The city of Halfway is using a $1.5 million federal block grant to build a new station for the Pine Valley Rural Fire Protection District.

Halfway received the Community Development Block Grant in 2019 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

In an email to the Herald, Lisa Dawson, executive director of the Northeast Oregon Economic Development District (NOEDD) wrote that the city has contracted with the District to prepare the environmental review for the construction project.

The new 7,800-square-foot station, which will replace a structure built in the 1960s, will be built in the northwest portion of a two-acre property the Fire District owns in Halfway, adjacent to the Pine Valley Fairgrounds and near Pine Haven Cemetery.

Dawson wrote that construction is slated to start this summer, and that the project should take about a year to finish.

She said the Pine Valley station, which will include five equipment bays with room for the Department’s vehicles and equipment, will be similar in size to one built recently in Richland for the Eagle Valley Fire Protection District.

The current fire station can’t accommodate all the equipment, and it’s also inefficient to heat, Dawson wrote.

The new station will also have restrooms, office space and a training room. There will be a paved parking area and potentially a helicopter landing pad for emergency medical flights.

“The Pine Valley Rural Fire Protection District is an all-volunteer organization that provides firefighting services for the City of Halfway as well as the surrounding community,” Dawson wrote in her email. “The nearest fire station is in Richland. Because of the remote, rural location, PVRFD volunteers are often the first responders to fires on public lands (BLM, USFS) within a 20-mile radius. The PVRFD acquired the vacant land for the proposed fire station in 2015.”