City Council explores wastewater takeover
The Spokane Valley City Council asked Spokane County last year what would be required for the city to take over the wastewater collection system within its borders and take over construction of a proposed wastewater treatment plant.
The answer came back Monday in a 2-inch-thick notebook from Spokane County utilities director Bruce Rawls.
Rawls gave the city a full inventory of the county’s wastewater system, its various budgets and other data, but stopped short of boiling that down to a dollar amount or some other tidy description of what it would take for Spokane Valley to take over the system.
“If the city of Spokane Valley really wants to get serious, probably the best thing is for you to hire a financial consultant,” he said, adding that analyzing the data could take four or five months.
Although cities generally have the power to take over utilities in their jurisdictions, critics say Spokane Valley is too young to conquer such a daunting task. Plus, taking over the proposed plant could cost $100 million or more – and that doesn’t count whatever cost might be involved in taking over the system of collection pipes under Valley streets. The city, since it hasn’t established much of a credit history, wouldn’t get the same interest rate on a loan that the county has already been promised.
Supporters of the assumption say Spokane Valley could better control its destiny if it owned the system. When new houses are built, it could hook them up to the sewer system without having to depend on another jurisdiction for approval. Plus, the city could charge residents a utility tax, putting money in its coffers.
The council and Spokane County Commissioners held a joint meeting Monday to discuss the future of wastewater treatment – not only who would own the system, but whether – and how – more wastewater could be treated in the future.
Municipal and industrial “dischargers” are grappling with the need to process more wastewater, even as the state Department of Ecology has said they can’t dump more phosphorous into the Spokane River. That could limit the region’s ability to build a new sewage treatment plant.
The dischargers recently began working on a compromise with Ecology and environmental groups.
On Monday, Rawls laid out some of the ways to reduce the amount of phosphorous in the river. Dischargers could clean the wastewater through a process called reverse osmosis, but that’s costly. They could treat the water and use some of it to irrigate alfalfa fields. Or they could treat the water and use some of it to recharge wetlands, particularly the Saltese Lake area in the Valley, Rawls said.
Rawls recently visited a similar wetland project in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“Scottsdale has this wastewater project right in the middle of the city,” he said. “They built a brand new library right next to it. It doesn’t smell. … It’s something we might want to think about.”
City Council members noted, though, that the Valley is experiencing a building boom, and land in the Saltese area is rapidly developing. And Rawls said the county would need to build a 17-mile pipe, at the cost of at least $30 million, between the treatment plant and the wetland.
The officials also discussed putting tighter restrictions on the sources of “nonpoint” phosphorous, such as the runoff from lawns and farms and even the makeup of dish soap.
As a final option, dischargers could sue the state over the right to release treated wastewater into the river. But officials on Monday spoke somewhat optimistically that a compromise could be reached.
City Council members agreed to continue working with other jurisdictions on a regional approach to wastewater treatment. They said they’re still exploring assumption, though, and might eventually conduct the financial analysis Rawls suggested.