City, County At Odds Over Sewage Growth Needs Force Officials To Consider Building New Treatment Plant

Spokane’s sewage treatment plant won accolades and awards after it was modernized in the 1970s.

Twenty years later, it falls far short of modern environmental standards. Even with a $70 million expansion started this year, it won’t meet the needs of growth expected over the next 20 years, city officials say.

That means an additional plant must be built. And while good estimates aren’t yet available, engineers say the cost could top $100 million.

The existing plant, which was built in the 1950s along the Spokane River, was modernized largely with state and federal money. Such grants no longer are available, so local residents likely will foot the bill for the next plant.

County officials contend the city is exaggerating the crisis and using sewage treatment to dictate where growth will occur.

The existing plant can treat 44 million gallons of sewage a day without violating environmental regulations.

The county, which is aggressively building sewers in the Valley and North Side, owns 10 million gallons of that capacity, and will need it all by 2007.

The plant was designed to be expanded to 60 million gallons, but that’s not possible under modern environmental regulations for the amount of nutrients the city can dump into the river. Instead, the modernization project should expand the capacity to about 52 million gallons.

County utilities director Bruce Rawls said the city gave its assurance last year that the county could buy 6 million gallons of the new capacity. The city now says that’s not possible.

“We can’t sell it to the county because we don’t have it,” said Gale Olrich, city director of wastewater management.

Olrich and other city engineers are studying the possibility of building a new plant and promise to lease capacity to the county.

“If we don’t build it, we can’t continue to grow,” Olrich said.

County Commissioner Kate McCaslin said the expanded plant would be large enough for both the city and county for years to come, if the city weren’t planning to annex large areas of the Valley and North Side.

She bristles at a note from unidentified city staff to City Council members, contained in a recent city document:

“We could … offer them (the county) capacity within our system when our second plant becomes available,” the note reads. “But they should use this capacity to eliminate existing septic tanks, not encourage growth.”

“I hope as a matter of policy that the city isn’t going to (use sewers to) try to control growth in unincorporated areas of the county,” McCaslin said.

County officials said that because of the city’s plans, they have no choice but to begin studying the possibility of building their own plant.

The city wants the county to join its plans. But county officials question whether the city’s preferred location, the West Plains, is best for the region.

The West Plains is the most logical place for the city to grow, and a plant there could also serve Airway Heights and Fairchild Air Force Base, city engineers note. But county officials contend the region’s fastest growing regions will be the Spokane Valley and North Side.

The city’s preliminary plans call for using nutrient-rich discharge from the proposed plant to irrigate a street tree farm.

While they’re not ruling out that idea, county engineers say the region should also consider other ideas. Among them: using the water to feed Spokane’s underground water supply and rivers, or to keep golf courses green.