Unlike sewage, new rates may flow uphill

Published 7:00 am Saturday, March 27, 2004

As mandated by state law every six years, the city of Langley will update its comprehensive sewer plan in 2004. At the same time, the city will be looking at the need for a rate increase for city sewer customers.

On March 17, the Langley City Council authorized Mayor Neil Colburn to sign an agreement with URS Corp. to update the plan.

In a brief explanation at the meeting, Rick Hill, the city’s director of public works, said URS Corp.’s Seattle branch will provide the required six-year plan, and a broader 20-year plan for Langley’s sewer outlook. He said the firm will also explore whether Langley could use an alternative and cheaper sewage collection system.

“We want to explore less-expensive options,” he said. “If they’re out there we want to be able to look at them.”

Hill said the city hired the Seattle firm to do the study because the engineering, planning, data processing and computer drawings needed for the study are too much for Langley’s small staff to undertake.

“It would be a very labor intensive function for a number of us,” he said.

Hill said the study will cost the city approximately $60,000, which includes almost $18,000 for the rate study. The amount is close to what it would take city employees to do the study in-house.

“There is no learning curve for them,” he said. “They jump in and hit the ground running.”

In an interview last week, Hill said looking at alternative collection systems could be less expensive. Systems that employ vacuum pressure or low-pressure sewer lines could provide savings when it comes to hooking into the city’s sewer plant.

“Our plan in the past did not specifically address those systems,” Hill said. “It’s to give us some more options on what we currently have.”

Currently it costs $2,000 to hook up to the city’s sewer, plus an additional $1,500 to $4,000 for a contractor to install the line, according to Hill.

A vacuum or low-pressure system could use shallower lines and smaller pipes, saving on construction and material costs, Hill said.

Langley currently uses a gravity collection system, which depends on gravity to deliver the sewage from each property to the treatment plant. The downward slope of the pipes must be at a steep gradient to ensure they do not become clogged, which requires that they be buried six to 20 feet deep.

Roughly half of city residents, or 320 households, are hooked up to the city’s sewer, Hill said, using 60 percent of the sewer plant’s capacity. The current sewer plant went into operation in 1992.

The city last drew up a comprehensive sewer plan in 1998. The current study is expected to be finished by the end of 2004.