Victor and Driggs Meet, Take No Votes

DRIGGS — The Victor and Driggs city councils met July 29 for the first time since Victor dropped its lawsuit against Driggs on July 1, spent two and a half hours on both cities' wastewater systems and how a shared plant would be paid for, and took no votes.

Tetonia Mayor Brent Schindler ran the meeting as facilitator. The published agenda ruled out public comment and stated that "no final agreement or long-term commitment is expected tonight." Written comment goes to a shared address, [email protected]. The councils adjourned around 8:25 p.m. and agreed to meet again in September.

The Driggs plant

Driggs public works director Jay Mazalewski said the existing treatment plant was designed to last until 2030. A 2025 review put it at 66 percent of its hydraulic capacity and 79 percent of its biological capacity. At the 4 percent growth rate the city's facility plan assumes, he said those figures reach 81 percent and 99 percent by 2031.

The plant meets its limits for most measures, Mazalewski said, but not for ammonia. Its discharge limit is 0.84 milligrams per liter, and he told the councils the plant "has not been able to consistently achieve that removal." He said engineers from several firms have looked at why and found no single cause.

Driggs has awarded a contract of about $1.1 million, including construction administration, to replace the plant's fine screens next summer. Mazalewski said those screens are sized to handle both cities' service areas.

Victor's alternative

Robert Worley of Sunrise Engineering presented Victor's own facility plan work by video. He put the collection-system improvements Victor would need at about $12 million in 2024 dollars, drawn from an August 2025 plan by Keller and Associates. A standalone Victor plant would treat about 430,000 gallons a day in a first phase and about 780,000 at build-out, at about $38 million in capital cost and $500,000 a year to operate. That is up from the $35 million estimate the city was working from in March.

Worley said Sunrise could not find a landfill within 100 miles willing to take the plant's biosolids.

A Victor official interrupted to say the plan was folded into the city's planning documents using grant money, and that "this is not saying we still want to build this as soon as possible or something like that, but just an understanding of what's possible."

Paying for it

Mazalewski put the cost of the Driggs upgrade in pieces: about $5.6 million for design and construction administration, about $28.9 million for construction in current dollars, and about $31.2 million once escalated at 4 percent inflation to a 2028 construction start. Class A water reuse would add about $6 million. Removing sludge when the lagoons are decommissioned would add $2 million to $2.5 million. A Victor councilmember added the figures aloud and arrived at a number above $45 million. Another asked whether the sludge figure had been stated as $5 million earlier in the evening. The discrepancy went onto a list of questions for Driggs to answer.

Driggs ranked first in Idaho for a state wastewater loan and asked for $25 million, Mazalewski said, of which about $6 million is forgivable, leaving about $19 million to repay at an estimated 2 to 2.5 percent. That request did not include Victor's service area.

Asked whether the loan could grow now that regulators require the plant to serve both cities, Mazalewski said the Department of Environmental Quality would not guarantee it. This year's money is committed, he said, and the agency has told Driggs to submit a fresh letter of interest in December.

Driggs bills Victor quarterly by multiplying its treatment operating costs by 0.45, because about 45 percent of the plant's flow comes from Victor. The 2011 agreement between the cities says the two "shall establish in writing" a set of capacity limits and capacity charges. Mazalewski told the councils that has not been done, and that the agreement as it stands assigns no capacity to either city. He also said the flow-based billing method is "not what's contemplated in the interagency agreement." Asked whether Victor's share could keep climbing without a ceiling, he said that under the current agreement it could.

What the councils still don't know

Driggs paid the full $400,000 federal penalty over the plant's violations, Mazalewski said, without splitting it with Victor.

He put construction at spring 2028, the plant online in late 2030, and full compliance by August 2031, a schedule that assumes Victor's service area is included. Driggs Mayor August Christensen told the councils that adding Victor back into the design meant the city would miss its existing deadlines with the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, and that Driggs does not yet have a revised agreement with them. She estimated the schedule had moved about nine months; two other voices in the room put it at 11 and 12.

The agenda had asked in writing whether Victor is a co-borrower, a contractual payer or a customer. Mazalewski said he had researched the term and read the agreement as making Victor a contractual payer, "the best interpretation of the contract I could come up with." On who bears cost overruns or changes in growth assumptions, he said, "That's not a question I can answer." A request for a fuller explanation of what a contractual payer is went onto the list of questions for a later meeting.

Victor and Driggs also do not agree on whether a joint powers agreement remains available. Christensen said the Department of Environmental Quality has told Driggs it cannot issue a new permit and that the waiting list runs years. A Victor councilmember returned to it near the end of the meeting and said the question was still open. Christensen offered to invite the agency to explain its position at a future session.

What comes next

Victor and Driggs agreed to keep Schindler as facilitator and to bring in Stephanie Bonney, a municipal attorney who a Victor official said worked on the city's judicial-confirmation case, to brief them on the governance options available to two cities sharing a plant.

Christensen told the councils that Driggs has been working on a fee study showing what each structure would mean for ratepayers, and that the city already has a draft agreement it can share. Neither had been given to Victor as of the meeting.

Members of both councils said a public meeting with the same presentations should follow, this one taking comment. A Driggs councilmember pushed back on the idea that the July 29 session had been closed, noting the public was invited to attend and that he was not opposed to taking comment at a future meeting.

What to watch: The councils penciled their next joint session for September 16 and left the time unsettled between 6 and 7 p.m., pending a scheduling poll. Victor expects to seat a new councilmember before then. Driggs' next letter of interest to the state loan program is due in December.

Victor and Driggs Councils Take No Votes in First Joint Wastewater Session

The Driggs plant

Victor's alternative

Paying for it

What the councils still don't know

What comes next

Sources