Town still searching for sewer plant solution

The Cathlamet town council is still searching for a way to upgrade the town's waste water treatment plant.

The council had been planning to replace old treatment ponds along the Columbia with a new plant on a hill along SR 4, but inflation has pushed the cost of that plant to a point that sewer bills would be over $100 a month.

The council has asked consulting engineers from Gray & Osborne (G&O), Inc., about the feasibility of upgrading the existing sewer lagoons, which were built in the early 1960's.

The town needs to negotiate with the state Department of Ecology,G&O engineer Ken Alexander told the council at their monthly meeting last Monday.

The engineers had made an estimate for upgrading the lagoons several years ago, but that cost would be much higher today, Alexander said.

For example, the lagoons presently remove 65 percent of the solids going into them. Under new regulations, the lagoons will have to remove 85 percent of the solids.

An upgrade of the lagoons may provide capacity for more customers on the sewage system, but not enough to generate the significant revenue needed to build a new plant, Alexander said.

The town needs to find out what standards Ecology will require, he added.

"I've handled five or six lagoon upgrades in my career, and Ecology has handled each one differently," he said. "We have no way of predicting what they might say."

Alexander noted that the current treatment plant "continues to violate its existing permit and that the upgrades will involve more stringent limits than what you currently operate under."

The council and Alexander agreed that they would set up a meeting with Ecology officials to discuss the possible requirements and the possiblity of using grant funds awarded for a new plant for upgrading the present plant instead.

In other business Monday:

--The town should be ready to go to bid on two water main projects in August, said Ken Alexander of G&O. Work would occur along Columbia Street and SR 4 in Rosedale.

--The council awarded a bid for a structural review and remediation design for the Old Fire Hall Building to Kramer Gehlen Associates of Vancouver. The firm bid $16,000 for the work; Gray and Osborne bid $16,750.

--The council agreed to allow the Lower Columbia Economic Development Council to take the lead in researching existing wind speed studies before contacting a firm for a proposal to install an anemometer on town timber land on Bradley Mountain to gather wind speed data for a possible wind farm.

--The council rejected a proposal from the mayor to contract with Jerry DeBriae Logging for burning slash on the waste water treatment plant site.