ZAP - Ruth Julson knows the taste of irony.

She lives with water that's so full of grains of hardness it's beyond softening - couldn't pour enough salt in a softener to remedy that water.

Yet the Southwest Water Pipeline is buried in the roadside ditch not 100 feet from her house.

The pipeline carries raw Lake Sakakawea water right past her to Dickinson, where it's treated and run out through a vast underground network to homes and farms west of the Missouri River.

It's wonderful water on its way to 35,000 people in 11 counties. So close she can almost taste it, but Ruth Julson can't have any of it

Instead, she has a daily grind of scrubbing scaly hardness - their water has 180 grains of hardness, which is 10 times more than nearby Hazen's - from sinks and toilets and off of faucets every day. Her washing machine is gradually going to ruination. The Julson pantry is full of gallon jugs of treated water she fills in town and then lugs into the kitchen every time she boils a kettle of water for macaroni and cheese, or fixes a pot of coffee.

Julson is a good-natured woman. On the topic of water, though, she gets agitated.

She's hopeful that the towns of Beulah and Hazen, where she shops for groceries and almost everything else, and where her kids go to school, will sign up for the pipeline.

If the towns go for it, the cost of bringing pipeline water into Mercer and Oliver counties, as well as northern Dunn County, will be more feasible.

When the towns make their decisions this summer, she hopes people will think of all the rural people who are part of those towns. Her family may live seven miles north of Zap, but country living doesn't separate them from community life.

"I hope they'll support us," she said. "We support them."

The towns of Killdeer, Beulah, Hazen, Stanton and Center have until Sept. 1 to decide whether to take Southwest Pipeline water.

This area is the final reach of the pipeline project's authority to serve 12 southwestern counties with treated water from Lake Sakakawea.

This final phase will cost in the neighborhood of $40 million and take four to six years to build. The project so far has cost $160 million.

This is not the first time the Southwest Water Pipeline has been to these towns. The pipeline was turned down back in the mid-'80s - Killdeer more recently - and if it's turned down again, there won't be any coming back.

Ray Christiansen, pipeline project director, said the deadline was set because the pipeline engineers have to design the project for this last remaining area.

If one or more of the communities sign up, the pipe will be sized appropriately.

If not, the pipe will be sized to serve a rural network, if the number of rural signups is enough so each hookup doesn't cost more than $36,000. The cities' participation gets important because it makes it far easier to meet that threshold.

Oliver and Mercer counties have about 1,500 rural households, and 600 of those signed up and put their money down for the project more than 15 years ago.

Christiansen said the pipeline project needs 50 percent rural participation, but he doesn't think it would be a problem to get that many rural homes committed.

It's the towns that have a tougher call.

Hazen and Beulah each have water treatment plants and "good enough" water, especially in Beulah, where it's softened right at the plant.

Over in Stanton, the town's treated well water is "hard as a bullet," said auditor Richard Honeyman.

Center's water is good, said city director Janell Peterson, but the town recognizes that switching to the Southwest Pipeline would benefit the rural residents.

Beulah Mayor Darrell Bjerke said, so far, the city council hasn't gathered enough facts and figures to make any move.

He said townspeople are satisfied with their water and worry their costs would increase.

Bjerke said Beulah is trying to figure out where it could dovetail into the project and somehow assist, because it is sympathetic to the problem rural people have with bad water, like the Julsons. When kids or cattle get sick from the water, it's not a good situation, he said.

Hazen City Commissioner Ken Link said Hazen passed a resolution that gives the city the option to buy water from an outside source.

The decision could be made by the commission, or by public vote.

He said he's been surprised at the public support, and comments to him are 20 to 1 in favor of switching to the pipeline water.

"People are tired of the quality. There's a lot of hardness," he said.

Southwest Water would cost more than people in Oliver and Mercer communities pay now.

In Hazen, people pay $4.50 a month, plus $2.50 per thousand gallons for water.

Link figures the cost of Southwest Water, once Hazen tacks on what it needs to distribute it, would be $5.10 per thousand. That's about $10 more a month per household, based on average use.

That's probably less than people pay for water softeners and softening salt, Lime-Away, replacement faucets and water heating elements, and bottled water for coffee and drinking in many households.

Honeyman said Stanton will vote on the matter. So will Center, Peterson said.

Link said he isn't sure how the decision will be made in Hazen, though he'd vote "yes" based on what people are telling him.

"If people don't like the idea of purchasing water, they haven't come in to tell us so," he said.

Christiansen said the Southwest Water Authority board plans to build a new water treatment plant north of Zap, near the intake line into Lake Sakakawea and alongside two storage tanks already there on the highest point in Mercer County.

The new treatment plant will cost another $6 million and will serve the Mercer, Oliver and Dunn area so that treated water can flow practically downhill the whole way and not have to be pumped all the backward from Dickinson.

Even though Killdeer voted against switching to the Southwest Pipeline a couple of years ago, Christiansen said he's hearing some renewed interest from that community.

Otherwise, Bowman and Rhame are the only two communities that haven't taken the water in the 11 counties that either wholly or partially switched over to the pipeline. Now Rhame is experiencing some problems with its treatment plant, but Christiansen said the pipeline doesn't have large enough line capacity to serve the town.

In Mercer and Oliver counties, the power plants are interested in switching to Southwest Pipeline water rather than treating their own.

"That helps a great deal," Christiansen said.

He said the pipeline representatives aren't sales people and when they meet with communities and with rural folks later this summer and fall, it'll only be to share that good plentiful treated water from the largest surface reservoir in the region is theirs, if they want it.

"It's urgent. This is their opportunity," he said.

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