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As Spokane County contemplates the start of the new sewer construction year, the Board of Commissioners is looking to the past to make sure that those who missed out on the chance to hook up to the wastewater-treatment system when they had the chance do so now.
The commissioners approved a plan Tuesday whereby home owners in neighborhoods where sewer pipes were laid in 2003 – but declined to pay the hook-up fee at that time and remained on septic systems -- will have to switch over in 2008.
The plan would run in stages so that contractors who do the sewer connections – it costs $5,395 per house – are not overrun by work all it once. Next year, those who were hooked up in 2004 and 2005 would need to be hooked up; in 2010, it would be neighborhoods sewered in 2006 and 2007; and so on.
According to Bruce Rawls, director of Spokane County utilities, by making sewer hook-ups mandatory – albeit on a year-to-year basis – the county is meeting two goals at once: protecting the aquifer and preparing for when a new wastewater treatment plant is built.
Experts say septic tanks are dangerous to the Spokane Valley/Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, the area’s sole source of drinking water, because there is only a thin soil layer above it. By moving to a countywide wastewater treatment program, the aquifer is protected from contaminants from underground septic systems such as phosphorus or nitrates.
In 2003, partly due to the hardship of having to spend thousands of dollars to hook up to the county system, home owners who had septic tanks were allowed to keep using them even though sewer lines were being installed beneath the streets in front of their homes. More and more, though, those property owners have been switching to the sewer system.
“We think it’s advantageous to start this year back to a mandatory policy,” Rawls said. “A lot of people have failing septic tanks and are starting to connect anyway.”
Rawls estimates there are about 500 parcels from 2003 that still need to switch from septic tanks to sewer. Once they do, it would add about another 140,000 per day to the wastewater treatment system. There are about 10,000 septic tanks still in use in Spokane County, which will cause about 2 million gallons a day to be processed.
Before agreeing to the proposal, Commissioner Mark Richard asked Rawls why the county shouldn’t pursue a more aggressive plan. Rawls replied the county could be in danger of exceeding its capacity at Spokane’s wastewater treatment plant.
“It makes me very nervous,” he said.
The commissioners agreed to revisit the issue again next year to see if it should speed up the mandatory hook-up rate.
“We could ramp it up then,” Commissioner Bonnie Mager said.
The infusion of cash from the mandatory sewer hookups also helps jumpstart plans for a new wastewater treatment plant, which will be built in conjunction with the city of Spokane Valley. When, exactly, that facility will be built is anyone’s guess.
Spokane Valley Deputy Mayor Dick Denenny reported to the City Council on Tuesday that a planned meeting with Department of Ecology officials on total maximum daily load (TMDL) on contaminants into the Spokane River was recently scrapped. Without knowing exactly how clean the discharge out of the plant has to be, it’s impossible to even secure a permit to build the facility.
“Nothing is going to get approved until that happens,” Denenny said.
“It’s disappointing,” Mayor Richard Munson said. “We have to get this resolved.”
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By
Mike Huffman
