PORT ANGELES — The largest public works effort in the city’s history — a plan to staunch overflow sewage — is included in a 2012-2018 capital facilities and transportation improvement program approved last week by the City Council.
The $41.7 million combined sewer overflow project surpasses the approximately $24 million spent to replace the Eighth Street bridges, the city’s largest public works project to date, Public Works & Utilities Director Glenn Cutler said Friday.
But the CSO project, which has been discussed for years, was approved with little said about it Tuesday night.
Instead, replacement of downtown’s centrally located Laurel Street stairway was the focus of attention before the six council members unanimously approved the $229 million six-year capital facilities and transportation improvement program.
18th in program
The $301,500 stairway project is listed 18th in the program, is not funded and is not slated for construction until 2014.
The six-year plan includes a proposed $27,500 in preliminary work for stairway replacement in 2013.
The stairway’s present condition and ongoing attractiveness to unsavory elements were criticized by some of the evening’s speakers.
“This seems to be the evening for stairs,” quipped interim City Manager Dan McKeen, noting that the K.O. Erickson Trust may install lighting in the area to provide additional security.
“We do not have any additional funding to apply to the stairs at this time,” McKeen said Friday.
The city approved funding to cut away the bluff for the stairway in 1936, according to a July 1936 edition of the Port Angeles Evening News.
The stairway’s steps lead from what is today a motel-dotted, densely populated bluff down to the fountain and mural at Laurel and First streets in the center of downtown.
By Wednesday morning, the city had painted over the graffiti-scrawled back of the mural, and Police Chief Terry Gallagher said Friday that police patrols will increase in the area.
The stairs are “pretty nasty in terms of smell, color, things falling apart, chips, whatever,” one speaker said during the public comment portion of the meeting Tuesday. Her name was unavailable Wednesday.
Port Book and News co-owner Alan Turner, whose store is one doorway away from the mural and stairway, said in a letter to the council that the stairway “attracts drunks and drug dealers who use the area to conduct business, which includes vomiting and urinating in the public space on a regular basis.”
For many tourists, the stairs “are one of the first or last impressions they receive of Port Angeles,” Turner said.
“I suggest the motto should be: ‘Clean them up. Or close them down.’”
‘Scary, filthy, disgusting, embarrassing’
Residents and tourists who have walked the stairs use the words “scary, filthy, disgusting, embarrassing” to describe the experience of walking its steps, said Turner, who parks his car on the bluff and walks the stairway to work.
“It just seems to be more like one of those situations where if we don’t show respect and concern for those things, then no one will show respect for those things,” Turner added Wednesday in an interview.
The city’s $17.3 million waterfront improvement project, slated to begin this summer — also a top priority in the six-year plan — puts the condition of the stairs into perspective, council member Pat Downie said at the meeting.
The stairway is “unsightly” and “not an asset at this point,” Downie said.
Truck route
Speakers at Tuesday’s meeting also said they are concerned the city will establish a truck route from First Street south up Race Street and west down Lauridsen Boulevard.
A $220,000 “Alternative Cross-Town Route Study” is scheduled for 2013 but has not been funded.
It is ranked 25th in the program and is the last project listed for potential 2013 funding.
CSO project
Construction on the combined sewer overflow project will begin later this summer.
The city will use a 5 million-gallon, city-owned tank on the former Rayonier pulp mill site to store untreated sewage and overflow stormwater.
The city is required by the state Department of Ecology to address sewer overflow, which occurs when stormwater floods the city’s sewage system, parts of which were built to carry both, and untreated effluent is dumped into Port Angeles Harbor.
Infiltration of groundwater into dilapidated sewage pipes also is a significant contribution to the problem.
About 32 million gallons of untreated sewage and stormwater overflow on average each year.
The tank’s contents will be treated at the city wastewater-treatment plant before being discharged into Port Angeles Harbor, Cutler said.
The project, which includes laying new pipes from downtown to the tank, will be completed by Dec. 31, 2015, Cutler said.
The city’s 2012-2018 capital improvement plan and transportation improvement program are available at http://tinyurl.com/8a7wwh4.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
