Port fiber line a go after contract inked

All systems are go on the Port of Whitman County’s $12 million fiber optic project after the agency signed a cooperative agreement with the project’s parent company last week.

Port commissioners agreed to the deal with Northwest Open Access Network, or NOAnet, at their regular meeting last Thursday, Dec. 16. NOAnet was the main recipient of an $84 million federal stimulus grant in March to lay fiber optic cable across unserved areas of rural Washington.

The port received a $10 million slice of that pie to link Clarkston, Pullman and Spokane with four bundles of 144 strands each of glass fiber optic wire. The line would run along state right-of-ways along highways through Spangle, Rosalia, Oakesdale, Garfield and Palouse.

The agreement with NOAnet allows the port to proceed with contracts for engineers and construction firms to do the work.

The port must put up $2 million of its own funds as a local match for the federal dollars.

That money, which will come out of port reserve funds, is expected to be recouped by leasing the new lines to telecommunications companies. The port has revised a payment plan on some projects and now gets revenue from lease payments on present fiber optic lines in the Pullman and St. John areas. Also, the port reserves have been augments by sales of a lot at the Colfax airport, a business incubator building at the Pullman Industrial Park and the former port office building in Colfax.

Signing of the contract with NOAnet had been delayed while port officials determined whether federal law would allow the port to lease access to the lines.