A School’s Growing Problem Lakeland Fights Health District Over Expansion, Sewage

Public interests clashed Thursday as school and health officials tangled over whether to safeguard drinking water or add classrooms to a growing rural elementary school.

The Lakeland School District wants permission to nearly double the capacity of Garwood Elementary School by adding seven classrooms. The school is not served by any municipal sewer system.

Environmental health specialists are worried that if the school expands, the sewage from the school drainfield will create a plume that could degrade drinking water.

“If you have a well in that path of that plume, you’d be pulling in that sewage,” said Ken Lustig, director of Panhandle Health District’s environmental health division. Although health officials are unaware of problems now from the school’s septic system, they worry about the cumulative effects.

“It creates a large stain of contamination for a long period of time,” Lustig said.

Attorney Charles Dodson, representing the school district, argued that the school can add many more students without harming the Rathdrum Aquifer, the region’s source of drinking water.

School and health officials made their arguments in an administrative hearing Thursday. The hearing officer is expected to make a recommendation to the health district board within a week.

The school district has scheduled a $9.3 million bond levy election for March 19 to add classrooms to Garwood Elementary, as well as other schools, and build a second junior high school in Spirit Lake.

The school district is trying to stay ahead of an impending space crunch caused by the rapid growth within its boundaries.

Kootenai County planning and zoning commissioner George Nadler testified Thursday that the Garwood/Rimrock area has exploded with 10-acre lots recently.

“This whole area has just gone bananas,” Nadler said, gesturing to a map of the Garwood Elementary attendance zone.

“This is a critical element of this bond issue,” Lakeland schools Superintendent Bob Jones told hearing officer Louis Garbrecht. “If we can’t (add to Garwood), we will have to go build another elementary school somewhere else.”

That’s exactly what the health district staff is suggesting.

By adding classrooms to Garwood, “maybe we’re putting a Band-Aid on the problem,” said Ken Babin, environmental health specialist. Instead, Babin said, the school district could build a new elementary school on property it owns in the nearby Silver Meadows subdivision - property that is not over the aquifer.

There, the district could expand a school without any concern over degrading water quality.

“We agree,” Dodson said. But, he added, “it’s easier for us to ask the people for $690,000 to add seven classes to Garwood.”

A new elementary school could cost about $2 million.

To protect the aquifer, the Panhandle Health District requires that development outside city limits must be on lots no smaller than five acres, each served by a minimum of a 250-gallon septic system.

In 1983, it approved a variance for the Lakeland School District to build the 360-student capacity school. The school was built in 1991.

By approving another variance to increase the school to 600 students, the sewage load would be six times what the regulations allow, Babin said.

School officials argued that their septic system is more than capable of handling the additional students. Built to handle 20 gallons of waste per student per day, the septic system is only receiving about 3 gallons per student per day.

The original design of the septic system was based on Idaho Division of Environmental Quality regulations.

The over-sized, under-used system irks school district officials.

“Lakeland School District has the reputation of being able to take one dollar from the taxpayer and squeeze five quarters out of it,” Dodson said.

Health officials countered that while the septic system is large and “state-of-the-art” it provides little treatment and works essentially the same as septic systems from 25 years ago.

, DataTimes