Council Oks Wastewater Proposal $2.3 Million Will Be Spent To Improve Collection

The amount of raw sewage that’s annually dumped into the Spokane River would be reduced under a multi-year plan to improve the city’s wastewater collection system.

On Monday, the Spokane City Council voted unanimously to spend $2.3 million for a 2-year contract with a Tacoma consulting firm to help design and manage the project.

“We want to protect the river and Long Lake,” said Tom Arnold, a city engineer on the project.

The improvements, which are being sought by state and federal environmental regulators, would cost nearly $70 million over the next 17 years.

City officials estimate the cost of the project would be paid largely through increases to sewer bills of about $2 a month.

Currently, the city dumps about 70 million to 80 million gallons of raw sewage into the river during stormy weather each year.

Sewers downtown and on the South Side carry both wastewater and storm water. During downpours, the sewer pipes fill with so much water that some of it is spilled into the river to prevent overflows at the sewage treatment plant.

The overflows come from 24 different locations along the river.

The sewers are designed, in some cases, with century-old concrete weir dams that act as spillways when too much water fills the pipes.

More than a decade ago, the city spent about $50 million separating wastewater and storm sewers on the North Side. Now, storm water is piped directly to the river from that part of town.

That separation project reduced sewage discharges into the river by some 700 million gallons a year.

“We are being progressive,” Arnold said.

Under the proposed project, the city would seek to eliminate infiltration of ground water into the sewers and reduce the amount of storm water coming off property and buildings.

By reducing year-round water flow in the pipes, less wastewater would be dumped during storms.

Some retention ponds may be needed to hold storm water so the pipes don’t overflow, Arnold said.

The consulting contract is going to Consoer Townsend Envirodyne Engineers, Inc., which helped build similar improvements in Nashville, Tenn.

The storm-water project is only half of the improvements to the sewer system planned for coming years.

The city also has a contract with CH2M Hill engineers to design improvements to the wastewater treatment plant near Riverside State Park.

The city expects to spend $65 million on the sewer plant over the next decade to improve the level of treatment and increase sewer capacity to handle growth in the Spokane region.

That already has added about $4 a month to sewer bills. INITIATIVE VALIDATED In other business, the City Council was told that an initiative measure seeking to elect council members by districts has been validated. The measure, sponsored by a group called Fair Representation Now, has more than 2,964 signatures from registered city voters to force the proposal onto the Nov. 2 municipal election ballot. Sponsors submitted 4,754 signatures last year, and the city sent those signatures to the county auditor to make sure they were valid. If approved at the polls, the initiative would reverse the city’s current practice of electing the mayor and six council members at large. Under the initiative, only the mayor would be elected at large while the rest of the council would be elected from geographic districts.