State may limit Kalispell's northern growth

A state letter about sewage limits has Kalispell's city staff confused -and delayed a City Council vote on a preliminary plat for Silverbrook Estates' second phase.

In the longer run, this issue could affect the proposed Glacier Town Center mall project.

On Feb. 4, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality wrote to the city that the agency is extremely reluctant to approve any new preliminary plats for northern Kalispell.

That's because all of the approved preliminary plats in northern Kalispell would build enough homes to reach the city's 2009 capacity to transport the sewage south to the sewage treatment plant.

This goes against Kalispell's unofficial pattern of letting whichever developer moves the fastest to get dibs on the available sewage transport capacity.

"This has profound financial implications for the community," City Public Works Director Jim Hansz told the council.

Right now, all of northern Kalispell's sewage goes through the Grandview Drive lift station -making it a bottleneck.

The city wants to build a second main north-south sewer line in western Kalispell, but that project still is in the initial brainstorming stage. It could be years before that line is built.

This spring, the city plans to upgrade the Grandview lift station so it can handle 860 gallons of sewage a minute - giving it an unused capacity of an extra 444 gallons a minute. Those unused gallons translate to the ability to serve 1,168 new homes.

Preliminary plats already approved for northern Kalispell do not quite reach that amount.

Preliminary plats are essentially rough initial plans on how a development will be laid out, after the city council approves them.

A preliminary plat also needs the approval of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, which looks at a developer's likely sewage volumes and the city's capacity to deal with them.

Preliminary plats have been approved for the first phases on some multi-phase housing projects in northern Kalispell such as Silverbrook, Starling and Bloomstone.

Preliminary plats also have been approved for all of West View Estates, Hilton Homewood Suites, Hutton Ranch Plaza, a new Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation building and the Spring Prairie Center shopping area.

Northern Kalispell projects that don't have approved preliminary plats include Glacier Town Center, Valley Ranch and Flathead Village Greens -all of which fill the geographical gap between Silverbrook and the rest of built-up Kalispell.

The approved preliminary plats for northern Kalispell translate to 993 typical houses - meaning the Grandview lift station has about 175 homes' worth of unallocated capacity.

On Tuesday, the City Council was scheduled to vote on the preliminary plat for the second and final phase of northernmost Kalispell's Silverbrook Estates subdivision. Howard Mann is the developer.

The second phase's preliminary plat calls for 197 single-family homes, 90 townhouse lots, 13 commercial lots and one fire station lot on the final 167 acres of the 325-acre project.

That is significantly more than the Grandview lift station's unallocated capacity to handle 175 extra homes.

And Glacier Town Center - with sewage needs that have not been made public yet -plus the two other north-side residential projects still are expected to apply for preliminary plats.

Here are two more wrinkles:

n A developer, depending on finances and the market, might take anywhere from several months to 20 years to completely build a project approved in a preliminary plat.

Or a project might be canceled - sometimes not even making it to the final plat stage.

n Kalispell's unofficial pattern has been to approve preliminary plats as long as they met the city's conditions.

That has led to a survival-of-the-fittest race among northern Kalispell's developers.

The fastest ones to get to the final plat stage -meaning they are ready to build -are the first in line to get the Grandview station's unused capacity. The slower developers will have to wait until a new sewer line gets built.

Consequently, a stalled project with a preliminary plat could fall behind a younger faster-moving project in hooking up to the city's sewers.

Ironically, Silverbrook's latest preliminary plat application might squeeze out Glacier Town Center's ability to use the Grandview lift station under the city's interpretation of the state's Feb. 4 letter.

Silverbrook needs Glacier Town Center to hook up with the major sewer line that Mann extended from West Reserve Drive to Church Drive for Mann to begin to recoup his investment on that line.

City officials and the council like the survival-of-the-fittest approach. And they are unsure whether the state's Feb. 4 letter forbids that philosophy.

So city officials plan to set up a meeting with the Department of Environmental Quality to discuss the matter.

One potential solution is for the state and city to sign an agreement that would require the west-side main sewer line to be built after enough new north Kalispell houses are actually built to bring usage of the Grandview station up to a specific percentage, said Rachel Clark, engineering section supervisor for DEQ's public water and subdivisions bureau.

On Tuesday, the council delayed action on the Silverbrook Estates preliminary plat until at least March 16 -hoping to hash out the issue with the state by then.

Interim City Manager Myrt Webb said: "Until we know what's going on, we shouldn't make any more commitments."

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com