The Seeley Lake Sewer Board discussed a model of onsite waste management at a proposed RV park in Seeley Lake, which could serve as a model for the broader community. Quarterly monitoring well data was presented and the Sewer Board approved efforts by Missoula County to monitor nitrate levels monthly.
Continued frustrations regarding the transparency of public process surfaced at a Missoula County Board of Health meeting regarding Seeley Lake’s septic system future on Feb. 15, the same day as the Sewer Board’s meeting. At the county meeting, the health board discussed likely changes over the next year to treatment standards for septic systems in an area of Seeley Lake with higher nitrate levels.
Another wastewater option
Brandon Grosvenor is the president and owner of Lazy Acres RV Park, a park proposed for the south of Seeley Lake. Lazy Acres has been approved by the county planning board and commissioners, and will consist of 70 RV park sites on 14 acres.
Grosvenor said he has preliminary approval from Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality for a discharge permit, which would require the RV park to treat waste to 5-7.5 mL of nitrate for onsite septic systems. The maximum level of nitrate allowed in drinking water in Montana is 10 mg/L.
Grosvenor said he learned about a system called a membrane bioreactor that can be a cheaper way of treating wastewater, and can treat it to lower than the 5-7.5 mL standard.
Cheri Thompson, Seeley Lake Sewer District Board member, had questions regarding cost, and Grosvenor said the system would cost about $95 per month for a household.
Both Shannon Therriault, director of environmental health for Missoula County, and Jesse Alexander, engineer with Water and Environmental Technologies out of Butte, thought it could be a great idea for Seeley Lake.
The Sewer Board decided to discuss the membrane bioreactor proposal at its March 21 meeting at 6 p.m. at The Barn or via Zoom. Visit seeleysewer.org for more information.
Monitoring
Bill Decker, Seeley Lake Sewer District manager, gave an update on the first half of the data from quarterly water monitoring the Sewer District has collected on 14 different wells. Advanced water properties like pH, density, conductivity, hardness, resistivity and nitrate levels were tested in four of the 14 wells, while the rest were tested for nitrate and chlorides.
Decker said three of the four wells with advanced testing looked pretty uniform — one well near ponds on Riverview Drive, a well behind Rovero’s hardware store and a well by an old car wash — while one stood out, the well near Lindey's Prime Steak House, where an RV dump site is located nearby. For the tested water properties, the well near Lindy’s continued to be an outlier.
“There’s something there and I’m not going to say what it is,” Decker said. “The experts are going to review it.”
Missoula County Public Health is offering to help the Sewer District with transducers, or components that can be added to a monitoring well to enable remote monitoring and to record water level and pressure in groundwater.
Therriault said the county was prepared to survey and monitor 10 transducers. The county public health department also wants to take monthly nitrate samples from the established wells and pay for that sampling, aiming to get a better picture of how groundwater is flowing. This nitrate monitoring would happen for a year.
The transducers would likely be placed in wells where higher nitrate readings have been recorded, and the data gathered could provide more insight on how groundwater is moving, and why nitrate readings can be inconsistent, Therriault said. Data would be shared with the Sewer District, or anyone interested.
At the Feb. 15 Seeley Lake Sewer District meeting, Therriault said the county could put the transducers in the wells as early as next week.
Monthly nitrate sampling could help show patterns of seasonality, or other markers that might explain confusing groundwater data, Jeanna Miller, environmental health supervisor with Missoula County, said.
“If we had more granular data that kind of showed some of that inconsistency, the jumpiness in the nitrate readings, we could put it all together in a way that was more useful,” Miller said.
The Sewer Board approved moving ahead with the 10 transducers and letting the county conduct the monthly nitrate sampling.
Policies and regulations
Groundwater monitoring was key to another part of both meetings.
Miller gave an explanation about the county health department’s standards around permitting septic systems and when and why the way the health department reviews septic permits changes.
Miller also gave this presentation to the Missoula County Board of Health at its meeting earlier in the day on Feb. 15, where public comment from Seeley Lake resident Nathan Bourne centered on frustrations that the county was making changes to the process without public input, a sentiment shared by other Seeley Lake residents.
The state water quality act, which reflects the national Clean Water Act, limits the health department on its ability to authorize or approve actions that would degrade groundwater. In 2013, the health department created a policy regarding boundaries on the limits of groundwater degradation, which Miller said is the same boundary used today that is also in the county health code.
In 2015, the health department established that sanitarians must consider all new nitrate data before issuing a septic permit, and now, there is a bunch of new nitrate data available to the Sewer Board and the board of health, Miller said.
With new data, Miller said the county sanitarian and hydrogeologist got together last year to talk about state laws and the health code and decided that any new septic systems in Seeley Lake’s Special Management District — an area identified as needing higher standards for septic system treatment due to data demonstrating higher nitrate concentrations in monitoring wells — would have to be a level two septic system, one that can keep nitrate discharge at less than 10 mg/L. These septic systems — SepticNet being a common one — can be four times more expensive than a conventional replacement.
The decision to require more advanced treatment for new septic systems was made in December, but softened within a week to allow for conventional replacement systems.
Part of Bourne’s concerns centered on the fact that, as a Special Management Area property owner, he is now required to upgrade to a SepticNet system for new development, something he wouldn’t have had to do before the December decision, which he said happened before the guidelines were officially changed and without adequate public input.
Miller said the protocols and their previous versions aren’t rule changes, but evolutions as new data has been gathered.
“What we have for permitting guidelines that we sent out to interested parties didn't do anything to change the 2015 health code rules,” Miller said. “We have to interpret and operationalize laws and rules all the time. We do that to be efficient and fair and consistent.”
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