One way or another we’ll end up paying
To those who fear that owning a wastewater system is too large an obligation for the City of Spokane Valley to assume, we have no choice. Let me explain. There are two separate issues concerning wastewater in the Valley: (1) Building, owning and operating a treatment plant, and (2) Ownership and operation of the wastewater collection system in the Valley.
Currently, there is a prohibition against new discharges into the Spokane River until a study of dissolved oxygen levels is done, which won’t be completed until 2007. As a result, neither the county, City of Spokane nor Spokane Valley can get a discharge permit at this time for a new plant. Accordingly, none of them is going to build a treatment plant any time soon. But the county’s current plan is to someday build a treatment plant with a 10 million-gallon-a-day capacity, of which, Spokane wants 2.5 MGD. The county and the Valley city get 7.5 MGD. However, 90 percent of the county’s wastewater comes from the City of Spokane Valley. Here’s the capacity chart:
Spokane Valley: 67.5 percent
Spokane: 25 percent
County: 7.5 percent
The plant is estimated to cost at least $100 million. This means that if the county builds the treatment plant as planned, the Valley will pay $67.5 million, the City of Spokane, $25 million and the county $7.5 million. And, when the plant is completed, under the current plan, the county will own the plant. We will pay for our share of capacity with increased monthly sewer rates. Since a treatment plant cannot be built any time soon, the City of Spokane Valley should get into the wastewater collection business while we are waiting. This would allow the city to phase into the utility business without immediately confronting the cost of building a new treatment plant. Everything is in place. The pipes are in the ground, the customers are in place, the rates are fixed, and the operation of the collection system is accumulating a reserve.
Owning the collection system in the Valley will not raise rates. Every piece of pipe that has been installed in the Valley has or will be paid for by Valley citizens. Everyone in the Valley on sewer has paid or will pay sewer related hookup fees, which are currently about $5,000. Everyone on sewer in the Valley is paying off revenue bonds previously sold by the county. Many have or still are paying off their ULID assessment. If the city accepts the collection system from the county, as the county has offered, the cost will simply be assuming the outstanding revenue bonds which we are already paying off, and will continue to pay off even if the county were to keep the collection system. Those with ULID assessments will continue to pay them whether or not the city accepts the collection system.
In other words, Valley citizens are going to pay for the collection and treatment of every drop of wastewater that comes from the Valley, regardless of who owns the system.
In the Valley we pay $24.50 per month sewer charge to the county. We also pay the county $10 per year for storm water. Those with septic tanks pay an aquifer protection charge of $30 per year, and those on sewer pay $15 per year. The county has divided its wastewater funds into five budgets. The county estimates that at the end of 2004, it will have $44.3 million in reserves in the combined budgets. Ninety percent of that reserve has been paid by Valley customers. Of the $24.50 per month we pay for sewers, the county pays $8 to the City of Spokane for sewage treatment, and $4 goes toward the reserve to build a new treatment plant. The county does not now have, nor ever has had a treatment plant, and doesn’t know any more about designing, building and operating a treatment plant than does the Valley. The county intends to hire an international company to design, build and operate the treatment plant. We could do that. The bottom line is that the Valley has and will pay every nickel it costs to collect and treat its wastewater. I think we should own the system.