Moran pool at standstill until growth plan decided

Spokane County’s plan to build a $3 million swimming pool in the Moran Prairie neighborhood is facing a major obstacle: There’s no water to fill it.

Depending on who is asked, the lack of water results from fighting with the city, the county’s neglect of state growth law or an over-reaching state board.

No one is saying they’re opposed to the new pool.

“It’s difficult to see the project potentially impacted by issues having virtually nothing to do with the project itself,” said Doug Chase, the county’s parks director.

The city of Spokane, the water purveyor in the area, won’t extend water and sewer service to the pool unless the county puts the pool property inside the urban growth area, which is considered land surrounding cities designated to become cities. Spokane already provides water to homes immediately adjacent to the proposed aquatics center.

County leaders stress concerns that the longer it takes to break ground on the pool the more it will cost. They also say that at least as many residents inside city limits will use the pool as those who live outside.

“Fundamentally, this lies in the hands of the city,” said County Commissioner Mark Richard, adding that he encourages supporters of the pool to call the mayor’s office. “If they wanted, with the stroke of a pen, they could make this thing happen.”

Spokane Mayor Dennis Hession said it’s not that easy.

The city’s long-term growth plan provides exceptions for granting water outside the growth area, but the pool doesn’t meet them. He added that while the water issue is a city rule, state law bars cities from providing sewer service to land until it’s within the growth boundary.

The county can solve the problem simply by moving the growth line, Hession said.

That’s what the county is considering, but doing so comes with risks.

This summer the Eastern Washington Growth Management Hearings Board ruled in cases involving development on the West Plains and at Five Mile that the county has neglected earlier rulings requiring the county to finish studies on providing sewer, water, roads and other services to new neighborhoods.

Until those and other reports are complete, the board ruled, the county will not be able to expand the growth area. Doing so could result in losing certain state funds.

If the county wants to start construction on the pool, it should do the work that the Growth Management Hearings Board said should have been done a long time ago, said Rick Eichstaedt, an attorney for the Neighborhood Alliance of Spokane County, which brought the actions to the growth board.

“To be absolutely clear, we are not against the pool,” Eichstaedt said. “There’s an easy way out for the county.”

The county’s legal staff, however, says the hearings board doesn’t have the authority to stop the expansion of the growth boundary, and county commissioners will hold a hearing in November on a proposal to expand it.

Last month, the County Planning Commission recommended against taking that step, saying they didn’t want to risk sanctions. Since then, a group of elected leaders from across the county that considers growth issues made the opposite recommendation in a unanimous vote.

Bonnie Mager, a candidate for County Commissioner, led the Neighborhood Alliance when it took the growth cases to the hearings board. The group alleges that residents, particularly in Five Mile, are facing crumbling roads and infrastructure with new growth that hasn’t been planned for.

The dilemma of the park, Mager said, is symptomatic of tensions between elected leaders.

“It’s part of the underlying tension and bad relationship that the county has with the city,” Mager said. “They’re feeling pushed, and they’re not going to take it anymore.”