PORT ANGELES — Clallam County commissioners will wait awhile before endorsing a Sequim city plan to extend sewers to Carlsborg, Sequim Bay State Park and the Jamestown S’Klallam reservation.
The city’s letter proposing the project to the federal government promised more than it might deliver, the county lawmakers decided Monday.
They’ll postpone their approval while planners obtain details from the city, state and tribe.
A week ago, Sequim officials got support from the Port of Port Angeles, whose John Wayne Marina would be served by the extended sewer system.
The $20 million project will cost the Port nothing if federal funds are secured to build it, they told Port commissioners.
“(U.S. Rep.) Norm Dicks said that if we brought a big project back to him, he’d make it happen,” Sequim City Manager Bill Elliott told them.
County commissioners, however, thought it wouldn’t be so simple.
Specifically, they questioned the claim that the project would recharge groundwater in the Dungeness watershed. Septic systems do so, but sewers remove waste water to a treatment plant.