Estimate: $760K added to Coulee Dam sewer plant bill

Coulee Dam’s sewer plant customers could end up paying three quarters of a million dollars more to add a lift station to carry Elmer City’s sewage to the new wastewater treatment plant, a new cost for which a search for funding will now begin.

Meeting in a special session Monday night, the Coulee Dam Town Council voted to pursue one of two options laid out in a hurry by Varela and Associates engineer Daniel Cowger last week following a closed session of the council.

Cowger’s $760,000 was described as a “rough” estimate for the cost for the added facility, which would be built along with the new plant situated above the Columbia River just downhill from River Drive, in the same vicinity as the current plant.

That estimate, which does not include interest on any financing options, is far higher than the $30,000-$40,000 figure mentioned earlier for simply buying bigger pumps for Elmer City’s aging lift station.

More horsepower is needed to pump the wastewater 22 feet higher to the new facility from Elmer City, which is planning to build its own wastewater treatment plant before its 50-year contract with Coulee Dam ends in 2025.

The towns have disagreed on whose responsibility it is to add the extra lifting capacity, with Coulee Dam contending it tried to engage Elmer City in planning and pointing to technical memos sent to Elmer City two years ago explaining the need. Elmer City argues that the current contract obligates them to deliver their waste only to the current facility that the two towns undertook to construct in 1975, not to a new one that Coulee Dam unilaterally decided to build at a higher elevation.

If the new addition can be funded similarly to the wastewater facility under construction now, it might entail financing and paying about 2 percent interest on three quarters of the cost, with a grant to cover a quarter of it.

The effect on monthly bills for the next 40 years would be about $2.11 per household equivalent, Cowger estimated, including to Elmer City residents.

Because the second option would cause longer, costlier delays in getting the new plant open, the council voted unanimously for the first option.

With that vote, they instructed the mayor to look for funding for the new lift station, plus possibly for another. The town’s own lift station that pumps effluent from the west side of Coulee Dam across the bridge and to the treatment plant is also aging.

Varela studied that potential need for the town two years ago. The likely cost: another $550,000 to $700,000.