Driggs’ temper running thin with wastewater facility

Only three communities have had violations grow since 2020, those being Driggs, Nezperce, and Kendrick. According to the Idaho Conservation League’s bi-annual violations report, Driggs has been discharging water that is approximately 25 times greater than its permit allows for the last three years.

The facility, billed as technologically advanced and cost-effective during its planning and construction, has had frequent and varied problems since it became operational in 2013.

The problems have ranged from being at or over capacity to being technologically deficient. In turn, those problems have brought fines and scorn from the State of Idaho’s Department Of Environmental Quality and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The highest profile of those fines was a $13,500 fine from the EPA in 2017.

In 2020, Forsgren engineering, a private engineering consultancy, said the cost to build a new, more conventional facility was around $12 million. In that estimate, a timeline was provided which showed that the facility will be over capacity year-round starting in 2023.

The wastewater facility is also tied inextricably with the city’s sewer problems. During the summer of 2020, officials found a multitude of leaks and openings in the sewer system. Public works employees were able to find and repair most, but not all of the openings.

Enough of a benefit was seen in plugging up the leaks to render the $100,000 Forsgren study somewhat moot but did not alleviate concerns considering ammonia discharge, its most persistent problem.

The leaks were essentially putting more water into the wastewater treatment plant, overwhelming the plant and making it seem like the facility was at capacity.

In 2021, the updated Forsgren study came back, and although the capacity question had been somewhat solved, ammonia discharge woes persisted. The questions regarding if this is the right type of plant or not did not go away either.

Earlier this summer, the city put out a press release informing citizens of a downwind odor coming from the wastewater plant. Although the odor was just a nuance of the type of facility, and not related to any problem, the city disclosed that they were reviewing and updating the 20-year wastewater treatment plant facility plan.

Public works director Jay Mazalewski, who has been dealing with the headache of the WWTP for his entire five-and-a-half-year tenure, is “extremely” frustrated by simply not being able to make it work.

“I feel like I could write a college thesis on this plant and try to troubleshoot and make this facility work. It has been my nemesis,” said Mazalewski.

“The pattern seems to be that every time I solve one issue or another, or potentially another, pops up. It is not necessarily that the plant breaks or is broken, it is just trying to solve this ammonia discharge and figure out why it is not working. In trying to solve that issue we have found others that need to be solved, which we have solved, but we just haven’t been able to come into compliance with the ammonia discharge,” said Mazalewski.

Mazalewski, as outlined above, has tried his best to get the facility to comply but each solution has been met with more failure with each attempt. His efforts have simply grown exhausted.

“I want to exhaust all possibilities before we say ok, we need to go to a new plant and spend a significant sum of money to bring us into compliance with the ammonia. My goal is to exhaust every avenue possible, and that is what I have been doing,” said Mazalewski.

A new facility is something that, despite the price tag, Mazalewski would begrudgingly welcome.

“The big picture is we are going to need community buy-in on this because yes, 10 years ago we bought a new plant, and the thought was that we were under the impression that it was going to work for us,” said Mazalewski.

“I’m not excited to spend the money to get a new plant. That is the least exciting thing. That is really why we have been taking so long to make this existing plant work,” said Mazalewski. “I am excited to get us into compliance, that has been the most frustrating thing, not being able to meet this discharge limit for ammonia.”

“Biting the bullet here and getting a process that is going to work for not only the next 10 or 20 but next 30 to 40, even 50 years down the line will set us up for long-term success,” said Mazalewski.

Although the city hoped to have a WWTP presentation on its agenda for the October 18th city council meeting, that had been postponed. The public will still have plenty of time to comment on this process, and their feedback will be welcomed says Mayor August Christensen.

“Our community has been asking questions about it and I think it is important to be transparent and have the opportunity for our community to be educated about it, especially moving forward with the plan that will be presented at City Council,” said Christensen.

“We need to take this step to get an updated plan that can hopefully show us what we can do differently instead of putting money into this plant that has never worked properly,” she continued.

The city has been hard at work with consultants on a new master plan for the facility, one which will weigh many options. The list will be narrowed down by the time it goes in front of council, but Christensen stressed patience and understanding from the community will be needed to make the best decision.

“I know that the engineers have considered 12 different options, this plan won’t have that many, but they are not going to give us one option to choose from. I haven’t seen it, we don’t have it yet, we just have to be patient and wait for it to come, learn from the experts, and make the best decision for our community,” said Christensen.