By Brian Mittge, The Chronicle, 7/11/2001
Centralia city councilors, with only slightly cold feet, voted unanimously Tuesday night to accept a $27 million zero-interest loan for the city's new wastewater treatment plant.
''Are we sure we want to do this?'' Councilor Ted Shannon asked, jokingly.
After years of environmental and financial negotiating with the Washington Department of Ecology, councilors were very sure.
The loan will pay for most of the estimated $35 million cost of the new sewage treatment plant, which includes around $8 million to carry waste to its location on Fords Prairie.
Both Centralia and Chehalis are under the authority of a legally binding consent decree, signed early last year with the DOE, to remedy dissolved oxygen deficiencies in the Chehalis River.
Centralia's solution is to replace its aging, at-capacity Mellen Street wastewater treatment plant with a new complex several miles northwest of the city.
Construction must be completed by 2008, but Centralia, with plans already being formed, is scheduled to have a new plant long before the deadline.
Councilors voted in April to increase city sewer rates in advance to help build up reserves to make the $112,500 monthly payments on the loan, due starting in 2005.
The city of Chehalis also has plans to build a new wastewater treatment plant. It hopes to obtain help from the state.
Chehalis officials applied earlier this month for a $1 million low-interest loan to help design the new plant and to purchase land for the new facility.
Wastewater Superintendent Patrick Wiltzius said he hopes to know within a few weeks if the city will receive the loan.
Predesign work, including land acquisition, is expected to cost $9 million.
The city is negotiating to purchase a plot of land, but if the deal falls through, the current plant location west of the city would house the new $30 million plant, said Wiltzius.
A new plot of land would be best, Wiltzius said, because it would be complex and costly to run the old plant while building a new one in the same location.
Chehalis must also have a new plant finished by 2008. Officials hope to get under way with construction by 2004.
The city still plans to take its water from the river during the summer and other low-flow periods, because the effluent would harm the water quality in the river, according to studies by the Department of Ecology.
The DOE has approved city plans to water a grove of hybrid poplar trees with the treated wastewater effluent.
---
Brian Mittge covers local government for The Chronicle. He may be reached by e-mail at bmittge@chronline.com, or by telephoning 807-8237.
This page created and maintained by Chehalis River Council
Send comments or questions to the: Chehalis River Council