Driggs and Victor Wastewater Agreement

DRIGGS — The Victor and Driggs city councils ended their joint sessions on the cities' 2011 wastewater agreement Sept 16 and asked their mayors to recommend an outside facilitator, after a review identified eight sections the two staffs read differently.

Tetonia Mayor Brent Schindler, who facilitated both meetings, spent much of the last hour proposing a third one inside two weeks, with the disagreements sorted into what he called historic, current and future. "I think that by separating it into historic, current, and future, I think that should cover all of the topics," he said. The goal, he said, would be "to look at these 3 time periods and then come up with an action plan for each of those time periods."

The third session was not scheduled. Half an hour later the councils agreed that Victor Mayor Sue Muncaster and Driggs Mayor August Christensen would collect names and costs for an outside facilitator and bring a recommendation back to each council. "So we will sunset this line of meetings, and the next thing you'll see is a recommendation from the mayors," Schindler said, closing the meeting at about 9 p.m. The only vote taken in three hours was to adjourn.

Driggs public works director Jay Mazalewski reviewed the wastewater agreement section by section. "I'm not here to give opinions," he said. "I'm just going to identify some sections in the agreement where the Driggs and Victor staff have had disagreements on interpretation." The framework has been in place since 1999 and was updated in 2011.

Section 5 requires the express written consent of both cities for any single connection above ten equivalent residential units, and Mazalewski called it "a very nebulous area." Read one way it governs hookups to the trunk line that carries Victor's sewage to the Driggs plant. Read another way, he said, "it includes all collection systems." Practice has been looser than either reading: "it was very fluid, and there wasn't any specific criteria, so we weren't necessarily following with a written consent." By his account the first written consent request in the record came from Victor in February 2025. "Its adherence to it has been cherry-picked is the best way to put it," he said. "It hasn't been followed to a T."

Victor's council had been calling those requests will-serves. Mazalewski separated the two: a will-serve is a letter a city issues to a developer, while consent to connect runs between the cities. On the requests Victor has sent Driggs, he said, "the city of Victor has issued will serves to those developments."

Driggs tabled the most recent batch of those requests on Aug 18, and city administrator Doug Self read the conditions into the record. The council wants to know whether Victor is still leaving the system and when; if it is not, what trunkline improvements the new development would require; how those costs are split; and how many units are already built or under construction. Mazalewski said he is compiling that information, including what the South Lift Station needs. Schindler called the station "definitely something that would need to be resolved shortly."

That station is the one both cities dropped from their plans after Victor decided to build a treatment plant of its own. Victor has since abandoned that plant and is now running its pumps below full output so the Driggs station does not overflow. Mazalewski said Driggs has asked its engineer to price an interim pump upgrade "to ensure we can continue pumping without a risk of sanitary overflow." The staff report he brought to the meeting says both cities' stations are at pumping capacity. Muncaster said Victor's public works director, Cole Pendell, had told her that Victor's Lift Station 1 is not, and that "our pumps are running lower to not overflow your pumps at the South Lift Station."

On capital costs, Section 3 gives Victor a review of any proposed project. "In there it says Victor will review the plans," Mazalewski said. "It doesn't say review and approve. It doesn't say have any input." Two other terms in the same section have no definition: what a capital improvement includes, and what counts as a project being underway, which is the trigger for telling Victor a project has gone over budget. The gray areas do not mean "the document's actually bad," he said; he was identifying disagreements for the councils to resolve.

The wastewater agreement calls for Driggs to bill Victor monthly for each 1,000 gallons measured where Victor's flow enters the Driggs system. A Driggs staff report in July put current practice at about 45 percent of quarterly flow. "Per the interagency agreement, it says fees will be established annually by both cities and adopted," Mazalewski said. "That has not been happening." He said neither method of billing covers "funding depreciation, funding future replacement of the plant."

The wastewater agreement also calls for an audit of the shared costs, with the expense "born equally by Victor and Driggs." Driggs has folded a wastewater audit into its own annual audit, and whether that satisfies the clause is unsettled. "It could be interpreted as a whole separate audit, or it could be interpreted as it could be included in overall audit," Mazalewski said. "That's the disagreement between the 2 staffs." The cities have commissioned one outside examination of the shared costs, the Cooper Norman report signed in Idaho Falls on Feb 9, 2024, which found that Driggs had overcharged Victor for years on their shared wastewater loan. Asked whether Victor has been paying its half of that cost each year, Mazalewski said, "That's a great question. I don't believe it has been."

Section 10 of the wastewater agreement requires the two cities to set capacity limits and capacity charges in writing. The cities have not set them. "The interagency agreement does not have any capacity allocation limits, or how much each city can put in, or how dirty each city can do," Mazalewski said. "It's not defined in the current agreement." The agreement, he said, "just says, hey, you guys need to work together and come up with a capacity allocation… that's one thing that we have not done as cities together."

Stephanie Bonney, an attorney with MSBT Law, followed with a comparison of three ways the cities could structure a future relationship: a contract for service, a joint powers agreement, or a sewer district. Members spoke for and against each. No preference was recorded.

The case for hiring someone from outside came from Driggs council member Miles Knowles, who put the evening in context. "The reason that we're here is because I think we tried to form some informal working groups, or at least putting both cities' staff together, and there were irreconcilable differences," he said. "I do like that idea of bringing in somebody from the outside who's going to be truly impartial to help us dig into the details."

Driggs council member Allison Michalski said she had already given Christensen "a list of facilitators, some of whom have special knowledge of water and/or environmental negotiations," and named university conflict-resolution programs in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana as places to look. Victor council member Erica Linnell, appointed to her seat last month, asked whether the cities needed a conflict-resolution specialist, a technical expert, or both. "I like the idea of both, honestly," she said. Later she added: "We may need to get a lawyer and engineering. Some of the nitty-gritty we need help with." She suggested the facilitator run the next discussion as a trial, "as a way to see if it's a good fit."

The councils took no public comment at either joint session. The published agendas directed written comment to a shared address, [email protected].

What to watch: Muncaster and Christensen are collecting bids and will bring a facilitator recommendation to each council at a regular meeting. No date was set. Driggs' decision on Victor's connection requests remains tabled.

Victor and Driggs Hand Their Wastewater Agreement to an Outside Facilitator

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