QUILCENE — Advocates of building a wastewater management system in Quilcene have asked the Jefferson County commissioners to exempt them from a regulation that requires matching funds for the development of a feasibility study.
Linda Herzog, a representative of Quilcene Conversations, has asked that organizers be exempted from a rule requiring that half the cost of such studies come from sources other than public money.
“Putting together a feasibility study has been more complicated than what we had originally thought,” Herzog told the three county commissioners on Monday.
Herzog said she did not know how much a study would cost but estimated it could range from $75,000 to $200,000.
The cost of the entire project would be clear after the study was completed, she said.
The money would come from the Public Infrastructure Fund — or PIF — which is administrated by the county for infrastructure.
“The requirement for allocations from the PIF are that it support infrastructure and promote economic development,” Herzog said.
“This project, when it is completed, will make it economic and attractive for businesses to locate in Quilcene.”
County Administrator Philip Morley said Monday that the commissioners would consider Herzog’s request to change the code at a future meeting.
The allocation of PIF funds is determined by an advisory board, which meets as needed and makes recommendations to the commissioners.
Any request for distribution of PIF funds needs to be made by a government agency.
In this case, the Port of Port Townsend is making this request on behalf of Quilcene Conversations.
“This would be an easy decision if we had nothing else on our plate,” said County Commissioner John Austin.
“We also have the ongoing Port Hadlock sewer proposal and other projects we need to support.”
According to the Quilcene Conversations webpage at http://quilconv.blogspot.com, the expansion of the capacity of the public water system that serves the Rural Village Center — which is the only commercially-zoned land in Quilcene — so that commercial-level fire suppression is available to the business properties along the US 101 corridor will enable Quilcene to regain its economic stability.
The first Quilcene Conversation was in 2010. The group since has held regular brainstorming and planning meetings to improve the community.
The assembling of the feasibility study for this is the first step to its completion, although the two projects — expansion of the fire suppression capacity and the development of a wastewater system — are separate.
Without commercial-level fire flow and functioning wastewater management the community will not be able to attract new businesses, maintain current business activity and ultimately support itself, Quilcene Conversations says.
“We intend for this first phase to be an accurate, reliable assessment of the numerous questions inherent in the proposal,” Herzog said at the Monday meeting.
“These issues are bigger than whether Quilcene should have a public waste water management system and what kind of system it should be,” she added.
“They are questions of public policy, environmental preservation, growth management, and the potential for a rural community to revive itself without modern infrastructure.”
Without reliable wastewater management, there is also the possibility that old and failing septic systems in the Village Center may eventually jeopardize groundwater, Quilcene Bay and nearby rivers and streams, according to the website.
The questions that would be answered by the study include determining what kind of technology will be most appropriate, the extent to which local property owners will be able to pay for ongoing maintenance and how the system should be managed.
Herzog refers to the system as a wastewater project and not a sewer project “because to call it a sewer project locks us in to a certain technology,” she said.
“We don’t know what we’ll need until the study is completed.”
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
