Town wastewater treatment plant needs major upgrades

Its construction nearly a half century ago helped transform La Conner from what former Town Councilman Michael Hood once termed a “stubborn stagnation” into a bustling, popular destination whose residents are envied by the many visitors who descend here from around the globe.

Now, as it approaches late middle age, the La Conner wastewater treatment plant is in line for a major makeover within the next decade.

“This is nothing new,” Mayor Ramon Hayes said of mandated and age-necessitated plant upgrades for which Town officials have been bracing. “We’ve known this was coming for quite some time.”

Even so, financing those upgrades will likely require more local heavy lifting than when the plant was built in the mid-1970s. At that time, said longtime treatment plant superintendent Kelly Wynn, the federal Clean Water Act covered 90 per cent of construction costs.

This time around, roughly covering the next 10 years, the Town anticipates a minimum $20 million plant improvements price tag.

Federal grants requiring just 10 per cent local matches – a 1970s incentive – are few and far between these days, Hayes lamented.

He and other Town officials are hopeful Congress will pass a major new national infrastructure bill, negotiations for which have been under way in Washington, D.C. since spring and that La Conner would be in line for a share of those funds if they are approved.

“This should be the Town’s priority,” Hayes said. “You can’t have a first-rate community with a third-rate infrastructure.”

Despite its costs, the pending round of plant improvements promises to be far less controversial than its original construction, which required that Town streets be torn up to lay new sewer lines.

It wasn’t just the temporary inconvenience of driving on gravel and sand-filled streets or having to navigate over bumpy culverts to enter and back out of driveways that fueled initial opposition. Long-range concerns were voiced as well.

“Opposition rose from those who feared life would change forever in La Conner as a result of the plant’s construction,” Hood wrote in his popular essay, “A Thumbnail History of La Conner.”

Ultimately, those in favor of the treatment plant won out and an aging septic system was replaced. No longer could residents near the waterfront watch their toilet paper flush into Swinomish Channel. Gone, too, was the network of meandering ditches that dotted the town and often filled with waste overflow.

As many predicted, a wave of commercial and residential investment followed. Property values increased, but so, too, did the cost of living.

“Development of La Conner’s present tourist-driven, service-based economy began in earnest,” Hood noted. “Sleepy, backwater, bohemian La Conner started to reawaken to 20th century realities.”

In addition to the Town of La Conner, the plant serves Swinomish Village, the Port of Skagit’s La Conner Marina and the Hope Island residential area. It receives wastewater through its collection system, septage delivered by haulers and biosolids trucked in from other treatment plants.

Over time, under Wynn’s direction, the La Conner plant has evolved into a model within the wastewater treatment industry, most notably via its conversion of biosolids – nutrient-rich sewage sludge that can be used as soil conditioner – into a valued revenue source.

According to Erik Gunn, writing in the contracting’s industry Dig Different, biosolids from the La Conner plant were originally sent to Eastern Washington for application on farmland there. After ferries began delivering San Juan Islands waste to the La Conner plant, enough biosolids were on site to create compost – a much in demand product among large-scale commercial users.

“Nobody much wants to deal with septage, but for us it works and it’s cheap,” Wynn said during a plant tour last year. “Our capacity allows us to receive and compost.”

Hayes would like nothing better than for the plant to be on the receiving end of federal funding as well.

“I’m hopeful the infrastructure bill will go through,” Hayes said, “and that we can be in on it.”