HAZEN - Duane Miller of rural Hazen got the news he was hoping for at a Southwest Water Authority meeting in Hazen on Monday.

The authority, which oversees the Southwest Water Pipeline, occasionally takes its meetings on the road out to its service areas.

Miller was a much younger man when he signed up for pipeline water back in 1992, and he learned Monday the water will finally be at his house six miles east of Hazen sometime around 2012.

That's still a ways out there, but Miller figures he can limp along until then with the slow recharge groundwater well he's got.

At least he knows good water and plenty of it is coming, and if he decides to stay in his home once he retires, or sell it, worry about water will be off the table.

The Southwest board has been trying for years to get service into Mercer and Oliver counties, thereby finally serving to all 12 counties with treated Lake Sakakawea water as the Legislature authorized back in the early '90s.

The communities of Hazen, Center and Stanton all signed on for the water in the past year, making it more doable for the authority to spend the many millions it will take to build a cross-country pipeline distribution system, add a new water treatment plant at Zap and retune the lake intake structure to get access to enough water.

Joe Bichler, an engineer, said the authority has a good revenue outlook and it's possible it will be able to start building a new treatment plant north of Zap and a main water line from there to Hazen as early as 2009.

Bichler said the treatment plant will be the first priority, though, so starting it and the pipeline will depend on how much and how soon money is available.

A $12 million boost to the revenue picture could come from the Resources Trust Fund. The fund comes from oil tax revenue, and some is set aside for water projects; if the money is available, both treatment and pipeline work can start simultaneously, he said.

At this point, Bichler said, the revenue picture for water works is looking good.

"We'll really be able to do a lot for construction," he said.

The Mercer, Oliver and northern Dunn project will not only wind up the authority's construction area, it will consume a huge amount of water.

Right now, the pipeline delivers about 9,100 gallons a minute out to the system with the water treated at Dickinson. From there, it goes to nearly every county "under" the Missouri River, with the exception of Morton and Grant counties.

Water usage in the Mercer, Oliver and north Dunn area will be nearly 3,000 gallons a minute, the single biggest service area outside of the city of Dickinson.

Besides the three communities and more than 1,000 rural residents, the pipeline also will serve all the power plants and coal mines in the two counties.

One user on the project's list is the Lake Sakakawea Casino; a yet-to-be built small-scale casino on tribal land north of Golden Valley on the south side of Lake Sakakawea.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511, or lauren@westriv.com.)