NAMPA — After marking the Nampa skyline for 50 years, the city's water tower will come down next year.
Lettering on the steel, 500,000-gallon, 100-foot-high tank along Interstate 84 near 11th Avenue lets everyone know they are in Nampa.
But the tank is near the end of its useful life, and it can't hold enough water to meet the needs of the city, whose population has grown to nearly 100,000.
Assistant city engineer Jeff Barnes says city leaders have considered three options:
- Keeping the tank while making structural improvements.
- Abandoning the tower in place, meaning emptying the tank, giving it a new paint job and leaving it as a landmark.
- Or demolishing the tower and replacing it with a 1.5 million gallon water tank on the same site.
In a survey of Nampa residents, 58 percent of those who responded said they would be OK with that third option, and saying goodbye to the tower.
"Last council meeting, which was last night, the council took that into consideration, and they approved us moving forward with that option," said Barnes.
Barnes says demolishing the existing water tank and tower, then building the new, larger tank, will cost about $5 million, and was the most economical option.
The new tank will be about 50-feet high and made of concrete rather than steel.
Nampa Mayor Debbie Kling and other city officials say they're committed to keeping the community involved during the next steps of the process.
