Sunnyland sewers part of city test

Residents of the Sunnyland neighborhood will be part of a test planned in 2009 due to Bellingham’s rising population.

“This project is to find out how effective it is to fix private sewer systems on the amount of waster treated on an hourly basis [at the sewage treatment facility],” said Chad Bedlington, Public Works superintendent of maintenance for the City of Bellingham.       

There are two types of sewer systems, said Craig Mueller, inflow and infiltration project engineer and administrator. The sanitary sewer carries away all of the water from sinks and toilets. This water is then treated at a plant before being returned to Bellingham Bay. Storm drains are untreated and return to rivers which eventually carry it to the bay.

It costs a fraction of a cent per gallon to treat sewage. Currently the sewage plant treats 9 million gallons per hour, during a day without rain. When it rains, this number jumps to 45 million gallons per hour. The rain can affect this amount of water needing to be treated only if it infiltrates weaknesses in sewer pipes. The city is spending money treating water that is already clean, according to Mueller.

“As a citizen who pays taxes it makes sense to repair or replace sewer pipes so ground water goes to the bay and… we don’t have to build more expensive sewer treatment plants,” said Mary Anne Stuckart, a member of the Sunnyland Neighborhood Association.

The population is expected to continue to rise. According to the Bellingham city census, Bellingham’s population has grown 20 percent between 2000 and 2010. Mueller expects this number to keep growing, which also means that water usage will increase.

The project will cost anywhere from $4.2 million to $6.9 million when it is complete, according the Sunnyland Sanitary Sewer Evaluation Survey. The money was built into the city’s budget as of 2009 as a portion devoted to city public works projects.

In 2009, a comprehensive sewer plan was created to combat the rising use of water in the area from a rising population. One item called for a new 1.7 million gallon wet weather storage facility, which is an underground tank that holds water until it can be treated at the plant. To avoid purchasing this tank, the city hopes to decrease the amount of extra water making its way into the sewage system.

The first step to solving this problem is to see how badly the pipe infrastructure was damaged. To discover weaknesses in Sunnyland pipes, smoke was poured into the system to see where it would rise.

“Most of the heaviest areas of smoke were on people's properties,” Bedlington said. “This means that we are going to have to gain permission from homeowners before we can work on the premises.”

Mueller and others on the project must receive written consent from property owners before beginning the work.

“This will be a no-charge service. Any problems that are found with a sewage system will be replaced and the area will be left exactly as, or better than, we found it,” Mueller said.

Those affected could lose sewer service for up to eight hours. The city will provide alternatives, such as portable toilets, if a personal sewage system will be offline for longer than several hours, according to Bedlington at the Sunnyland Neighborhood Association meeting on April 19.

A new sewer line can be added to a property declaration. This can slightly increase the property value, depending on the extent of work, Mueller said.

The Sunnyland Neighborhood was selected for a number of reasons. One is Sunnyland is in the central basin of the city, meaning that more rain tends to collect in this area. Another factor is where the pipes lay. In Sunnyland, most sewage areas are in alleyways, making it easy to fix the pipes without disturbing the community.

Not all of Sunnyland is eligible for pipe upgrades. Only the area with a boundary of Kentucky Street to the south, Illinois Street to the north, Dean Avenue to the west, and Grant Street to the east will be part of the sewer replacement, according to Mueller.

The area surrounded by State Street, James Street, Illinois Street and Grant Street will be the “control area." To show if replacing pipes in the west part of Sunnyland worked, Mueller compares the water treatment amount from this area to the eastern portion of the neighborhood. The two areas had relative amounts of smoke rising in similar areas, meaning the problems are comparable.