Jefferson County is closer than ever to developing a public sewer system in Port Hadlock—something the community has spent 20 years or more waiting for.
On April 20, county commissioners approved a contract for the final design of the system for a core service area. This design work, which cost $1.42 million, was funded by an appropriation from the state legislature and the county’s Public Infrastructure Funds.
This step will get the county “shovel-ready” for construction of the system.
But it isn’t the first time commissioners have been “shovel-ready.”
“If you go back in the papers, you can probably find me saying that we would get a shovel in the ground in 2010, which is one of the lessons that I’ve learned over my time as a commissioner,” Commissioner David Sullivan said in a 2018 interview with The Leader. “Because things change.”
Without a public sewer system, commercial development and multi-family housing cannot be built, holding the area back from residential and business expansion.
The lack of a sewer system is one contributing factor to the lack of affordable housing, and therefore, the homelessness problem in Jefferson County.
During the 2008 recession, the county’s proposed sewer project was not ready to secure potential federal funding from the Obama-era stimulus packages.
This time around, the county wants to be ready for a potential federal stimulus package that could fund a large infrastructure project such as the sewer.
“We need approximately $20 million to get this project built,” said commissioner Kate Dean.
Funding will likely comprise some combination of grants, loans, bonds and landowner financing.
“We expect the upcoming recession to make it harder for the county to service debt from loans or bonds, and we suspect that landowners will be financially strained to pay for on-site installation and hook-ups, as well as the Local Improvement District assessment,” she said. “So, getting a significant portion of funding from the feds in an infrastructure stimulus would greatly ease the difficulty of financing the project. Plus, it would generate construction jobs in the near term and allow for commercial growth and increased density in the long term.”
A Local Improvement District is a way of financing the sewer by taxing within the improvement district.
In the past, the cost to build a sewer system was too much for taxpayers to bear.
But in 2018, a group of property owners from the Port Hadlock “core area” presented the county with a petition indicating strong support for the sewer and potential interest in forming a Local Improvement District. In response, the county hired design consultants to perform a feasibility study to determine what steps could be taken to reduce the cost of a startup sewer system to serve the core area while still allowing for future expansion to serve the larger area when demand occurs.
“The project has gained traction with property owners in the service area (the core of Port Hadlock) thanks to the work of Craig Durgan, who is a property owner there,” Dean said. “Craig has been able to work with property owners to see the benefit of the project. I would hate to lose that momentum.”
The county has the backing of property owners in the core area, and it has funded the final phases of design with the contracted company. So what’s next?
“The simplest answer is ‘to construct it,’” said Monte Reinders, county director of public works. “However, that is a vast oversimplification. For a project like this, there are many steps that run concurrently.”
The $1.42 million contract approved by the county last week allows the contractor, Tetra Tech Inc., to complete the final design, develop specifications and cost estimates for the sewer treatment facility and pressurized sewer collection system in Port Hadlock.
“Final design is certainly a big step, but not a technically difficult one,” Reinders said. “The challenge is funding a project like this.”
The core area (Phase I) will cost $18.6 million to build the public portion of the sewer, which includes the treatment plant, wastewater infiltration ponds and collection lines in the public streets. It will cost an additional $4.5 million of private on-site costs for pipes and pumps on each parcel. (These numbers include the design costs.)
This is why it’s important the county is well-situated for federal funding.
“It will take multiple sources of state and federal money to offset most of the construction cost so that the sewer is affordable for the property owners,” Reinders said.
Without the proper funding, the project would stall.
“For all the talk about infrastructure funding, there is a surprising lack of large grants,” he said. “It’s a little hard to do a $20 million project when agencies want to talk about $500,000 to $1 million grants. There are more loan programs, but it is difficult to start a new $20 million sewer on loans when you might have only 100 connections to begin with.”
Large grants, and more than one of them, are needed. And that’s where a stimulus package could come in handy.
“The idea behind any stimulus package is that it can ‘stimulate’ an economy that is in recession and help recovery from a recession,” Reinders said. “Funding projects that are nearly ready to be constructed can stimulate the economy in a timely fashion.”
During the last recession, a stimulus package helped fund the construction of a sewer in Belfair.
“The Hadlock sewer project should be well-positioned if infrastructure stimulus money becomes available since all of the necessary property has been secured and design is underway,” Reinders said.
But if that doesn’t happen, Dean will continue to look for other funding sources.
She has been working with the federal Economic Development Association, which has some stimulus funds.
“They are quite limited, so I am not optimistic,” she said. “They may get more funds in the future. They are also coordinating a funders conference with the other federal agencies such as USDA Rural Development and HUD to consider the best federal grant and loan sources.”
She has also planned to reach out to the Department of Defense to discuss grant programs they have to fund infrastructure.
While the county is closer to seeing a sewer in Port Hadlock, there is still an uphill battle to overcome.
“There are agencies expanding existing sewer systems,” Reinders said. “There are agencies replacing aging sewer systems. But no one else that we are aware of is trying to start a new system from scratch. The possibility of infrastructure stimulus is intriguing. It may represent a unique opportunity for this project. But there will be a lot of competition.”
