Clearwater RV Dump Site to remain closed

SEELEY LAKE - Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) Missoula Region Supervisor Randy Arnold advised the Seeley Lake Community Council at their April 11 meeting that the RV Dump Station at Clearwater Junction won’t be operational again this year.

The RV Dump Station has been managed by FWP for close to 20 years, Arnold said. Several years ago, issues began to develop with the dump station pump. The pump is an effluent pump which moves waste from the holding tanks to the drain field.

“With some challenges to those pumps, we had, a number of times, went in to fix them and made repairs to the pumps [and] intermittent stuff that happens,” Arnold said. “At some point, we determined that the best course of action, to continue to use the RV dump station, was to replace the pumps.”

In looking to replace the pumps it was discovered that the cast iron infrastructure was failing, Arnold said. Finding people to replace the pumps without first fixing the cast iron was not possible.

“The sheer liability of somebody going in to replace the pump just to have all of the cast iron infrastructure fail, left no one willing to actually go and replace a pump,” Arnold stated.

State design and construction engineers visited the site and determined for a short period of time to run on one pump, Arnold said. It quickly became apparent that additional work at the site was necessary.

“I’ve jokingly referred to this among my staff is not unlike what you bump into when you’re doing a home improvement project,” said Arnold. “It’s been a little like that for us on this RV dump station as we go to look at the infrastructure that’s in place. Clearly, it’s the same time that we would want to fix some of the way the holding tanks are situated and some of the other infrastructure. Our engineers came and gave an initial estimate of what would be required to change out the cast iron and get the new pumps in place. A 2019 estimate was north of $225,000.”

Arnold said part of the proposal includes modifications to allow two RVs to dump at the same time as it was prior to Department of Transportation modifications at the rest area. The agency saw with only one pump station available on peak use days, RVs started to block normal traffic flow.

The thought was if FWP went through the effort of replacing some of that the dump site infrastructure, it would be a really good time to redesign the site. Arnold said. This wouldn’t require more than a modest redesign, to enable to RVs to be side by side. The figure presented pushed close to $300,000 as an estimate in 2019.

Flash forward through COVID to now, with other infrastructure development and hiring contractors and getting scopes of work out for competitive bid processes.

“We’re just ballparking right now that we’re conceivably as much as $400,000, if not over for this project,” Arnold said adding that amount would require legislative approval. “I’m in conversations with our director’s office talking about the possibility of proposing a legislative ask for the authority to be able to build or repair of the site in an infrastructure bill, which would be over our $150,000 threshold. If we got that approval, if we move forward to the legislature to request something like that, would be the 2023 session.”

If approved by the 2023 legislature, then FWP would get their engineers out for a more accurate bid proposal, Arnold added.

Members of the public asked if there was a work around for the interim. Arnold stated, “I think the challenge for us right now is we really do need to replace at least one of those pumps.”

FWP Park Management Specialist Loren Flynn added, “The last word I got, and this is fairly recent from our design and construction folks, they are highly skeptical that the inner workings of the guts of that thing are viable at this point.”

The other part of the equation is that in 2019 estimates for replacing one pump was $80,000, Flynn said. Move forward to 2022 pricing and I am not sure we have the money within the FWP to do that.

Flynn also advised the council FWP currently has about $5 million in deferred maintenance projects. “Certainly, this one is top of the mind,” Flynn said. “But it does kind of have to play into our overall regional needs for infrastructure and deferred maintenance.”

Tom Browder, Council secretary, presented a community question, “We know we’re getting illegal dumping from our RVs, probably even in your facilities. What’s your short-term plan to mitigate that?”

Arnold responded that potentially education and outreach as well as enforcement support.

“I’m not sure that we’re quite in a position to suggest the RV station at Clearwater Junction was an essential or critical piece to anybody recreating in the Blackfoot,” Arnold said. “Those same users with holding tanks are traveling from somewhere to somewhere. I understand there is a dump station at Seeley Lake, although that isn’t something that we can solely depend on. Then there’s a dump station north, I think, [at] Holland. Otherwise, users come to Missoula or some other point.”

Flynn added that outreach would involve other partners since there are also Forest Service Campgrounds along the route and Bureau of Land Management is another key partner.

“It has to be group effort, if we’re going to reach enough people to actually make a difference” Flynn said. “We can certainly come up with a strategy for that.”

Another community suggestion was to use the dump and have it pumped like a port-a-potty. Arnold pointed out there are still infrastructure problems from where the hose connects to the tank itself.

Flynn said it has been considered but the contractor used for pumping the port-a-potties is unwilling to do that.

“We can probably have that conversation again and see if it’s a different answer,” Flynn said. “What I recall is our contractor was unwilling to do that, partly because of the condition of the tanks themselves.”

When asked if another contractor could be used, Flynn said the state bids out these things and there is a contractor in place.

In other business, Seeley Lake District Ranger Quinn Carver reported issues with people getting stuck trying to use the groomed snowmobile trails as people see the snow melting off. The road to Morrell Falls is a particularly hard-hit area.

“We put a class three closure down at the bottom of Morrell Falls,” Carver said. “It only took 24 hours before somebody turned it around and messed it up.”

Carver suggested the agency may add gates in some targeted areas in the spring to keep people from getting stuck and having to be pulled out and receive a ticket. This would be a future item up for more discussion.

“We’ve got millions invested in these roads,” Carver said.

Carver also reported the District will have a couple of new hires in the coming months to fill out the recreation department. Fire crews are on site and currently working to remove hazard trees from the campgrounds. The District will be planting wind firm trees, such as larch and ponderosa pine this spring in Big Larch, Lake Alva Campground and on the District compound to fill in trees taken down.

The recording of the meeting is available on the Council’s Facebook page. The next Seeley Lake Community Council meeting will be held May 9 at 6 p.m.