Sandpoint buys land for wastewater treatment site

SANDPOINT — Plans for a regionalized sewer plant are gaining momentum, and while few expect to see the project come to fruition any time soon, Sandpoint is already positioning itself to be the site’s home base.

The City Council voted late last month to purchase a 32.2 acre plot of land with hopes that it will someday house a wastewater treatment plant capable of serving all five of the area’s sewer districts. The city spent $905,000 on the land, which is located just south of Baldy Mountain Road and west of the BNSF Railways tracks.

Sewer regionalization has been in the ether for years, and proponents of the plan claim it would save money and have less of an environmental footprint. The newly-formed Pend Oreille Clean Water Alliance recently sponsored a well-attended forum on regionalization, but even the most optimistic sewer advocates admit the plan is years away from becoming a reality.

If regionalization doesn’t pan out, the city will move its own wastewater treatment plant to the property, according to Councilwoman Carrie Logan.

“We’re going to need a new sewer treatment plant, and the first thing we need to do is get the land,” she said. “And putting it up in that area gives us the potential to make it regional.”

Despite passing an $8.5 million bond for sewer renovations just two years ago, Public Works director Kody Van Dyk said the city has been mulling the idea of moving its current plant — which sits in a residential neighborhood and is known to stink — for years. Those plans could be sped up if the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System decides the plant is not sufficiently removing key nutrients.

“It’s been a goal of the City Council many times over the years to move the existing plant from where it is,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot we could do at the current plant. We just don’t have the room to do what we need to do for nutrient removal.”

In a year when Mayor Gretchen Hellar was forced to cut the city budget, spending nearly a million dollars on a piece of land — especially one that could sit vacant for 15 years — will likely draw skepticism from some residents, but Logan insists that the purchase has nothing to do with shortfalls in the city’s operating budget.

“It’s a different pot of money,” she said.

“We can’t use that capital funds money for operating expenses. We have to use it for the types of projects, basically.”

The property could be paid for using new user fees from sewer hookups or with leftover money from the wastewater improvement bond.

Because sewer improvements were less expensive than originally estimated, Van Dyk said approximately $1 million still remains from the bond.