Council ponders water grant offer

The Cathlamet town council met yesterday morning as The Eagle went to press to decide weather or not to accept state funding for construction of new mains and pump stations for a new sewage treatment plant.

Also on the agenda of the meeting, at 11 a.m. Wednesday, was the scheduled second and third readings of revisions to the ordinance establishing the town's timber fund cumulative reserve.

The council intends to amend the ordinance to allow council members to appropriate, by a two-thirds majority vote, timber reserve funds to any use not specified in the ordinance.

The amendments would set the stage for the council to vote at its May 18 meeting on a proposal to appropriate $50,000 to the Wahkiakum Family Practice Clinic.

The ultimate monthly rate needed to finance a new waste water treatment plant may sway council members to reject a state grant to construct mains and lift stations to connect with the proposed new wastewater treatment plant.

Last year the council purchased land from the Wahkiakum School District for the proposed new plant. The new lines would connect the site with the existing sewer system.

However, council members reported Monday that applications for state and federal funds to help with the cost of construction haven't yielded as much money as they'd like.

"You're looking at a $100 monthly bill to pay for the plant," said Ken Alexander, consulting engineer from the firm Gray and Osborne, Inc.

The proposed new plant would have a lifetime of 20 or more years but cost as much as $13 million.

An alternative would be to line and make other improvements to the existing sewer lagoons, said town Public Works Superintendent David Vik. That would be less expensive, but it wouldn't be the long term plan favored by the Department of Ecology.

Vik said Monday that Ecology officials would be visiting the existing plant on Tuesday, so council members said they would raise the issues with them then so they could make a decision on whether or not to accept the funds on Wednesday. The deadline for notifying the department is May 4.