Board discusses water testing and budget

SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake Sewer District Board continued to hone a water testing regiment for the lake and began discussing next year’s budget at their March 17 meeting.

Over the last several months the Board has been discussing with Clearwater Resource Council (CRC) how to do water testing to assess the human impact on Seeley Lake. The Board amended their budget in November to allocate $5,515 for environmental DNA (eDNA) testing but learned last month that it would not be enough for a year.

This month CRC came back with another testing proposal that would not only show if the source of contamination was human, it would separate out deer, geese, dogs and “other.” CRC’s Executive Director Caryn Miske explained that if “other” was a significant source, contamination is coming from a source that has not been considered yet.

Miske proposed testing at four sites on the lake including two sites in the south by development, one in the north and then one from deep mid-lake where they expect to find little contamination for a control. She recommended they start in June and follow up with two or three more samplings and forgo testing in the winter.

The cost of this new recommended testing is significantly more with each sample costing $800 instead of $300. CRC also plans to do E. Coli testing but the District would not need to fund that.

President Tom Morris pointed out that their budget of $5,515 would be exhausted very quickly with four sample sites at $800 each. He questioned if the previously proposed eDNA testing was not going to separate out human sources from natural sources.

Miske said the $300 tests would do that but she felt the extra expense was worth it to provide more meaningful data by separating out the sources.

Director Cheri Thompson suggested they do cheaper tests to determine where pollution was highest and then invest in the more expensive testing to determine where it was coming from.

Miske said they could watch the E. coli tests and make adjustment to the locations if needed.

The Board voted to do the less expensive eDNA testing in May followed by the more expensive testing in June. The Board can then consider if they want to budget more money for continuing the testing in the next fiscal year that starts July 1.

The Board started discussing their fiscal year 2023 budget. Several items in the current year’s budget did not cost as much as budgeted leaving a healthy amount in the reserve. Other items like the budget for drilling new test wells hasn’t been spent but the Board still plans to use it.

After hammering out a basic budget for each line item, the Board discussed if they could spend money from the reserve and not charge as much to the taxpayers. Morris pointed out there might be enough in the reserves to operate for a year without charging the taxpayers anything this year.

Manager Bill Decker said having money in the reserve is not wasting it because it could help pay for a project in the future or matching grants.

The Board will continue the budget discussion next month.

In other business, a member of the public asked if the Board could get back to doing in-person meetings. The Board said they would research where they could have the meetings with access to Wi-Fi so they could offer both online and in-person. They could go to in person meetings as early as May.

The next Board meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m., Thursday, April 21. The agenda and information on how to participate will be posted on the District’s website seeleysewer.org