Drain Field Plugs Up Project Missing Plans All That’S Left For Park’S Toilets

Don’t hold your breath - or anything else - waiting for the new restrooms at Q’Emiln Riverside Park to open.

Months after the toilets were expected to open, there’s still no septic system for the $35,000 building. The plumber is still waiting for the go-ahead.

The problem: no engineering designs for a required drain field.

“It’s absolutely nobody’s fault but mine,” said Bruce Noble, a professional engineer who volunteered to make the plans. “I’ve just been too lazy to finish what I’ve started.”

The old restrooms were destroyed when a tree fell on them during a severe windstorm in 1996. The city has provided six portable privies - which cost $50 per month each - for about the past year and eight during the year before that, City Parks and Recreation Director David Fair said.

The park is on the south side of the Spokane River and is not connected to the city sewer. That means it needs a septic system with a drain field, which is what the old restrooms had.

But complications arose when a survey of the property showed that the old drain field was too close to the Spokane River, Fair said.

Designers had to plan a new drain field further away.

Once Noble submits the plans for the new field - he says he’ll do so “just as soon as I can get them done” - the Panhandle Health District and the state Division of Environmental Quality each will have to approve the project. That will take three or four weeks. Finishing the plumbing will take a few weeks more, Fair said.

The new 1,200-square-foot facility has a maintenance room, a large room that could be used for concessions in the future and wheelchair-accessible men’s and women’s restrooms, said Skip Hissong, a Lion’s Club volunteer with the project.

“I find it incredibly ironic that we’ve got this enormous, beautiful bathroom and we can’t flush,” he said.