Loan, permit in peril for sewage plant

Plans to build a new sewage treatment plant in Spokane County are hitting serious snags.

The Washington Department of Ecology has already said that it will likely not issue a discharge permit for the plant because of water quality issues. Now officials at Ecology say they aren’t going to give the county the low-interest loan it was promised last year.

County officials are raising a stink and pledging that they will take legal action against Ecology if it doesn’t issue the loan and permit.

“You better get ready,” county Commissioner Kate McCaslin told Spokane County attorney Jim Emacio during a Tuesday meeting on the issue.

The county hasn’t received written notice that Ecology is rescinding the loan agreement, but Ecology officials called the county to say the loan won’t be issued, said county Utilities Director Bruce Rawls.

The county is proceeding with the loan application anyway, and it is sending a letter to Ecology saying that the agency needs to live up to its agreement.

“I want an explanation of why they’re now reneging,” McCaslin said.

“We made a mistake. We thought we would be able to give them a loan and as we got farther into it we found out we couldn’t,” said Ecology spokeswoman Jani Gilbert, who explained that it would be illegal for Ecology to loan the money to build another discharge source when the Spokane River already violates clean water standards.

Ecology is developing standards called total maximum daily load, or TMDL, that will set limits for pollutants in the Spokane River.

“The important thing is we need to get the river cleaned up,” Gilbert said.

“The county can apply again for the next loan cycle,” she added. “If we get this straightened out, they have another shot at it.”

But Rawls said the outcome of that plan probably won’t help the county with its cause.

“I believe that the outcome of the TMDL is going to be so stringent that I’m going to recommend to the board that we sue DOE,” he said.

Rawls and the commissioners complained Tuesday that Ecology is failing to take into account the fact that the county’s new plant would produce cleaner effluent than the city of Spokane’s existing sewage treatment plant.

The county could still build the plant without the low-interest loan, but financing the project with bonds would add about $15 million to the $100 million cost, Rawls said.

Without the plant, county and Spokane Valley officials warn that development in the area could be halted because the existing treatment plant will run out of capacity for the two jurisdictions within five years. And it could take almost that long to build it.

“I think it’s the most critical issue to the Spokane area,” said Spokane Valley Mayor Mike DeVleming.

Environmental groups argue that the county should consider increasing conservation efforts and other treatment options such as using highly treated effluent to irrigate parks, golf courses or crops.

“Maybe Spokane County ought to be doing more to clean up the river in other ways,” said Commissioner John Roskelley, who supports the plant.

The county could decide to not discharge into the Spokane River, but that would add 40 percent to 50 percent to the cost of building a plant.

Now commissioners must decide whether to proceed with the plant.

McCaslin said she’s reluctant to spend the money to build it without a permit in place.

But Rawls said even in a worst-case scenario, the plant could still be used to discharge onto dry land, although the $16 million cost to install a special membrane filtration technology would be wasted.

Even if the county could get a permit now, that permit would be good for just five years and would have to be renewed about the same time the plant opened, he said.