Leaky sewers temper boom

The Silver Valley is on the verge of economic revival, but nobody is sure how a recent building moratorium could affect the building boom.

Proposals for condos, hotels and homes are a welcome sign after years of exodus stemming from closed mines and soaring poverty levels for those who stayed in the historic valley that was once one of the world’s richest silver producers.

But construction plans for most of the county’s undeveloped areas are now stopped – a timeout to give the region’s sewer district a chance to get a handle on excess amounts of groundwater and storm water taking up too much space in the treatment system.

The moratorium by the South Fork Coeur d’Alene River Sewer District only applies to land not in the sewer district boundaries. The sewer district snakes along the valley, poking into narrow gulches, and serves 5,500 households and businesses along the Interstate 90 corridor between Woodland Park and Pinehurst.

Kellogg, Wallace, Pinehurst, Osburn and Mullan also are within the boundaries. That means large developments already in the works, such as the Silver Mountain expansion that will eventually include hundreds of condos and a golf course, can get sewer hookups.

But projects outside the district that don’t yet have approval, such as the proposed 930-unit Silverhorn Alpine Village development under the Silver Mountain Resort’s gondola line, can’t get sewer service.

“It’s a shot across the bow, a wake-up call,” District Manager Ross Stout said. “We can’t ignore it any longer. The sewer district isn’t against development. We want the tax base, too.”

But before the sewer district can expand and take in more land while continuing to serve growth within its boundaries, it must reduce the amount of groundwater and storm water that flows into the sewer through cracked pipes, roof drains and storm water manholes connected directly to the sewer system.

That’s all water that doesn’t need to go through the district’s treatment plant and is taking up space that is needed to handle the increased sewage flow that will come with the valley’s growth, Stout said. During the recent wet weather, the system peaked at 7.2 million gallons of water and sewage that went through the treatment plant each day. In dry weather, the system normally handles about 1.5 million gallons a day, he said. That means as much as 5.8 million gallons of water that does not need treatment goes through the system each day.

To further complicate the problem, the groundwater is high in heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and zinc, which are ubiquitous in Silver Valley soils.

The treatment system can’t filter out those metals, so they are dumped into the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River along with the treated sewage water.

That’s really what has sparked the need for the moratorium, Stout said.

Reducing pollutants isn’t a new issue for wastewater plants in the region. Spokane and Spokane Valley are trying to reduce phosphorus pollution in the Spokane River to comply with new state and federal standards. Treatment plants in Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls face similar issues.

In the Silver Valley, the sewer district has a permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to discharge treated wastewater into the river. Because of the amount of heavy metals in the area, the EPA has given the sewer district a variance – the only one in the Region 10 area that covers Idaho, Alaska, Oregon and Washington. The variance allows the district to discharge more heavy metals into the river than what is normally allowed as long as officials work to reduce the problem.

The district’s current permit and variance expires in 2009, and the EPA has given it until then to show significant progress in reducing the amount of groundwater and storm water getting into the system.

That means the sewer district and the towns need to spend nearly $7 million in repairs – money that is difficult to find. Raising property taxes to pay off sewer bonds may not pass muster with local voters. Stout said the moratorium, which took effect last month, gives the district and the towns some added time to come up with creative options such as grants or partnerships with developers.

“I think it’s a reasonable approach,” Kellogg planning administrator Walter Hadley said about the moratorium. “It doesn’t hold hostage the folks already paying sewer district fees.”

Wallace Mayor Ron Garitone said there is a lot of talk on the streets about the moratorium, and he’s preparing a report to present to the City Council during next week’s meeting to help people understand the situation.

He said Wallace has been trying to fix sewer lines as they get the money, but there isn’t much cash to go around. Besides having 100-year-old sewer pipes in places, the town’s streets, bridges and other utilities are antiquated. He acknowledged the problem is critical and will ultimately determine how the valley can grow.

“We aren’t proud of this problem,” Garitone said. “But we aren’t sitting on our hands and saying we aren’t going to do anything about it. We have the will; we just don’t have the means.”

The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality also applauds the sewer district’s self-imposed halt.

A 2000 study by sewer district engineers outlines the estimated cost for local cities:

Kellogg: $3.2 million;

Wallace: $2.7 million;

Osburn: $825,000.

Those numbers have likely grown during the past six years, Stout said.

If the sewer district doesn’t prove to the EPA that it’s trying to solve the groundwater and storm water leaks, the agency will require the district to add a treatment process to remove the metals from the effluent. That could carry an $18 million price tag that would cause sewer rates to skyrocket for the 5,500 accounts in the district.

Stout said that’s more expensive than all the sewer projects that need to be done in the district. That’s why he wants the cities to start working on enforcing their laws regarding roof drains and disconnecting storm water manholes from the sewer system. Kellogg and Wallace have separate storm water collectors that drain into the river. Stout said the towns also must identify what projects need to occur to stop water from getting into the sewer system.

He knows it’s doable because Mullan has already replaced most of its sewer lines over the last few years, which has reduced flows 68 percent. Stout can’t say how much of that is groundwater and storm water, but he knows it’s a large percentage.

“I would like to see the other cities follow their example,” Stout said.