Fines Urged For Mccall’s Sewage Dumping City Putting Treated Effluent Into North Fork Of Payette

The Cascade Reservoir Association wants penalties of $25,000 per day from the city of McCall for every day the city continues to dump its treated sewage effluent into the North Fork of the Payette River.

That fork flows into Cascade Reservoir, and the effluent is considered a factor behind water pollution in the popular recreation-residential reservoir.

The reservoir association earlier asked the McCall City Council to sign an agreement to quit dumping treated water into the Payette. At last week’s McCall City Council meeting, the reservoir association’s deadline, the council took no action.

The next day, the reservoir association filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Boise, naming McCall officials and the federal Environmental Protection Agency as defendants.

The legal action claims the city’s EPA permit to discharge into the river expired in 1993 and without a new one, discharges into the river violate the federal Clean Water Act.

EPA, the city of McCall and the Idaho Division of Environmental Quality have said in the past the permit was administratively extended until a review is completed and a new permit issued.

The Cascade Reservoir Association asks federal court to declare that the city’s continued discharge into the river is unlawful, that it should be barred from discharges and the city would be forced to ban hookups to the sewage system until the discharges are stopped.

The association action also seeks firm deadlines for eliminating the discharges.

McCall City Attorney Ted Burton said the lawsuit hinges on the fact the city hasn’t received a new permit from EPA. He said that’s beyond the city’s control.

“I guess we feel kind of caught in the middle,” he said.

Other officials said they haven’t had time to study the complaint.

Warren McFall of the Idaho EPA office said it’s clear the state environmental division wants a level of treatment that is very restrictive.

Instead, the city has proposed a land application process where the treated sewage would be applied to farm land south of Lake Fork.

That process is taking too long, members of the association said, and the lawsuit was filed in hopes of speeding things.