No Increase In Sight For Medical Lake Utility Rates

Now that the city of Medical Lake has finished planning for sewer and water improvements, the City Council apparently won’t have to raise utility rates this year.

Mayor Sharie Stearns proposed a combination of new rates, with the total bill dropping slightly.

Water rates would go down slightly under the proposal. The city would continue to collect the monthly service charge of $17.75, but the rate would include the first 1,000 gallons of water at no charge.

Currently, the city charges $1.50 for the first 1,000 gallons of water in addition to the monthly service charge.

Also, the water-use rate would drop from $1.50 per 1,000 gallons to $1.35 for up to 10,000 gallons.

Garbage rates would increase 12 cents for a single can to $12.40.

Sewer rates are proposed to stay the same as last year at $32.45 a month.

City Administrator Pete Rose said the city increased its water and sewer charges over the past several years to help pay for costly improvements.

Currently, the city is planning a scaled-back sewer treatment plant that will meet modern environmental standards.

The state of Washington is planning to hook its hospital facilities to the system.

Treated water that will come from the plant will be discharged into West Medical Lake or a tributary of Deep Creek.

Rose said the effluent will be clean enough to stop the hazardous algae outbreaks that have caused closures of West Medical Lake over the years.

If the city didn’t discharge water into West Medical Lake, the lake level would drop and the lake would turn into a swamp, he said.

Medical Lake had initially planned a $21 million plant south of Eastern State Hospital. That project was scrapped when a federal financing grant and loan package was withdrawn by the Clinton administration, Rose said.

The new $12.5 million project is proposed for the property next to the city’s existing sewage lagoons northeast of the high school.

An additional $1.5 million will go for building pipelines to the state institutions.

The city’s share of the project will be about $5 million. Higher sewer rates in recent years allowed the city to save $1 million to be used to pay for the project. Grants and loans from the state will make up the difference.

Portions of the treatment process will be enclosed in a building to minimize odors, he said.

The water utility also set aside enough cash in recent years to help pay for $2.7 million of improvements to the water system, including a new well drilled in 1995.

, DataTimes