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December 26, 2010 in City
Spokane’s sewage system undergoing quiet upgrade
Next phase: storage tanks to catch overflows of rain and snowmelt
Untreated sewage and storm water flow into the Spokane River under the Monroe Street Bridge on Dec. 15. The city has about 30 pipes that release sewage into the river during rain or snowmelt.
(Full-size photo)
When it rains in Spokane, it pours sewage into the Spokane River.
Faced with a 2017 deadline to stop discharging millions of gallons of raw sewage annually into the Spokane River, the city in 2011 will build several underground tanks to help stem the flow – although the biggest and most expensive projects won’t be completed until much closer to the deadline.
Before the city began pursuing its latest strategy to keep untreated wastewater out of the river more than a decade ago, an average of about 80 million gallons of sewage a year flowed to the river during rain and snowmelt.
The city already has stopped the flow from six overflow pipes by building tanks to store wastewater when sewers get overwhelmed. The wastewater then is piped back into the system and treated when capacity is available.
The early projects were smaller – although the city estimates that 4.4 million gallons a year on average is diverted to the treatment plant from the overflow pipes.
Next year, the city will finish projects to capture an additional 5.7 million gallons from six overflow pipes.
To Lars Hendron, the city’s principal wastewater engineer leading the project, the numbers signal progress.
“We’ve been taxiing for a while, and now we’re just about ready for liftoff,” he said. “There is a definite ‘yuck factor.’ Citizens expect to be able to use the river knowing that there’s hardly ever any sewage in it.”
But the solution comes with an estimated $300 million price tag that is coupled with steep jumps on utility bills. Just last week, the Spokane City Council approved a 17 percent boost in sewage rates to help pay for the overflow prevention system.
Besides the city’s hefty 20 percent utility tax, the rates also will help finance a separate program to improve treatment at the city’s plant. The increase was on top of a similar hike last year, and more double-digit increases are expected in the next few years. Even with larger revenues from bills, the city still expects to borrow money to finish the upgrades.
Mayor Mary Verner said she is committed to completing the program but has asked state leaders to consider extending the deadline to help spread out the cost.
Richard Koch, senior environmental engineer for the state Department of Ecology, said the state has no plans to change the Dec. 31, 2017, deadline, which is included in the city’s permit to discharge wastewater.
“At the current time, we’re saying, ‘No way,’ ” Koch said. He added, however, that if in a few years the city has made significant progress and has a clear path to finish, the state might be willing to reconsider. “The city is correct to be concerned about cost,” Koch said. “Yet this is the cost of maintaining the environment, which is one of the main selling points of Spokane.”
The city’s permit says that as of the end of 2017 each of the city’s overflow pipes will be limited to one overflow per year from rain or snow melt. Currently, the city’s most active pipe overflows about 50 times.
Next year, homeowners in Spokane will pay $43.73 a month for sewer service. Koch noted the cost in some rural parts of the state is well over $80.
Councilwoman Nancy McLaughlin, who voted against the wastewater rate increase, said she supports the upgrades to keep sewage out of the river but believes residents can’t afford the spikes.
“That’s important work that we’re doing, but we need more flexibility,” she said. McLaughlin also criticizes the state and federal governments for setting strict rules while providing little money to complete upgrades.
Rachael Paschal Osborn, executive director of the Center for Environmental Law and Policy, criticized any request to extend the deadline.
“It’s really time to get the raw sewage out of the river,” she said, noting that the city was given nearly two decades to achieve the goal. “It was plenty of time to figure it out, how to fund it and get it done.”
Some critics note that the city would have more money to complete the projects if it didn’t divert 20 percent of rates for utility taxes. Verner and the City Council decided a couple years ago to begin taxing rates devoted to capital projects, which previously weren’t taxed.
Spokane and other cities have lobbied the state Legislature for help meeting the environmental rules for sewage.
State Rep. Timm Ormbsy, D-Spokane, sponsored a bill earlier this year that would have raised fees on petroleum in part to help finance municipal sewer projects like Spokane’s. Ormsby said he expects the issue to be discussed again next year, though it’s unclear if there’s much chance of approving fees or taxes to pay for sewage upgrades given the anti-tax sentiment voters expressed in November.
“I felt that it was a shared public responsibility because all of us collectively have an interest in water quality,” Ormsby said.
Koch said dumping raw sewage into the river is a public heath concern and adds phosphorus to the water, which contributes to toxic algae blooms in Lake Spokane.
Spokane’s problems with sewage overflows are similar to those in many cities that have sanitary sewers connected to storm water systems.
In the 1930s, the city pooh-poohed state officials who criticized Spokane for not treating its sewage before dumping it into the river. Treatment didn’t begin until the 1950s. Because the storm water flowed into the sewers, pipes directly to the river remained so that when the system was overwhelmed sewage could go into the river to prevent backups.
In the 1980s, Spokane separated storm and sanitary sewers so that rain could be piped to the river without affecting sewage. Much of Spokane’s North Side has separate sewers for wastewater and storm water.
But because of more stringent rules on dumping storm water into the river, Spokane shifted its strategy in the 1990s to building overflow tanks.
Hendron, the wastewater engineer, said much of the past decade was spent planning for the tanks and learning from them so the city can better plan the larger ones.
“We also knew we would have quite a learning curve,” Hendron said.
While the city’s main strategy is building tanks, the city also has constructed other kinds of systems in hope of reducing storm water flow so that future tanks can be reduced in size. The largest tanks are expected to hold 5 million gallons – enough to roughly fill eight Olympic-size swimming pools.
In some areas the city has redirected storm water to flow into the ground. One high-profile project completed this year on Lincoln Street on the South Hill captures rain and takes it to a pond in Cannon Hill Park.
“While we’re doing the gradual build-out (of tanks), we’re also exploring and building other innovative storm water catchment,” Verner said.
Councilman Jon Snyder said he believes the city is on the right path to solving the problem even if improving the sewers isn’t as popular as building roads or bridges.
“Sewer infrastructure is often the forgotten aspect of infrastructure.” Snyder said. “No one wants a combined sewage overflow tank named after them.”
MAC faces angry crowd 
liarsinnews on December 26 at 8:15 a.m.
Snyder says sewer is often a forgotten aspect? Give me a brake. I`m sure the users who pay their city utility bills haven`t forgot. The utility bills are obscene. I`ve checked other cities and believe me the utility bills are MUCH less than ours. Look at Dakota county in the Minneapolis area for one. I`ll trade my bill any day of the week with anybody who lives there.
liarsinnews on December 26 at 8:27 a.m.
The more I think about what Snyder said, I`m insulted. Were not a village of idiots.
D Statler on December 26 at 8:54 a.m.
I suppose that we should go on dumping untreated water into our beautiful river and washing our problems down stream.Nobody wants higher taxes.Unfortunately,we didn’t build the sewer system correctly and big enough to begin with. I am glad the city and county are doing the right thing.Building new infrastructure to take care of our mess seems to be the right thing to do. I am a bit concerned that we are trying to reinvent the wheel(so to speak).There are plenty of great citys with very functional systems we could model after.Spokanes leaders and civil engineers could use an infusion of new blood and new ideas. Starting over with a bigger state of the art facility would make more sense than storing our waste in tanks for future treatment. The monies spent on tanks would be better spent on a new plant capable of handling Spokane’s future needs. Our taxes are going up,one way or another.
liarsinnews on December 26 at 9:11 a.m.
undooly, I didn`t say to dump waste water into the river. I said, our utility bills were obscene. I`ve observed Spokane`s spending and after a couple decades one can`t help but notice corporations the city deals with. Take for example, some of the companies that hire former city employees. Track on Phil Williams, a former city employee who left the city under questionable circumstances and now works for a company that the city of Spokane through the years has spent millions of dollars with them. I think its time to put that company under the microscope.
Spokane_Citizen on December 26 at 9:43 a.m.
Most of the cities paying lower wastewater utility bills are situated on much larger rivers or bodies of water. The key consideration that drives discharge limits for pollutants downward (and the costs of attaining such limits upward) is dilution factor. If you’re discharging to a large river (such as the Columbia, or any other number of large ‘receiving waters’ across the United States) the treatment technology doesn’t have to be exotic. If (like Spokane) you’re discharging to a tiny river, then the discharge permit stringency and complexity of treatment skyrocket.
There’s 250 thousand people in the Spokane area, plus stormwater during precipitation events, discharging to what is a very small river….at low river flow treated wastewater can constitute 1/5 of the river’s flow. That means the wastewater must receive an exquisite level of treatment to achieve federal and state water quality limits.
It will actually be cheaper to construct the combined wastewater stormwater holding tanks than upgrade Spokane’s treatment plant sufficiently to handle the temporary extremes in flows at the plant. The tanks discharge back into the system when the regular flow falls (there are large diurnal variations in flow to every treatment plant) so use can be made of the capacity for combined treatment during the low flow hours.
These stormwater holding systems are in use all across the country….and represent the state of the art in handling these ‘legacy’ problems that most larger cities inherited when they stopped dumping raw sewage directly to rivers, lakes, or ocean.
liarsinnews on December 26 at 11:40 a.m.
I eluted to Dakota county in Minnesota where there are several small rivers. Two factors must be considered. First, the sewer rate (with a latest state of the art system there) is lower than Spokane. Not by much, but less. Second. Spokane`s city utility tax is the highest in the nation. Name even one city, that is even close to the 25% gross=upped rate users pay in the Lilac City. I know of two cities that have a high tax but the voters passed a ballot to do it. Those taxpayers probably would not have passed a 25% tax. A guess on my part. The two I talk about pay 2 or 3% more than the 6% tax before the ballot was approved.
Spokane_Citizen on December 26 at 11:47 a.m.
Dick, it would interesting to find out what those municipalities total tax based revenue rate is in relation to population….and do they utilize a business and occupational tax, etc? Sometimes these things can be a real ‘apples and oranges’ comparison nightmare.
Spokane_Citizen on December 26 at 12:46 p.m.
Dick…for what it’s worth, Minnesota rates (according to wikipedia anyway) as the 12th highest level of taxation per capita in the US. Don’t know how that translates down to the cities….there’s an income tax of course…does it get redistributed to the cities?
Another item of interest would be whether their street departments are funded like a utility, or from the general fund? Street utility funding might explain their much higher snow removal performance (and of course they’d be expected to have excellent performance, since MN experiences a continental climate, with pretty severe winters, doesn’t it)?
liarsinnews on December 26 at 2:53 p.m.
spokane citizen, you didn`t mention where the state of Washington stands. I`m not going to get into another email duel. Your entitled to your thoughts and beliefs and so am I. I lived in Minnesota most of my life and I was there when the state income tax was enacted. Like Washington is doing, they promised a much lower sales tax and only the rich would pay. Both were lies. However, real estate tax there, if you lived in the house, were reduced 40% with a homestead exemption and done every year. On the other side of the coin, if you were a landlord you paid 100%. Sales taxes subsequently climbed to the same rate as before the income tax. Sales taxes though, never charged for stuff like cloths etc. In 1992, the CEO of WWP was bragging to the city council that WWP rates were the lowest in the country. The 1992 Washington CEO magazine printed out electrical rates for major cities that were the cheapest in the nation. Both, CDA and Minneapolis (as well as my home town) were lower than WWP. Spokane did have low rates though. Fire departments in major cities in Minnesota had built into the budgets money for firetrucks unlike Spokane. Spokane which you are well aware floats bonds for the purchase but years ago when I did some checking appeared SFD spent more than at least my home town. At the time the population was over 100,000. Its around 80 or 85000 today.
Spokane_Citizen on December 26 at 5:05 p.m.
Dick….I have absolutely no intention of initiating another ‘duel’…I said I’d respect your statements, and I intend to stand by my word. You are, indeed, very much entitled to your opinion. My previous verbal attacks achieve nothing but animosity, and I sincerely regret them. I may sometimes disagree, but I’ll do so in a respectful manner.
Wikipedia doesn’t make a statement regarding Washington’s tax burden standing, but the state claims that it’s 15th….so they’re both pretty high in that respect. As for politicians not always telling the complete truth…I don’t think the local group has any sort of monopoly on that tendency!
MrNatural on December 27 at 9:02 a.m.
The Spokane River (next to the aquifer) is one of our area’s most precious natural resources. Protecting and revitalizing the river makes good environmental and economic sense. I’m very glad to see this article and what efforts are being made.
philipgregory on December 28 at 7:05 a.m.
“When it rains in Spokane, it pours sewage into the Spokane River.”
What is this? 1910?
Where has Spokane been wasting tax payer money they couldn’t have taken care of this decades ago?
Another example of the poor leadership in eastern Washington.
Spokane_Citizen on December 28 at 10:11 a.m.
Phil, old cities across the country have the same problem. Until the 1950’s most of them just discharged raw sewage and whatever precipitation landed on paved surfaces to the local waters via the closest possible point. When the early environmental regs (actually health department regs) came into existence, the cities put in large ‘interceptor lines’ to cut those discharge points off, and to deliver the sewage to what would now be considered very primitive sewage treatment plants.
Without the interceptor lines cities would have to dig up and reroute all the sewer lines, at astronomical cost (and at that time the citizens didn’t even want to spend any money on interceptors or treatment plants…..it was so much cheaper to just pollute the river). In a lot of ways they were just like a lot of citizens are these days who see no point in spending money on something they don’t care about; the environment.
If a city decides it wants to get all of its combined sewage and precipitation related flow to the treatment plant in the SAME PIPE AT THE SAME TIME, then most of the city has to be dug up….at even greater expense, with road disruption that will make Spokane’s recent street upgrades seem like a walk in the park. The treatment facility would also have to be MUCH bigger to handle large intermittent flows.
If you really want to learn something about this problem go to EPA’s CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow) enforcement website….you also find that Spokane is hardly alone in this problem……it’s an even bigger problem in the old eastern US cities that also experience high precipitation.
The ‘devil’s always in the details’….we can simplistically rant about problems we know little about, or we can seek some knowledge and solutions.
MrNatural on December 29 at 12:24 p.m.
“In the 1930s, the city pooh-poohed state officials who criticized Spokane for not treating its sewage before dumping it into the river.”
ROFLMBO!…and I thought only monkeys did that….