End of the gravel road

POMEROY–Mary Dye remembers how "Fiber to the Home" project all started for her. It came in the form of a very long letter from Joe Porie who sent it to her when she was first elected. "That is what triggered my interest in what we can do and how we can do it," said Dye. "He really is the intellectual property who creates this model."

It is pleasing to see how one letter spurred the rise of a community through obtaining high-speed internet and how it has inspired commerce, and is building an economy in the community. "The thing that makes me extremely happy today is to see all our private sector partners, the people who are going to be able to utilize this infrastructure to be able to do commerce in rural area and build the economy of our community," said Dye.

To initiate the idea to expand internet into the rural areas of Washington state was at first an uphill battle, but some momentous events happened during that process. "It was a difficult battle to start this conversation, taking two-years of debate, along with a complaint to the UTC filling 3,000 pages," she reflected. Dye explained that the lack of internet limits rural communities: people in these areas would not use it just to watch Netflix, but utilize it. The greatest example of this is the COVID shutdown. Now it is evident how critical this technology is to all communities.

Dye helped to champion a public infrastructure which now opens the market doors in a way not previously experienced by rural communities such as Pomeroy. "We built a public infrastructure that our private sector partners can run on. It is a road that accesses a market that have largely been ignored because there wasn't a market case to be made," says Dye. "Having this infrastructure––a road, into our community which allows us to go out into the world with our creativity, with our innovation, with our dreams to be entrepreneurs in the global marketplace."

Dye reflects on a neighbor who is the typical homemaker, mom, school activist and, more importantly, an innovator and runs beehives. She is known throughout the area and does business in any way she can. "I think about my next-door neighbor," Dye says thoughtfully. "She is a home maker, she's a mom, she's an activist in the school, but she's innovative. She runs beehives. At one point the neighbors got together and we helped pour cement in the shop next to her house and she collects honey. She runs 11,000 hives clear to California and back. She has shelf space in every Rosauer's and Huckleberry's sections in the area. She's well known. She has a commercial kitchen in her house. She's an innovator."

Even though this person has a thriving business, it might expand with the help of the internet. "She can be bigger, but she lives three quarters of a mile past the last mile," says Dye. "So rural internet is small town and this is the start. But rural internet really is the end of the gravel road."

Dye went on to say that Dye Seed, the biggest private employer in the county which does millions of dollars of sales every year, had a T-1 line that failed, so now they have to pay for two T-1 lines.

"They provide all the seed for Scott's Lawn, an international company, on a T-1 line, on copper line that was the first and oldest line installed in the state of Washington," Dye said. "It's these injustices that compels me forward.

"It is an honor to be here today in the smallest county that doesn't have one stop light, not one, but we have high-speed internet today thanks to the work done here and to the intellectual genius of the Port of Whitman and the efforts the Port of Garfield bravely jumped up to this space," Dye said.

"I can tell you, Diana, the first time I read that letter, I did not have a clue what that thing said," she admitted. "And so, it's a very complicated space. It's not something that somebody that has been excluded from the digital world would be able to get. All the hard work is such an example to what can be done in the smallest community.

"If Garfield County, with its 1,500 people, can show a market case to have high-speed internet, then others should be able to show a market case for highspeed internet.

"This is the place that shows a model of what should and can be done," Dye said. "As we move forward, we will think about the people at the end of the road who is making polymers for jet engines in his garage."