well enough to allow those employees to sup­port families. But those employees and their families are going to need places to live.

Right now, Starbuck, Dayton, Waitsburg and Prescott don't have enough housing to support 30 new jobs, much less 130. Be­cause of the construction of Portland Gen­eral Electric's Tucannon River Wind Farm, rental properties are already extremely scarce around here. (I know. I'm a landlord, and it's good for me.) If and when the pulp plant gets up and running, we're going to need more housing. It's that simple. (And it's looking a lot more like "when" than "if.")

When I spoke with Columbia County Planning Director Kim Lyonnais last week, he said he is concerned that by the time the new workers arrive at the new pulp plant in a year and a half, it'll be too late. A lot of those workers will have to live elsewhere - commuting from Walla Walla, Tri-Cities or Lewiston.

By state law, new housing developments in and around Dayton have to fit within the county's urban growth boundary, as specified in its growth management plan. The City of Dayton is obligated to provide water and sewer to homes within those boundaries, but not outside them. Lyonnais told me he believes there is not enough available land for development with Dayton's urban growth boundary, as it is currently defined.

Whether or not that is true, now is the time for the city and county to look closely at the urban growth boundary and consider if it needs to be expanded.

Waitsburg is in a little better shape, be­cause a housing development has already been approved on the northeast edge of town. But Waitsburg and Walla Walla County also need to look at their growth management plans and consider where more new housing could be developed.

Meeting the demands of job growth is a good problem to have, but it's one we need to begin solving now.