City proposes $20M water plant bond

SANDPOINT — Hot on the heels of a controversial school levy, Sandpoint residents will head back to the polls in May to vote on a $20 million water treatment facility bond.

The City Council voted last week to approve a May 26 bond election for renovations to Sandpoint’s lake water treatment facility. Public Works Director Kody Van Dyk said the renovations are a necessary part of ensuring safe drinking water for the 4,000 user connections in Sandpoint, Ponderay, Kootenai, Dover and unincorporated areas of Bonner County.

Between its lake treatment and Little Sand Creek facilities, the city can comfortably provide clean water to its users during most of the year, but the plants often reach or exceed capacity during the busy summer months, which Van Dyk said can affect the quality and safety of drinking water.

Abnormally high Sand Creek runoff in recent years has given the city a cushion for its water treatment, but Van Dyk said the city cannot afford to gamble on a heavy runoff as a long-term solution.

“If we were receiving normal runoff from Sand Creek, we would not have enough to serve Sandpoint in the summer time,” Van Dyk said. “That’s the primary issue, having enough water to serve Sandpoint in the summertime.”

If approved by voters, the renovation would include the addition of an immersed membrane filtration process, which filters out pathogens from raw water. The plan also calls for a larger raw water transmission pipeline and rehabilitation of the plant’s chemical and operations buildings.

The proposed upgrades will allow the lake plant to improve its output of 3-3.5 million gallons of water per day to at least 10 million gallons, Van Dyk said.

The city is still reviewing bids and cannot put a firm price tag on the project, but Van Dyk estimates the total cost will be $15-20 million.

The city is hoping to use a combination of federal stimulus dollars and loans to fund the renovations. Van Dyk is pursuing a low-interest loan from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality’s state revolving funds, as well as a grant of up to 30 percent of total costs from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Program.

While it will be weeks or months before a decision is handed down, Van Dyk is confident the project will receive stimulus funds.

“I don’t want to say it’s a sure thing, but it sounds very good that we could get the full 30 percent,” he said.

Whatever the final cost, the bond will be paid down through increased user and water hook-up fees during a period of 20 to 30 years, according to Van Dyk.