PORT ANGELES — The City Council will have to wait another two weeks before completing the purchase of nearly 12 acres of the former Rayonier mill site and a large storage tank on the waterfront property.
The Port Angeles City Council was expected to ratify the $995,000 purchase agreement Tuesday, but that changed when Rayonier Inc. notified the city that day that it was going to propose a few “minor changes,” said City Attorney Bill Bloor.
Bloor said he didn’t know what those changes would involve. He said he expects to receive them this week.
If the city doesn’t object to them, the agreement will be brought back to the council at its Oct. 19 meeting to be ratified, Bloor said. The meeting will be at 6 p.m. in City Hall, 321 E. Fifth St.
The city will use the 5-million-gallon tank, which sits on the 11.86 acres the city would purchase, to temporarily store untreated sewage and storm water that would otherwise overflow into Port Angeles Harbor during heavy rain.
The rest of the land will be used to connect the tank to the sewer system and the wastewater treatment plant located adjacent to the property.
The land purchase also gives the treatment plan room for expansion.
State mandate
The move keeps the city on track to comply with a mandate from the state Department of Ecology that it reduce the number of sewage overflows from the present 30 to 100 annually to no more than four per year on average by 2016.
About 32 million gallons of untreated effluent is dumped into the harbor each year.
The overflows occur because some of the city’s sewer lines, mostly those constructed before 1960, also carry storm water.
Those pipes aren’t large enough to always handle the influx of storm water.
The city is using low-interest loans from the state to purchase the land and pay for the rest of the sewer overflow project, estimated at about $40 million.
Wastewater fee
The loans are being repaid through a wastewater fee that has been charged to all utility customers since 2005.
The fee started at $2 per month, and each year, it increases by another $2 plus inflation.
With that plan, city staff say, the fee can remain flat after 2015, and the loans will be fully paid after another 20 years.
Next year, the fee is proposed to be $14.95 per month, an increase of $2.65.
It’s projected to reach $26.50 per month in 2015.
Under the terms already agreed upon in the purchase agreement for the land and the tank, Rayonier would still pay for the environmental cleanup of the property.
The city has planned to acquire the tank since 2006.
It formed the Harbor-Works Development Authority, with support from the Port of Port Angeles, in May 2008 to accomplish that goal and direct the redevelopment of the entire 75-acre mill site.
When it became clear that the public development authority would not reach a purchase agreement with Rayonier last summer, the city began negotiating for a section of land and the tank.
The city has said it could make the acquisition through eminent domain if negotiations failed.
City staff said eminent domain wasn’t its first choice because that could result in a legal challenge from Rayonier.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.