Sewer District Faces Rate Increase

The South Fork Coeur d’Alene River Sewer District is struggling to pay for necessary improvements to keep sewer mains from overflowing with storm water.

The district, which serves several communities in the Silver Valley, received a compliance order from the Environmental Protection Agency in June requiring it to make improvements to its system.

The order was the result of problems from heavy storm water runoff in March. The heavy runoff filled the sewer lines and caused the sewer to overflow from manholes and flood some basements in Wallace, Kellogg and Silverton.

Since then, the district got approval to open a temporary bypass at the Page wastewater treatment plant to prevent such backups from occurring in the future.

Meanwhile, an engineering firm has been hired to evaluate methods for ridding the system of excessive flows and evaluate the capacity of the treatment plant into the year 2017. The firm’s report will be used to secure grants and loans for construction.

The district has until November 1999 to disconnect the temporary bypass. If the sewer district violates the compliance order, it faces $25,000 per day in fines.

Sewer district officials said they will have to increase sewer rates to pay for the engineering study. Rates haven’t increased since 1980.