GRAND VIEW, Idaho — You may not know a lot about Grand View, Idaho, and maybe the folks in this little Owyhee County town like it that way. City leaders say it may be a sleepy little town along the Snake River, but it’s a great place to call home. And now, with infrastructure improvement, it’s even better.
Mayor John Pennington says it’s time to go to work and give residents the services they need. “We like to be self-efficient. Just like this new well we're putting in here, we have to have a certain amount of water for everybody, and the sewer system has to be upgraded, same way with the lagoon over there and they will be improved and get better.”
City Superintendent Dan Whitted says the town needs to stay ahead of any future growth. “ We got to stay in compliance with D.E.Q. and E.P.A., they’re always breathing up our exhaust pipes. Everybody wants their water and their sewer to work. We just gotta keep our improvements going."
The Biden Administration offered over 600 million dollars in grant money to build more brand band infrastructure to rural U.S. Their goal was to push toward internet for all by 2030. “We have pretty good service now, but we don’t have fiber, which is what everybody needs for any kind of businesspeople have to be accessible to everything, to make everything work.”
And for rural towns like Grand View, federal grant money is worth its weight in gold.
Both Pennington and Whitted grew up here, moved away for a while, but both found their way back home, as Pennington explains. “I do like it. I’ve been around the world, and you keep coming back to Grandview. Maybe like they say, there’s no place like home.”
