SEQUIM — The industrial promise of Carlsborg is about to be realized, according to the county public works director, who mapped out a timeline for the $14 million Carlsborg sewer project.
A contract for the project — planned since the late 1980s — is expected to be awarded in September, with project completion planned for the end of 2016, Public Works Director Bob Martin told county commissioners at their meeting Monday.
The contract award is a seminal step in the development of the only industrial area in Clallam County outside the cities of Port Angeles, Sequim and Forks.
The system will serve about two-thirds of Carlsborg’s urban growth area that consists of all the industrial and commercial land and some of the residential area, Martin said Tuesday.
“The idea is some years down the road. Once additional funding materializes, there will be another phase,” Martin said Tuesday.
“The hope is that having urban service available within a rural area will stimulate more development.”
Septic systems
The project also eliminates the need for drainfield and septic systems that, along with other practices such as overfertilization, can foul the groundwater with nitrates.
“The trend is upward, and at some point, it becomes a serious concern,” Martin said Tuesday in an interview.
“If nitrates are going up, there could be other things as well.”
Cost to residents
During construction, it will cost Carlsborg-area residents $500 to connect to the system.
“While we have a contractor building the system, it makes it easy for us,” Martin said.
Two years after the project is completed, all new developments — any building with plumbing and sewage — will have to connect with the sewer at a cost of about $8,000 — “in the same ballpark” as Sequim and Port Angeles residents, Martin said.
At the outset, there will be about 80 buildings or 180 equivalent-residential-unit connections — a measure of sewage usage — with a capacity of up to 5,000 connections by 2090, Martin said, anticipating population growth at 2.15 percent a year.
Martin said that Greywolf Elementary School and Sunny Farms Country Store, for example, will be connected to the system.
Construction will cost $11 million, including $1.2 million in contingency funds.
The county already has paid another $1.3 million to the city of Sequim for sewage capacity at the city’s treatment plant.
The rest consists mostly of costs related to permitting and engineering, which Martin said Monday is 90 percent complete.
“We are going to end up with a well-thought-out project,” Martin told the board.
Funding
Funding consists of a $10 million loan from the state Public Works Trust Fund and a county match of $4.5 million of Opportunity Fund money generated by the state’s annual return of a portion of county sales tax proceeds.
The Trust Fund loan will be paid back at 0.25 percent interest if the project is completed by May 2017 and 0.50 percent interest if completed after 2017.
Martin said Trust Fund loan officials had been concerned about completion of the project given the commissioners’ ongoing impasse with county Treasurer Selinda Barkhuis.
The dispute is over spending authority for Opportunity Fund money that had been dedicated to the project.
“None of what’s being talked about with these grants will have any consequence with our ability to build the sewer system,” Martin said Tuesday.
The project consists of 17,000 feet — 3.2 miles — of underground sewer collection pipe and 15,000 feet of underground pressure sewer lines.
The line will stretch from the pump station at the intersection of the Olympic Discovery Trail and Carlsborg Road to the nearest portion of the sewer system in Sequim.
A conditional-use permit also will be required for construction of the pump station, which will be located in an Olympic Discovery Trail right of way.
A report in the late 1980s pegged the project cost at $20 million, “so it never materialized,” Martin said Tuesday.
“It was all about funding and where to come up with the funding to do it,” he said.
“I don’t think much happened until we were successful in getting this $10 million loan.”
The loan was initially awarded to the Clallam County Public Utility District, which decided not to do the project.
Martin said further sewer extensions in the UGA will depend on the availability of additional loans and the pace of development.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.