Small changes mean big savings at Bannock County Event Center

It takes gallons and gallons of water to keep the fields at the Bannock County Event Center lush, but now, those green fields won’t mean wasted tax dollars.

“A lot of grass to keep clean for the kids to play on, so anytime we can save money and be more efficient with our budget, it’s definitely a help,” said Guy Patterson, the director of the Event Center and Wellness Complex.

The county is replacing old water lines and connecting them to the already existing well to help the county save money.

Since the Event Center is a Bannock County facility, it’s technically outside of Pocatello city limits, which means the county pays significantly more for each gallon of water than a typical utilities customer.

“We just started the project yesterday morning, and we should be finished up with the minor details by the end of today,” Patterson said.

Watering more than 200 acres of playing fields adds up to nearly $75,000 in water bills this year alone.

“We will drastically cut that back to probably under 10,000 in water from the city at this time. So, we’ll save about 60 grand,” said county commissioner, Terrel Tovey.

The county spent about $30,000 on the pipelines and kept the labor in house to cut costs. Even with the expense of the pipelines, the project pays for itself within a years’ time.

“I think this is just a great example of way that we’re working to maintain service to the community to give them quality fields to play on, but at the same time use the tax dollars in the most efficient way we can,” Patterson said.

Tovey, the other county commissioners and the clerk got their hands dirty while helping the crew move the project along.

“We started this as a joke: to get this line done by the end of the building season, we’d come put it in. I don’t think anybody thought we were serious about it,” Tovey said. “It was good to go get our hands dirty,”