Port Townsend’s City Council on Nov. 4 approved plans for a new wastewater discharge pipe at North Beach, but that plan is now running into opposition.

Whether the “outfall”, in development off and on for eleven years, will actually be built is up in the air after council members and members of the public said they felt more modern and potentially more expensive options should be considered first.

Currently, wastewater treated at the North Beach facility is drained into the Strait of Juan De Fuca through a 900-foot pipe that is old and leaking. Half the pipe was built in the 1940s out of concrete, the other half was built in the 1960s out of cast iron.

In order to expel wastewater into the Strait, the city must hold a NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permit issued by the Washington State Department of Ecology.

The Department told the city in 2015 that in order for it to renew its five-year permit in 2020, Port Townsend would need to come up with a proposal for a new outfall by December 2018. In December 2018, the city asked for a one year extension. Today that extended December deadline looms large.

The city has known of the need to replace the outfall since 2008. From 2008 to 2010, research, surveying and testing was done to design a new outfall. In 2010 the city met with permitting agencies and took feedback on the design. The project then was put on hold and not revisited until 2015, when it became a requirement of the city’s pollution permit renewal.

When that updated proposal, 11 years in the making, was presented to the City Council, members of the public spoke against it. Council member David Faber said he was not aware of any controversy surrounding the plan until that day.

Marine biologist and Jefferson County resident Nam Siu said he did not feel the city had adequately considered less environmentally impactful alternative options to the outfall, including new wastewater treatment technology that could upgrade the plant so the water could be reused, making an outfall unnecessary.

In addition, he drew attention to the Department of Ecology considering new guidelines for nutrient dumping into Puget Sound, which may require the city to upgrade its facility down the road.

He said in an interview that the city has had nine years to do research into alternatives to the outfall as well as to explore costs and pursue grants and has been aware of the public’s and other state agencies’ concerns with the design since 2010.

In a 2010 letter to the City of Port Townsend the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Fish and Wildlife stated the agencies were concerned about impacts to marine life and asked for a “thorough evaluation of alternatives, including water reuse and upland disposal…”

“To an outside observer it would appear as the City has done nothing to address these comments in the last nine years and waited until the eleventh hour to rush an approval through the council under the pretense of a looming deadline,” Siu said in a follow-up email to City Council members.

Peterson disagreed with speakers from the public at the Nov. 4 meeting. He said other options were evaluated and deemed too expensive to the rate payer, costing in the $10 to 15 million range versus the projected $4 million of the new outfall.

Even with an upgraded system where the discharge could be cleaner, he said there would still need to be an outfall as a back-up, plus additional infrastructure to pipe the water for reuse.

Even if the city went ahead with this plan, which would not see construction begin for another year and a half, Peterson said the treatment plant could always be upgraded in the future.

“We’d like to wait for some technology to come along but we believe we’ve found the one that is the most cost effective for the rate payers,” he said. “We’re responding to (the) state, we’d like to not have to do the outfall at all.”

After hearing from city staff and the public, council members were divided on what to do.

Council member Michelle Sandoval said she understood the hesitation and was open to looking at other options and their costs but that she felt city residents do not want to have their water bills go up.

Member Pamela Adams said she wants the outfall fixed. She said she lives near North Beach and constantly hears from constituents who are worried about the leaks and are afraid to take their children around the beach.

Members Faber and Speser said they felt they needed to be more educated on all alternatives to make a decision. A discussion to postpone the vote for two weeks was had but ultimately the council felt two weeks was not enough time to consider all the alternatives.

With the deadline approaching, members decided to vote to approve the plan in order to meet state requirements, with the caveat that sometime in the next six months other options would be considered and vetted. Council member Gray was the only dissenter, feeling that it made no sense to approve a plan with the intent not to complete it.