Council deadlocks on Cottonwood sewage
Tie vote means application to use Kalispell treatment plant remains active
The Kalispell City Council is stymied over whether to allow noncity subdivisions to hook up to the city's sewage-treatment plant.
The council voted 4-4 on Monday on whether to reject the Cottonwood subdivision's application to connect to the city's plant. The tie vote keeps the application active.
Monday's action reverses an apparent stance that the council took at a Dec. 5 workshop session on the same issue.
On Dec. 5, most council members appeared to lean toward rejecting Cottonwood's application, because they were leery about the city acting as purely a utility for noncity residents. And the city staff recommended rejecting Cottonwood's application because it would take up capacity at the sewage-treatment plant that it wanted to save for future Kalispell users.
Cottonwood is adjacent to, but not inside, the Evergreen sewer district. The 38 1/2-acre, 92-lot subdivision would use Evergreen's sewer lines to reach Kalispell's system.
In the past, city officials have been reluctant to provide sewer services to Flathead County residents outside of the sewer district, which has a 1990 agreement with the city. However, Jack Fallon, an Evergreen sewer district board member, told the council Monday that the 1990 agreement does not forbid the city from providing sewer services to non-Evergreen residents in the county, though it does not require the city to do so, either.
Also on Monday, Cottonwood developers Wally Wilkinson and Doug Siderius and the subdivision's engineer Brett Birk argued that hooking up to the city's treatment plant would be environmentally better in the long term for the area than the subdivision using septic tanks.
In October, Flathead County commissioners set a condition for the subdivision that it must receive public sewer service from either Kalispell or Evergreen.
The protecting-the-aquifer argument resonated with some council members.
"It is in our best interest to see that sewage in our treatment plant," council member Hank Olson said.
Council member Duane Larson said, " We need to consider the aquifer, not just for Kalispell, but for the whole area."
Council members Kari Gabriel, Bob Hafferman, Randy Kenyon and Jim Atkinson voted to reject Cottonwood's application. Mayor Pam Kennedy, plus council members Larson, Olson and Tim Kluesner, voted in Cottonwood's favor - some with the caveat that the city needs to work out a policy on how to deal with noncity applicants who want to hook up to Kalispell's treatment plant. Council member Bob Herron, who suffered a recent back injury, was absent.
The city staff will meet with the Cottonwood developers to work out a revised application to return to the council.
Right now, the city's sewage-treatment plant is processing sewage at a rate of 2.7 million to 2.8 million gallons a day, expecting that figure to increase significantly because of rapid growth in the greater Kalispell area. The city's plant has a capacity of 3.1 million gallons a day.
Kalispell is expanding its sewage-treatment plant so it can handle roughly 5 million gallons a day by 2007.
The 1990 agreement entitles residents within the Evergreen district to an average of 682,000 gallons a day of the city plant's capacity. Evergreen's use has remained steady at roughly 450,000 gallons a day. In the past, Evergreen has been reluctant to allocate its unused city-plant capacity for non-Evergreen homes because Evergreen residents have paid for that allocation for years in their sewer bills.
Evergreen is studying whether to build its own sewage-treatment plant.
On Monday, the City Council appointed Kluesner and City Manager Jim Patrick as its representatives on an Evergreen committee developing the scope of the feasibility study for the proposed plant.
Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com.