SOME HOPES FOR a happier New Year rest on the down economy.
“Right now [infrastructure projects] are costing less because there’s less work available [for contractors],” Clallam County Senior Planner Carol Creasey said Wednesday at the Old Mill Cafe in Carlsborg.
Those lower construction costs could open the way to providing some long-needed infrastructure — if regulatory blockages can be cleared.
Costs were the primary factor that delayed sanitary sewer systems for Clallam’s Carlsborg, Jefferson County’s Port Hadlock/Irondale and Kitsap County’s Belfair urban growth areas–known as UGAs.
When sewer projects lagged, growth opponents appealed and the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board ruled the UGAs invalid due to lack of urban infrastructure.
The 2005 ruling against the Port Hadlock/Irondale UGA is slated for a Hearings Board hearing Jan. 5 to determine whether the implementing ordinance Jefferson County commissioners adopted Nov. 9, 2009, resolves the invalidity.
No actual sewers have been constructed, but an interim design has been achieved and grants have been obtained to partially fund phase one.
Kitsap is also close to resolving its Belfair issue, said Creasey, as she explained Clallam’s efforts to restore the Carlsborg UGA, which was ruled invalid in 2008.
In June 2009, Clallam County Superior Court Judge Ken Williams reversed the Hearings Board decision regarding the Carlsborg UGA, but the challengers appealed to the state Court of Appeals, which may rule later this year.
The case could then be appealed to the State Supreme Court.
In the meantime, Clallam County must try to comply with the 2008 Hearings Board decision.
Ironically, the state law doesn’t provide for communities such as Carlsborg, Port Hadlock, Irondale and Belfair, which all predate the 1990 Growth Management Act by as much as a century.
Invalidity doesn’t even preserve their status quo.
It labels all existing commercial activity and small-lot residential developments “noncompliant,” and renders difficult or impossible most new development, expansion and even some repairs, Creasey said.
While the Growth Management Act may deserve some credit for focusing attention on the very serious need for sewers in these unincorporated communities, appeals and rulings have inflated costs and delayed solutions.
“Clallam County has already spent about $500,000 on this project,” Creasey estimated.
The county now needs to complete biological, hydrological and cultural resources assessments, which must be submitted to the state departments of Ecology and Health and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, she said.
Meanwhile in Carlsborg, tiny pre-World War II mill houses share quarter-acre lots with corroding metal septic tanks, and nitrate levels rise in adjacent water wells.
Clallam Public Utility District 1 operates a water system serving part of the UGA, but it can expand only as it acquires more water rights, mostly from private wells being capped, said Jeff Beaman, assistant water superintendent.
Sewers won’t create more sprawl, noted Tom Miller, who is also with the PUD.
State law restricts sewer service to within UGAs — a tight 560 acres in Carlsborg’s case — and economics will restrict it further, to initially serve only where it’s wanted and most needed.
Vocal public support is the key to moving the project ahead, Beaman, Miller and Creasey said, but the first thing people ask is how much it will cost them.
Grant funding is essential to achieve affordable hookup costs, they said, pegging the current cost of a sewer and water reuse system for Carlsborg at $15 million.
People with working septic systems won’t be required to hook up, but may find it a better and more affordable option when their septic eventually fails.
The congressional delegation (U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, Sen. Maria Cantwell and Rep. Norm Dicks) and state 24th District legislators (Rep. Lynn Kessler and Rep. Kevin Van De Wege) have voiced support contingent on strong local support.
Every person who shops within the UGA has an interest, whether they realize it or not, agreed Sunny Farms owner Roger Schmidt and Old Mill Cafe owners Larry and Val Culp.
They hope a flood of letters and petitions will get sewers flowing before construction costs rebound.
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Martha Ireland was a Clallam County commissioner from 1996 through 1999 and is the secretary of the Republican Women of Clallam County.
She and her husband, Dale, live on a Carlsborg-area farm. Her column appears Fridays.
E-mail her at irelands@olypen.com.