Tuesday, March 19, 2024

City gets preliminary approval: $13.9M for wastewater treatment project

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The Leavenworth City Council received a bit of good news on the upcoming wastewater treatment plant project. The city has applied for money from Rural Development. The application was for $13.9 million for plant and wastewater system upgrades. 

“We did find out yesterday that the state RD office obligated the city for those funds, which means the funds are available and tied to our project,” said Joel Walinski, Leavenworth City administrator, at the Aug. 8 study session. “Right now, we’re looking at a $10.7 million loan at 2 percent or less over 40 years. Then, $3.2 million in grant dollars.”

The bottom line, Walinski said, is the impact on sewer rates. Currently, a single family home pays between $55 and $65. That will increase to $63-to-$67. The reason for the range in rates, he said, is the impact of the commercial users. 

The commercial users pay for their sewage treatment based on how much water they use, not just a flat rate. The amount of water determines their sewer charges. 

“How much of that increase they use, that is why we have a range. If we had just single family residences, I could tell you flat out it is $67. But because we have the commercial and that rate varies, based on how much they use, that number could be between $63-to-$67, which is is considerably lower than a lot of the other communities,” Walinski said. 

Councilman Elmer Larsen said he was concerned about the 40 year term for the loan, when much of the equipment needs to be replaced in 20 years. Walinski said some portions of the project do have a 40 year life cycle, such as the pipes in the ground. 

“You are correct, one of the issues is as you get to the 20 year mark, even if you don’t need more capacity or more regulations, the life cycle of the pump, communications, electronics...there is a 20 year cycle. So you will have a $3 to $4 million project in 20 years,” Walinski said. 

RD did make the city include a budgetary amendment for replacement of some of those things, Public Works Director Herb Amick said. Larsen asked if there was money included for a partial relocation of the facilities to the current Community Cupboard location. 

“There is about $1 million in there for shop improvements. The contingencies are based on 20 percent. It is a large contingency. The only caveat, you have to spend the loan first, the grant second,” Walinski said. 

We definitely want to take full advantage of the grant, said Mayor Cheri Kelley Farivar. One of the big costs of doing the RD grant was taking the wastewater master plan, a 78 page document, and turn it into an RFD, a reference document for RD. 

Transposing that document was a big piece of work, Walinski said, done by the engineering firm of Varella and Associates, which designed the wastewater plant. 

After the initial utility regionalization meeting, Walinski said typically when entities consolidate, everybody collects the gain. Since the rates in Leavenworth are low, he said the city might not gain in rates, but it might gain somewhere else. He said they are exploring that. 

Councilwoman Sharon Waters asked if regionalization would affect this process. Walinski said probably not.  

“I would look at the regionalization study... here’s a couple things we do know. The regulations in operating a waste treatment plant are probably going to increase, with more and more regulations,” Walinski said. “In this next piece where it says permit status, one of things written in our new permit, we will be required to follow all new regulations. I think the WSDOE and EPA are anticipating tightening the regulations.”

Perhaps in 2020, 2030, 2040 when the new regulations come into place and something new has to happen to the plant, that is where regionalization might help, Walinski said. Not this upcoming project, but maybe the next one. 

“Maybe there is a way for regionalization to not only help us address those new regulations but kind of open the door on different solutions in terms of how we would go about doing this. Right now, there is a group in Leavenworth deciding how Leavenworth addresses its wastewater,” he said. “There’s a group at the PUD discussing how Peshastin addresses the wastewater. In Cashmere, they solved theirs. When new regulations come about, wouldn’t it be more efficient to have a group of individuals solving those problems all together? Maybe there is some cost savings there.”

There are a lot of changes to the valley which cannot be predicted, like housing and commercial development, which could join the cities together, Farivar said. That may encourage that kind of regionalization. 

“When we talk to people about how the rates are going to go up, we need to make it clear how fortunate they are only going up 17 percent as opposed to Cashmere, where the rates doubled. They are at $107 per month for sewer collection residential,” Farivar said. “I know people are concerned about rates going up. If you do a comparison study, it is moderate compared to some.”

The other item is the status of the WSDOE permit to operate the wastewater treatment plant. Walinski thought their permit was on hold. 

“The WSDOE wants to issue us a new permit. We working through this new permit. We’ve gone through one conversation with the Department of Ecology. At first, they were going to put new regulations in place by December of 2019,” Walinski said. “We got them to move that line out to August of 2020. That gives us time to put the new plant in operation, to conduct the testing, proving our operations can pull phosphorus out in an efficient way.”

Larsen asked what would happen if the city did not meet the deadline on the wastewater treatment plant improvements. 

“There is a daily fine. The other is definitely the court cases. You’ve seen some on the water side. This would be court cases against the city on waste treatment. Another thing, more particular to Leavenworth, bad press in terms of not treating the wastewater properly,” Walinski said. 

The city is still exploring the different types of filtering systems to remove the phosphorus. There are a number of options for the treatment of phosphorus. The lowest cost filer is sand, Walinski said. 

“We do have some concerns because we are going to turn it off and on. Is the sand filtering the most efficient doing that? Is there another method which might be a little more expensive?,” Walinski said. “We need to look at those. Herb (Amick) and Antonio (Muro, wastewater plant supervisor) need to go to some of the places that are operating those and talk to them.” 

Even with the biological treatment, Walinski said they will still need chemical treatment. 

“In Minnesota, one of the places we had chemical treatment for phosphorus. In that location, we had three or four chemical distribution points, so you could get competitive bids,” Walinski said. “One of my concerns here is we’re not going to get competitive bids. We’re not going to need a huge amount. Those chemicals can get quite expensive. We need to really look at what method you chose.”

Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.

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