BLYN — A humble wastewater main line could pour revenue into the coffers of both the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe and the city of Sequim.
Building the 6.5-mile-long pipe may pump new life into the tribe’s dream of a resort near 7 Cedars Casino and drain off some of the city’s excess sewage-treatment capacity.
The project will cost the tribe $8.3 million, according to the city.
The resort was estimated to cost $7.5 million in 2010, when the tribe temporarily shelved the idea.
“We’re planting the infrastructure plan necessary for the resort that’s absolutely essential to the development,” said Jerry Allen, chief executive officer of the casino.
Allen declined to say when the tribe may revive its plans for a 300-room, seven-story, twin-tower hotel resort.
In 2010, tribal officials said it was five years in the future. Those five years nearly have passed, and the link to Sequim’s sewage treatment plant may accelerate the development, Allen said.
“It’s certainly a project that will accomplish many things, both the tribal development, the administration office and some plans they have long term down there [at the tribal headquarters] as well as the resort master plan down here [at the casino] as well,” he said.
The extension also will serve tribal homes and businesses.
The tribe, which already uses small-membrane bioreactor wastewater treatment plants in Blyn, had considered building a larger one but, as Clallam County commissioners did in November for the Carlsborg Urban Growth Area, chose to tie into Sequim’s facility.
“We think this is certainly the best fit financially, environmentally, economically,” Allen said.
As for Sequim, “it’s good for our ratepayers, and it’s fair for other payers to bring their sewage to Sequim,” said City Councilman Ken Hays, who was mayor when Sequim decided to expand its wastewater plant.
City officials do not know what they will charge the tribe for the service.
Overbuilt
Hays said he had regrets soon after approving the expansion in 2010, thinking it was overbuilt.
“We were made to feel tremendous pressure to approve the design,” he recalled of the council’s newly seated majority who had turned pro-development interests out of office.
“If I had it to do over again, I’m not so sure I wouldn’t have said, ‘Let’s go back and rethink this.’”
Still, the connection to Blyn will bring the plant closer to 80 percent capacity, more efficient “than the 40, 50, 60 percent we have now.”
It also means “treating what’s always been seen as waste water as a resource, and a precious one at that. It’s not the sewage but the water it takes to flush it down our pipes,” Hays said.
Amount of waste water
Just how much waste water the tribe will pump to Sequim remains to be seen.
Carlsborg will add about 80,000 gallons per day to the system, and Sequim City Manager Steve Burkett said Blyn’s contribution may be roughly larger.
Sequim’s plant has a maximum capacity of 1.75 million gallons per day, Burkett said.
Building the connection to Carlsborg is slated to start this spring. A June estimate set the total cost of piping waste water from Carlsborg to Sequim at $17.2 million over 15 years.
Connecting the sewer system to Blyn will let the tribe move wastewater away from the Sequim Bay ecosystem, where the tribe has worked to restore salmon habitat in Jimmycome-lately and Dean creeks.
Installation of 6.5 miles of pipe is estimated to cost the tribe $2.3 million less than the projected cost of building a membrane bioreactor on-site system.
The expansion extends outside Sequim’s city limits and its urban growth area to tribal lands.
The Growth Management Act prohibits any connections to the system along the route. That means properties between Sequim and Blyn cannot tap into the new line.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com
