EVERETT – The Snohomish County Council unanimously approved new requirements Monday to make King County’s Brightwater sewage treatment plant fume-free once it’s built in south Snohomish County.
The council passed an emergency ordinance requiring a smell-stopping system that will halt 99.9 percent of odors from escaping from the sewage plant once it’s built.
Council Chairman Gary Nelson said the new rules aren’t just for the $1.48 billion plant.
“This isn’t just for that one, this is for any treatment plant. It doesn’t make any difference who puts it in,” Nelson said.
The new requirements don’t go too far, he added. Stopping the escape of anything odiferous isn’t especially onerous. King County has pledged in the past to install an odor elimination system.
“They should be pleased, what we’re doing is following exactly what they wanted to have done,” Nelson said.
Christie True, Brightwater’s project director, said she couldn’t address the odor ordinance – and one also passed Monday by the council to cover earthquake issues – because she hadn’t seen them yet.
King County has already made a commitment to building a treatment facility that won’t have offensive off-site odors.
“We have already made a commitment to build a state-of-the-art odor control system,” True said.
“What that means for the people who live and travel around it, you will never smell Brightwater, any kind of odors … from the fence line of the property.”
Even though it exists now only on paper, Brightwater has long created a stink for some Snohomish County officials. They’ve raised concerns about the location of the facility, near Highway 9 and Highway 522, and have complained about the process that led to the selection of the Brightwater site.
A Thurston County court decision last week, though, gave Snohomish County more power in the permitting process for the plant.
The rules adopted Monday also require King County to set up a fund for future years, in case problems arise with the odor-control system. The fund would be 1 percent of Brightwater’s total price tag. King County would need to set aside more than $14 million for the fund.
But True said the fund should be set at 1 percent of the cost of the plant itself – $300 million. It should not include the cost of all the pipes, mitigation efforts and other parts of the project, she said.
King County expects to seek a building permit for the plant in September.
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