County may spare LFP from Brightwater tunnel portals

Published 11:25 am Friday, February 22, 2008

Officials with Brightwater say the city of Lake Forest Park has a strong chance of being spared some of the impact of a new $1.3 billion waste water treatment system to be built in the next 10 years to serve North King and South Snohomish counties.

In Shoreline and Edmonds that impact could be lessened as well, officials said.

Three portals — or entry shafts to pipe tunnels — may be eliminated from the preferred plans, said Christie True, project manager for Brightwater.

While the location for the system has not been finalized, King County executive Ron Sims designated a site along Highway 9 in Snohomish County north of Woodinville as his preferred alternative. The county awaits a final environmental review statement to be released in November. Sims will make the final decision in December.

Rather than starting the untreated waste water pipelines with an entry portal by the Lake Forest Park Towne Centre shopping mall, the county is thinking of starting those pipes in Kenmore, for the preferred Route 9 alternative.

“We believe we will not need any of the portals earlier identified in Lake Forest Park,” True said, referring to one portal that was to be built at Lake Forest Park Towne Centre and a second portal at the Lake Forest Park/Shoreline border on Ballinger Way NE at 25th Avenue NE.

“For Lake Forest Park, the Towne Centre has become a vibrant part of this community, and we received a lot of comments from citizens and leaders about this. We took a hard look at it and eliminating or delaying the impact significantly,” True said.

Right now, untreated waste water from Lake Forest Park and parts of Mountlake Terrace flows through the McAleer and Lyon Creek trunk lines to pipes in Lake Washington. From there it flows to Westpoint Waste Water Treatment Facility at Discovery Park in Magnolia, True said. The county is now looking at continuing to send that flow to Westpoint rather than to Brightwater, thereby eliminating the portal and piping needs by the Towne Centre, and reducing the flow to Brightwater in 2010 by about 2 million gallons a day.

Brightwater would serve Brier, Kenmore, Woodinville, Bothell, portions of north Kirkland in the Juanita Bay area, other areas in the south Sammamish Valley area and Snohomish County, she said.

“We think we could potentially delay or eliminate the need for that segment of pipeline that started in Lake Forest Park and went to Kenmore,” True said. “Instead, the construction would start in Kenmore and go to the Route 9 site.”

In a couple of decades, however, if capacity requires it, the portal may still need to be built, True said.

“It depends on how much growth occurs in that area,” she said.

Two portals on the Shoreline/Edmonds border could be eliminated, and replaced with one portal to be located where Mountlake Terrace, Edmonds and Shoreline meet at NE 205th St/244th St. and Ballinger Way NE, True said.

The eliminated portals include one that was to be built by the Nile Golf Course at NE 205th/244th St. SW and 1st Avenue NE and a second portal at NW 205th and Firdale Avenue. Both were along a pipeline sending treated waste water from the Route 9 into Puget Sound off of Point Wells.

The portals could be eliminated, True said, “because with further engineering we have found we could run the tunnel boring machine further distances.

“Before we were looking at tunneling and having the portals roughly 10,000 feet apart, and now we are looking at having the portals 20,000 feet apart,” she said.

The county identified all the portals in the draft environmental statement “because we were trying to be as conservative as we could with the draft and as we do further engineering, we are looking at ways to reduce impacts even more,” True said.

All portals will still be identified in the final environmental statement, but listed as primary and secondary portals, she said.

The county does not know yet how eliminating these portals will affect the total cost of the system, which is estimated at $1.3 billion.

“The machines we need to dig 20,000 feet versus 10,000 feet may be more expensive,” said True, “and we may have to replace parts on the machines more often. So we don’t know for sure what the total savings might be for eliminating those portals, but we do plan to do a completely new cost estimate this fall.”

Despite where the waste water goes, the hook-up fees would apply to all newly built homes, True said. Existing homes would not have to pay this fee.

The fee is assessed for 15 years from the time of the hook-up and is currently set at $17.60 per month, billed semi-annually.

To finance Brightwater, True estimates the fee for new hook-ups could triple to $46.50 per month, starting in Jan. 1, 2005.

“The way we charge, regardless of where you are in our system, whether in Seattle, Snohomish, Issaquah, or Lake Forest Park, everyone pays the same sewer rate to King County,” said True. “You may have a different rate to your local provider, but the rate for King County is the same. The hook up fee is also the same. So if it’s a new home in Lake Forest Park, they would pay the hook-up fee, regardless of where your waste water goes.”