Unclogging the pipeline

The Spokane Valley City Council voted Tuesday to get political about sewage treatment in less time than it takes to flush a toilet.

Officially, City Councilman Steve Taylor’s motion was to “add consideration of methods to advance the Spokane County wastewater treatment plant to the city of Spokane Valley’s legislative agenda.”

As Mayor Rich Munson put it, the question was, “Can we flush our toilets in two years?”

The council took exactly a minute to pass Taylor’s motion unanimously.

The quick decision to lobby the state government sprang from a grim report a week earlier about regulatory delays in construction of a new sewage treatment plant to serve communities in the Spokane Valley.

Spokane County Utilities Director Bruce Rawls told the council last week that environmental regulations could delay the plant so long that a development moratorium is necessary.

Also, Rawls told the council, efforts to meet Washington water quality standards – as enforced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – may push rocketing costs still higher.

Cost estimates that started at $73.4 million now are in the neighborhood of $170 million. And that doesn’t include the possible $40 million cost of putting treated effluent on Saltese Flats instead of into the Spokane River.

Last year, when the construction cost was estimated $106 million, residential sewer rates were expected to rise to $39.48 a month in 2013.

Rawls declined to comment on how high rates might go now, noting consultants haven’t completed a new rate study that considers numerous possibilities.

It’s not hard to guess, though, how doubling construction costs from $106 million to $210 million might affect a $39.48 monthly bill.

The new rates will apply to all Spokane County sewer customers, even those whose sewage would continue to go to the city of Spokane’s treatment plant.

Sewer service could become unaffordable for many residents, Munson said in an interview. He thinks the solution is for state officials to relax water quality standards that can’t be met with current sewage-treatment technology.

Spokane County and other local governments had negotiated a plan to meet the standards by supplementing state-of-the-art technology with a ban on phosphate dishwasher detergent and voluntary measures by private firms that discharge wastewater into the Spokane River.

The plan fell apart in September when the EPA ruled it had improperly decided to consider Idaho’s discharges into the river separately from Washington’s.

James Bellatty, water quality manager in the Washington Department of Ecology’s Spokane regional office, said last week that he hoped to submit a new plan to the EPA by December 2009.

Ironically, Munson said, the EPA’s standard is “far more lenient” than Washington’s – which he contends is the toughest in the nation. But the EPA is obliged to enforce the state standard.

“If we make up the standards, why can’t we change them?” Munson asked.

Bellatty said he thinks the “very difficult” state standards can be met, and “changing the standards is a very difficult if not impossible task.”

John Craig may be contacted at johnc@spokesman.com.