Board steps towards mandatory hookups

SEELEY LAKE –The Seeley Lake Sewer District unveiled a resolution to mandate properties within the District to connect to the sewer as it is built at its July 18 board meeting.

Board President Pat Goodover read the resolution at the meeting stating that the District’s attorney Jon Beal made edits to the version Goodover received just a half hour ahead of the meeting. The printed copies were already outdated.

It took Goodover more than 13 minutes to read it in its entirety with the bulk of it explaining the reasons why the Board needed to move the sewer project forward and why mandating connections is in the benefit of the entire district and public at large.

• The District was established in 1992 for the purpose of determining if a sewer system is needed in all or part of the District and if so to construct and maintain a sewer system.

• The Board has the authority to levy assessments in order to construct the system and the Board used that to authority to do so. A protest of these assessments fell short of the 50 percent threshold.

• The Board must follow its own resolutions to move forward with constructing the proposed sewer system and preserve the funding package.

• The District currently has $9.8 million in grants for the treatment plant and Phase 1 of the collection system which may be lost if the Board is prevented from moving forward.

• State law prohibits pollution exceeding surface and groundwater standards.

• Elevated nitrate levels in the groundwater has caused the Missoula County Health Department to create a special management area in Seeley Lake.

• The Health Department has stated that the proposed sewer would clean up the nitrate problem however to maximize the effect all properties in the District should be connected.

• State law gives the District the authority to adopt rules and regulations establishing which properties must connect to the proposed system.

The resolution goes on to state that all properties must be connected to the system for the best interest of all the landowners, residents and public at large.

Three exceptions to the mandated connections were given: Properties that have installed level two nitrogen reducing septic systems within the last five years; properties that are unbuildable; and vacant but buildable lot landowners can request that the mandated connection is only a stub out to the property. Any property with an exception granted will be responsible for paying for their connection at a later date.

District Manager Jean Curtiss said that mandatory connections are common across the state.

The District plans to mail the resolution out to all the landowners in the District July 24 and will consider taking action on it at the next month’s Board meeting.

In other business:

Operating and Maintenance Budget: Curtiss has created an O&M budget that splits the cost into two categories.

The first category would be the benefited property charge that would include mostly the Board’s costs such as secretarial, bookkeeping, insurance, legal and the District Manager’s cost. This would be charged to all lots across all phases regardless if they were connected or not. This part of the proposed budget is just over $60,000 and works out to approximately $10 per month.

Curtiss said they may be able to lump the District Manager’s expense into the construction cost to reduce the cost but she needed to check on it.

The other category would be the actual operation of the system at $227,508 per year. The first couple of years would be subsidized by money granted from Missoula County and the District’s reserve. Curtiss said the subsidies were only planned for a few years so that more of the District could be constructed and other ideas like the resort tax and other community funding could be secured.

Curtiss presented that taking $75,000 off in subsidies and sharing the cost between 150 connected lots in Phase 1 would result in a monthly bill of $84.73 per month on top of approximately $54 per month in debt service and the benefited property charge.

The District is pushing to have Phase 2 constructed at the same time as Phase 1 in order to include more users. If an additional 130 lots were connected in Phase 2 it would drop the price down to a subsidized rate of $46.88 per month plus the debt service.

Another factor that will change the rate is the District plans to use some kind of usage volume rate so businesses that use a lot of water would pay a larger share. That has not been laid out yet.

It is unclear if the mandatory connection resolution will require vacant lots to pay towards the operation of the system or just the benefited property charge.

Phase 2 design: The Board voted to sign a contract with Great West Engineering to do preliminary design for Phase 2 of the collection system. Curtiss explained that the design would allow them to create the estimates that are needed before a notice and protest could be done. She hopes to have the Phase 2 ready to bid by March of 2020.

District Manager Contract: The Board voted to extend Curtiss’s contract as District Manager indefinitely until her services are no longer needed.

Legal update: Beal said there is nothing new to report on the lawsuit filed against the District and Missoula County by Seeley Lake resident Don Larson and several other landowners and renters. The District has moved to dismiss the lawsuit and it is in the hands of Judge Karen Townsend.

Beal said that Townsend is planning to retire in August. It is not known how her retirement will impact when a decision might come.

Other questions and answers from the meeting:

Why hasn’t the Health Department performed groundwater tests on any additional wells other than those installed by the Sewer District? Missoula County Sanitarian Jim Erven agreed that he would love to have more data but he doesn’t. He explained that the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology study and the three wells that the District has been following show a clear widespread nitrate problem in the groundwater due to septic systems.

Erven said there has been discussion of installing more monitoring wells, however, they are waiting to see if the sewer project moves forward. If the sewer project moves forward, there is no need to install more wells. If not, then more test wells may be considered.

What would Missoula County do if the Board decided to pull the plug on this system? Erven replied that both the Missoula County Board of Health and Montana Department of Environmental Quality have the responsibility and the authority to require corrective measures to address the groundwater pollution. Erven said it would be up to those agencies to decide what action but he felt that doing nothing was not going to be an option.

Goodover said that if this system wasn’t built with the grant funding that was available he felt the same system would be forced on Seeley Lake without grants and would cost significantly more.

Why can’t the entire valley be assessed to pay for this project? Montana Code Annotated (MCA) 7-13-2280 specifies that only properties benefited by an improvement can be assessed for the improvement.

Curtiss said a community forum is being planned for this fall to discuss implementing a resort tax to help offset the cost of the sewer. A resort tax is one way to get people from outside the District to help pay for the system.

Why has the county approved a subdivision using septic systems right across the street from the Sewer District? Erven said the subdivision, Alpine Trails, did get approximately 30 lots approved with conventional septic systems. The developer hired an environmental consulting firm and was able to show through environmental calculations that the nitrogen from those systems would not impact the areas with known contamination. Erven said it took the developer three years and a ton of data to go through the process of gaining approval for those systems.

The next meeting is scheduled for Aug. 15 at 5:15 p.m. at the Seeley Lake Community Hall. The meeting will recess at 6 p.m. for a hearing on the annual assessments. As always, the public is welcome at both the meeting and the hearing.