Spokane County and Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District are playing fast and loose with taxpayer money. Both have announced plans to go forward with construction of new sewage treatment plants. The county proposes a facility to treat 10 million gallons per day at a hefty price tag of $110 million. Liberty Lake plans to expand its plant from 1 to 2 million gallons per day at a cost of $14 million.

The problem? Neither the county nor Liberty Lake has a permit to discharge treated sewage into the Spokane River. And they are not going to get those permits either. The Spokane River is over the limits for phosphorous, ammonia and other pollutants that consume oxygen and harm aquatic life. Federal and state laws prohibit new polluters when a river fails to meet water quality standards — exactly the problem the Spokane River is experiencing.

Because the Spokane River is polluted, new sewage plants must meet strict pollution limits. This may mean no new discharges during summer months, when instream flows are too low to absorb all of our municipal waste. In other words, new plants will have to treat their effluent to a very high quality, and then put it somewhere other than the Spokane River.

But Spokane County and the Liberty Lake sewage district are not building plants that will meet these requirements. As a result, their expensive treatment facilities will be obsolete from day one.

Both the county and Liberty Lake are fully aware that their plants will not meet state requirements. But they are willing to gamble, perhaps because it is not their money on the line. Both facilities are heavily subsidized by state and federal grants and low-interest loans.

How is it possible that our elected officials are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars on new public facilities that will not be adequate for our needs? Are the commissioners surprised that the Spokane River cannot absorb all of the sewage generated by 400,000-plus people? Do they believe that if they go ahead and build these plants, water quality laws will simply disappear?

Solutions abound to our sewage treatment needs. But first, all local governments — Spokane County, Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake and the City of Spokane — must accept that the Spokane River is not an all-purpose dumping ground. Sure, everybody says they love the river, but spending $125 million on outdated sewage treatment technology is not the kind of valentine the Spokane River needs.

What we do need is vision and leadership. Ours is not the first community to confront this problem. Indeed, many strategies have been used elsewhere to successfully manage and reduce sewage effluent:

“ Water conservation: Less water going into the treatment plant means less water coming out of it. Spokane has some of the highest per capita water use in the nation. Here is a huge opportunity to solve two problems (aquifer and river) through aggressive conservation programs.

“ New filtration technology: smaller footprint, better odor control and cheaper.

“ Re-use and reclamation: Treat the water and use it to irrigate 15 regional golf courses (and pump less water from the aquifer too!)

“ Land application: Treat the water and use it to restore wetlands and recharge aquifers.

It is also time for the cities and the county to form a regional water quality authority. Metro-King County in Western Washington saved Lake Washington by bringing together multiple governments to achieve regional sewage treatment goals and protect natural resources. It saved a lot of money, too.

To the Spokane County and Liberty Lake sewer commissioners, what happened to fiscal responsibility, respect for the law and environmental stewardship? Committing large sums of tax dollars to obsolete technology and likely litigation is not a wise way to manage resources — fiscal or natural.

In 2014, what will we see looking back to today? Decisions that led to years of intergovernmental turf wars, expensive lawsuits and boondoggle construction? Or, regional cooperation that carefully protected both public budgets and public resources?

We have arrived at the crossroads; it is up to us to decide.