LaPorte area sewage worries Fort Collins

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

The bargaining chips are flying fast in the continuing saga of LaPorte sewer service. Apparently, Fort Collins doesn't want LaPorte sewage to entirely slip, slide or ooze beyond its control.

City officials do not want sewer effluent dumping into the Cache la Poudre River above Fort Collins, and they're willing to treat LaPorte sewage to avoid that possibility. The city's utility staff has recommended working with a planned metro district in LaPorte, as long as the city can treat the sewer effluent at its Fort Collins plant. If that were to happen, the LaPorte metro district would build the collection lines and pay the city to do the treatment.

The proposed scenario would avoid the building of a package sewage treatment plant in LaPorte. Such a plant would dump treated sewage into the river above Fort Collins, a situation that has some city folks worried about water quality in the river.

An upstream plant "will degrade the quality of the river as it goes through town," said Jim Hibbard of the utilities department. "The river is the jewel of the downtown community," he added, noting that it's difficult to restore water quality once it has deteriorated.

The city also wants to discourage the formation of multiple sewer districts in the LaPorte area, which would add even more treatment facilities upstream of the city.

P&Z board says yes

In November, the city's planning and zoning board gave the nod to a plan for the city to provide sewage treatment for LaPorte by working with a local metro district. Next to look at the proposal is the city's water board, which will meet Dec. 2. Both boards are advisory, passing along recommendations to the city council, which must make the ultimate policy decision.

The issue came to a head about six months ago, when several developers in the LaPorte area asked Fort Collins to provide sewer service to their projects. In the past, the city has acted on such requests on a case-by-case basis, and many in LaPorte assumed, when drawing up the LaPorte Area Plan, that city sewer service would be available. However, city policy discourages providing services outside the city's growth management area unless there's a benefit to the city.

Last June, work began on developing a clear policy regarding the city's treatment of LaPorte-area sewage.

In the meantime, two developers who want to divide a parcel on the east edge of LaPorte grew tired of waiting for an answer and began to look at forming a metro district for the LaPorte area. Such a district could supply public sewer as well as other services. The district could either build its own plant or contract with another entity to treat sewage.

At the P&Z meeting, Doug Ryan of the county health department noted that some kind of central sewer system would be necessary if the LaPorte Area Plan is to come to fruition. The health department would prefer to have a consolidated sewage treatment system downstream of Fort Collins, Ryan said.

Both the city utility staff and Ryan said one advantage of Fort Collins treating LaPorte sewage, as opposed to the metro district having its own plant, involves management. It's more difficult for a small treatment plant to have adequate staffing, they said, so there is more potential for problems or upsets at the plant.

Dollars studied

Even if the city finally agrees to treat sewage from the LaPorte area, that doesn't mean it will happen. Chris Kaul, one of the partners looking into a metro district, said it depends on how the dollars stack up. He met with city utilities managers early in November to discuss options for working together, and he's still waiting to hear more specifics on dollar amounts. A metro district would have to pay a certain amount to the city for sewage treatment, and, if the staff recommendation is adopted, it would also have to pay an up-front fee per tap. The up-front fee would cover city services, such as the libraries, used by LaPorte-area residents.

Kaul and his partner, Charlie Messerlian, would not be bound by any city recommendation and could go ahead with building a package treatment plant if they receive the necessary approvals. One of the first steps is to hold an election in the proposed new district, and a majority of property owners would have to approve the project.

Dollar-wise, Kaul said, it will cost the partners about $250,000 to get a district up and running, and Fort Collins tap fees to their development alone could be close to that amount. "I would rather put the quarter-million into infrastructure in LaPorte," he stated, than to let Fort Collins have the revenues. "We're going to go the route that benefits LaPorte."

City planner Tim Wilder said that if Kaul and Messerlian don't make progress in forming a metro district, and other developers start pressuring Fort Collins to provide sewer service, the city could go to a back-up position of providing sewer service in a prescribed area around LaPorte. However, the city has no particular timetable for moving to the back-up plan.

"There are still a lot of steps," he noted, before Fort Collins even has a definite policy in place. In the meantime, LaPorte-area developers are watching and waiting, on hold until a sewer solution can be worked out.