ENTERPRISE — Lottery bonds to cover the cost of refurbishment of the Wallowa Lake Dam are still not fully funded, but there is hope now that the dam and other projects have been included in Gov. Kate Brown’s budget the Legislature was to begin considering when it opened Tuesday, Jan. 19.

Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, said the $16 million project — of which $14 million is to come from the sale of lottery bonds and $2 million from other sources — is still in the holding pattern it’s been in since the lottery forecast fell short in June.

“But they haven’t been canceled and haven’t been set aside,” Hansell said Thursday, Jan. 7. “So she is asking for all of them to be funded, including the Wallowa dam.”

The senator said much of the decision on funding will be up to state Treasurer Tobias Read, who will determine if enough money has been produced to fund the 30-plus projects counting on the bond sales.

“If he believes there’s enough money, he will do it,” Hansell said of Read.

But much remains to be seen.

“It may all change tomorrow,” he said. “But from what I was told today, from working with the available funds, we’ll fund the projects that are ready to go.”

And the Wallowa Lake Dam is ready.

Last year, 20-plus years of trying to get the century-old dam refurbished culminated in the signing of a memorandum of agreement by the four primary stakeholders in the project. Those stakeholders are the Wallowa Lake Irrigation District, which owns and operates the dam, the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, the Nez Perce Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

The June lottery forecast the stakeholders were counting on fell considerably short, largely due to a shortfall in lottery sales caused by business closures from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The dam and other projects were put on hold when the lottery report came in below the four-to-one ratio needed to sell bonds to fund them. That means $4 million in lottery revenue must come in to sell $1 million in bonds. In June, the report came in at only 3.1 to one.

The September report was up by about 45%, Hansell said last fall, but he hasn’t heard about a December report.