SEQUIM — The name bears no glamour, but community groups clamor for a piece of it: Sequim’s Water Reuse Demonstration Site, a nearly 28-acre swath north of Carrie Blake Park at 202 N. Blake Ave., is a object of desire for Sequim Family Advocates, a grass-roots group of parents who want playfields added; for the Clallam County Master Gardeners, who want to build a classroom beside their demonstration garden; and the Sequim City Band, which hopes for a 500-seat auditorium added onto the James Center band shell.
And though the Sequim City Council has expressed support for all three ideas, the state Department of Ecology has the final say on whether any will become reality.
On Monday night, Sequim Capital Projects Manager Frank Needham sought to explain all of this to the Sequim City Council — and to Sequim’s new public works director, Ben Rankin. He’s just arrived from Clemson, S.C., where he was the city engineer. Sequim Interim City Manager Linda Herzog hired him in May; on Monday she told the council he’s here to listen, learn and potentially reprioritize his department’s project list in the coming weeks.
The water reuse site, Needham began, is property the city has developed since the mid-1990s with millions in grants from the Department of Ecology.
“The intent was to demonstrate how we could use reclaimed water in a very public way,” so a fishing and model-boating pond, restrooms and stretches of lawn were put in, all with water from the city’s state-funded reclamation plant. Today, the plant produces an average 600,000 gallons of reclaimed water each day, Needham said.
That water can be used for the Master Gardeners’ demo garden, but the proposed classroom building presents problems. Needham said it will bring “impervious surfaces,” concrete or asphalt that contribute to stormwater runoff, a major factor in the pollution of local streams and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The gardeners will have to come forward with “creative solutions,” Needham added, such as putting a green roof — a roof rife with native plants — on the classroom or choosing a building-pad surface that absorbs water before it runs off.
Sequim Family Advocates, a group led by soccer dads Dave Shreffler and Craig Stevenson, has told the council it will raise the money to build playfields at the water reuse site. The city will provide reclaimed water for the fields, Needham said, but the state Department of Health will require that it be chlorinated.
The proposed auditorium at the James Center presents a more complex problem. Ecology officials told Herzog that a 500-seat concert hall, even with added restrooms where reclaimed water would be used, isn’t at all what the state had in mind.
Needham provided some history: After the reuse site was established, then-public works director James Bay was the one who persuaded Ecology to allow a band shell to be built; state officials “thought it was going to be teaching seminars” on water reuse.
In fact, the building, named the James Center, after Bay, is a venue for free concerts throughout the summer. Patsy Mattingley of the Sequim City Band has led a campaign to expand it to include an indoor space, touting the benefits a performing arts center would bring to Sequim.
Herzog, hoping to salvage the expansion idea, suggested a land swap. If Sequim could find a 5-acre parcel elsewhere in town to demonstrate water reuse, she asked, would Ecology allow construction of the concert hall on the original water reuse site?
Needham said it’s still not clear, however, whether Ecology and Sequim can make that idea work; the state could still prohibit the concert hall on the reuse site, forcing Mattingley and her project team to look for another location.
The city must next confer with Mattingley, Needham said, on whether the team wants to move forward with its original plan, move off the water reuse site or scrap the concert hall altogether.
“Let’s hope they go forward,” he said finally. “It’s a great project.”
Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
