City lets funds go to waste

POST FALLS – The city of Post Falls, flush with new growth, is looking to expand its sewage treatment system to handle the added pressure.

In the next five years, the city plans to spend about $42.5 million for sewage treatment upgrades and system expansions to keep up with the growing population and meet new water-quality standards proposed by the federal government.

“You’re always under construction,” City Public Works Director Terry Werner said of the wastewater treatment plant. “You’re always trying to meet needs.”

The city is planning several stages of expansions that will increase its treatment capacity by nearly 60 percent by 2012. In addition, the city is considering irrigating farmland with treated wastewater to reduce the amount of effluent dumped in the Spokane River.

The strain on its sewage system has caused the city to put the brakes on several large residential projects planned for the Rathdrum Prairie until Post Falls can afford to extend sewer services, city officials said. This spring, the city turned down the 280-acre multiuse Foxtail development east of Highway 41, saying it would require millions of dollars in sewer upgrades.

“When you get people who want to come in ahead of (planned expansions), it stresses out the city to fit that in our budget,” City Administrator Eric Keck said.

To better prepare for the expected growth on the Rathdrum Prairie, the cities of Post Falls, Rathdrum and Hayden, along with Kootenai County, are working on a sewer master plan for the area.

The study, expected to be finished in eight to 10 months, will show how best to provide sewer hookups on the prairie, which sits above the Spokane Valley/Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, the sole source of drinking water for more than 500,000 people.

The forthcoming plan has stalled development on the prairie. Post Falls and Hayden, for example, requested that the county delay approving a 116-acre project proposed by Post Falls church Real Life Ministries east of Highway 41 until the study is complete.

“To allow (projects) to develop without municipal services is irresponsible,” Keck said. “We need to grow in an orderly fashion. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”

Expanding the system

Figuring out how much Post Falls will grow and when to expand its services is a tenuous balancing act, Keck said.

Post Falls, which last year approved plans for 900 new homes, condominiums and apartments, is on pace to continue its population boom with an expected growth rate of 3.5 percent per year. City officials predict Post Falls will expand to 30,000 residents in the next six years.

During the past four years, the city has steadily expanded capacity at the sewage treatment plant by more than 100,000 gallons each year, said Werner, the public works director. The plant now treats about 2.5 million gallons a day, including half a million from Rathdrum, which contracts with Post Falls for its sewage treatment.

The plant is capable of handling 3.2 million gallons a day. The city plans to expand its capacity to 4 million a day by 2009 and to 5 million gallons a day by 2012, Werner said.

In a master sewer plan completed in 2002, officials estimated the city would need a treatment plant with a capacity of 10 million gallons a day by the year 2060, Werner said.

By 2012, city officials say, they plan to spend about $15 million to expand the treatment facility and about $12.5 million to extend the collection system. City officials estimate another $15 million is needed for upgrades to meet new federal water purity requirements.

Sewer bills may rise

To pay for it, the city is planning incremental increases to hook-up fees and monthly user costs, city officials said. Next year, residents may see a nearly 4.5 percent increase to their sewer bills, Werner said.

The average resident now pays $24.48 per month for wastewater and storm water fees.

The city likely will ask voters to approve a bond – estimated at more than $30 million – in the next two to three years to help shoulder the cost, Werner said.

Residents currently are paying for several bonds, passed in the 1980s and 1990s to build and expand the current facility. One will expire in 2009, around the same time city officials expect to ask voters for a new bond. That timing may keep the city’s debt load from increasing significantly, city officials said.

This spring, the federal government announced new requirements for reducing the amount of phosphorus in treated wastewater as part of an effort to clean up the Spokane River. Phosphorus promotes the growth of algae.

Post Falls will be required spend about $15 million on a new filtration system, city officials said.

“It’s going to take some new technology to meet those requirements,” Werner said.

Cities along the Spokane River have worked with the government since 2005 to create the new EPA standards.

Applying wastewater

As a way to reduce the amount of effluent dumped in the Spokane River and handle the ballooning population growth, Post Falls has bought 628 acres of farmland on the Rathdrum Prairie with plans to irrigate it eventually with treated wastewater.

In 2004, voters approved a 10-year, $9.5 million bond to buy acres of bluegrass near Hayden Avenue north of town.

The 2004 bond election, though, became controversial when neighbors to the farmland protested the land application, fearing tainted water and claiming the city would spread raw sewage on the property.

That’s not the case, Werner said. The city will irrigate the land with treated wastewater, the same effluent that currently flows into the Spokane River.

“It’s not some brown, ugly water,” Werner said.

Treated effluent won’t harm the aquifer because plant roots act as a secondary filtering system, officials say. The roots absorb nutrients, such as phosphorus.

The Hayden Lake Recreational Water and Sewer District was the first in Kootenai County to buy prairie property for land application, when it began in the 1980s to grow bluegrass and poplar trees.

Rathdrum also has purchased 320 acres for future land application use, Rathdrum Public Works Director Chet Anderson said.

Post Falls officials say land application will secure open space on the Rathdrum Prairie, an area where developers are gobbling up land and building subdivisions.

“That could be the last 1,000 acres,” Werner said of Post Falls and Rathdrum property.

City officials pitched the land application option for future use, Werner said, and it’s still four to five years away. The city must prioritize funding for meeting the new EPA filtration requirements before paying to extend piping three miles out to the city’s property, Werner said.

It likely will cost more than $3 million for infrastructure to pump, store and distribute 1 million to 2 million gallons a day, Werner said.

When the city will do that, he said, “will all depend on growth.”