Waitsburg is Dealing with Wastewater Challenges

I want to first take the opportunity to assure City of Waitsburg residents that our current situation with the wastewater treatment plant is not something to panic about. Yes, the pressing system needs to be replaced, but no, we will not be dumping directly into the river; in fact, that would never be an option. Nor are you going to have to stop flushing your toilets anytime soon.

We have reached a point with our pressing system where we are looking at an emergency-type situation IF we do not get it replaced, but we are currently working on choosing the system we want, and after that system is approved by city council, we will be ordering it as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we have a portable press that will be here in about a month and will serve as a temporary means for wasting until our new system is installed. And in that month until the press arrives, if we reach capacity, which we do not anticipate, we do have options for removing waste, none of which include discharging directly into the river; again, that is absolutely NOT an option.

To shed some light on what the City of Waitsburg’s water and sewer systems are comprised of, and what the overall maintenance needs of the systems truly are, a description of the water and sewer systems and how the city plans for future projects follows.

The city’s main water source is a series of springs located about 10 miles outside the city limits along Coppei Creek in the Blue Mountains. This gravity-fed system has been in use for over 100 years and has gone through several improvements over the decades.

The last major work occurred in the early 1980s, which involved the replacement of approximately eight miles of cast iron pipe. The remaining approximately two miles of cast iron pipe that was installed in the 1930s is still in use today, along with the entire collection system at the spring source.

In addition to the springs, the city also has four deep basalt wells that are mainly only used to supplement the springs during the warm summer months or on an emergency basis.

Aside from the water sources, there are approximately 11 to 12 miles of piping around the city that distribute the water throughout the city. Sizable portions of the distribution system were replaced in the 1950s and 1980s and are comprised of varying materials, ages and qualities.

Every user of the system is required to have a water meter as a means to measure the amount of usage, which correlates to the monthly water bills.

The city’s wastewater treatment plant was rebuilt in the late 1990s and came online in the early 2000s. This $3 million facility consists of a variety of systems that are necessary to comply with our state-issued discharge permit as a means to address sewage disposal.

As with water, there are miles of sewer mainlines spread out through the city that work on a gravity-feed drainage design. Unlike the water system, the vast majority of sewer mainlines around the city consist of terracotta clay installed in the 1930s and are far beyond their useful lives. Anyone who has ever had sewer backup due to root infiltration can attest to the ineffectiveness of this material over time. That is why the city has spent the last several years, when funding is available, relining many of the sewer mainlines.

As a component of our annual budget adoption process, the city reviews and updates its capital facilities plan (available on the city’s website) which includes water and wastewater systems, based on a list of deficiencies and planned priorities.

Maintenance of these two systems is predicated on user fees. Without user fees, we cannot effectively maintain either system. Over the last couple of years, utility rate increases were passed as a means to allow the city to create a path forward through the leveraging of these rates to borrow money in an effort to fix some on the most pressing issues associated with the water and sewer systems, leaving smaller repairs to the city public works crew to repair over future years.

As city staff, we grapple with infrastructure issues every day and how we prioritize repairs to the city’s various systems. Due to limited funding year to year and exceedingly high project price tags, we have to plan infrastructure improvements out over several years.

When we chose to do the water meter replacement project before replacing the wastewater treatment plant’s pressing system, we did not anticipate the accelerated rate at which the pressing system is now failing. We were hoping to capture lost water use through replacing the meters, which would generate more revenue to help fund some of the other infrastructure improvements in the coming years.

Now that we have to address the pressing system immediately, the city will reevaluate its priorities and shift project timelines around to solve current problems while continuing to plan for future repairs to a century-old system that always seems to need something fixed.

In the end, we are doing all we can with the limited time, staffing and money the city has to devote to the water and sewer systems, which are just a few of the many items city staff has to take care of on a daily basis.

Anyone who has regularly attended city council meetings or served on city council would be able to attest to the amount of time spent discussing the infrastructure needs of the city and what needs to be done to repair our aging systems to ensure future generations aren’t forced to pay for projects that should have been done decades prior when problems first arose.

Should any concerned citizen want to discuss system deficiencies or project selection further, they are more than welcome to contact me.