Cemetery will irrigate with reclaimed water

MEDICAL LAKE – The new Eastern Washington State Veterans Cemetery will not only be a place for thinking about the past, but it will also be a place that will help ensure the area’s potable water supply for the future.

The cemetery will be located at Espanola Road and Ritchey Road, bordered by Hallett Road to the north. The water to irrigate it will come from West Medical Lake, where the local wastewater treatment plant discharges its reclaimed water.

“It’s very clean water we are putting in that lake,” said Doug Ross, the city administrator. “It’s water that is cleaner than drinking water.”

Pipes needed to irrigate the cemetery are already in place, and reclaimed water is already being used to water lawns at the plant and many state buildings in the area.

Rich Cesler, the director of the Eastern Washington State Veterans Cemetery, said ground will be broken on the $9 million cemetery in May 2009, with its opening is penciled in for May 31, 2010.

He hasn’t hired any staff yet but is anticipating hiring a manager, receptionist, grounds foreman and three or four grounds technicians starting in December.

Once open, any veteran can be buried in the cemetery and the service member’s family won’t have to pay burial fees. The cemetery will provide a concrete liner, a committal shelter for the service and a memorial stone.

“I’m getting those requests on a daily basis,” Cesler said.

He said the gently sloping Medical Lake location was chosen for its proximity to West Medical Lake and its supply of irrigation water, and because the area is bordered by roads for easy access for visitors. The Wastewater Treatment Plant in Medical Lake opened in March 2000. It replaced two old treatment plants and a lagoon system.

Steve Cooper, a supervisor at the wastewater treatment plant, said everything that comes into the plant is reused.

The water that is treated is pumped into West Medical Lake at a rate of 500,000 gallons a day, and everything left over is turned into class A compost. The plant, which serves around 4,600 customers, treats the water using bacteria that remove nutrients and organic material. Before it is discharged into the lake, the water is sent through a filter and exposed to ultraviolet light to kill anything that had been missed during the initial treatment process.

The treated water is clean, but not necessarily potable.

“It’s very clean,” Cooper said. “I wouldn’t drink it just because I know where it came from.”

Irrigating the cemetery should be no problem for the plant, which is staffed by four people and operates 365 days a year, said Cooper, who hopes that soon some of the water may be used to irrigate the soccer field next door.