Possible odors from Liberty Lake Sewage Plant

By Nina Culver Splash contributor

Discussions about possible odors from the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District’s sewage plant have led Greenstone Homes to withdraw a suggested plat amendment to the Trutina development east of Harvard Road that called for dozens of single family homes.

Greenstone has been responsible for developing many Liberty Lake neighborhoods, including the River District. The Trutina development just north of Indiana Avenue is designed for seniors and vacant land bordering Indiana and Harvard Road is currently slated for commercial use and multi-family housing. It is this vacant land that Greenstone wanted to turn into single family homes.

The sewer treatment plant is just east of Harvard Road and south of Indiana Avenue, which would have meant that homes would be right across the street from the plant. General manager BiJay Adams said the district was concerned that there would be an increase in odor complaints if homes went up across the street from the plant, which has been there since 1982.

“There’s no ifs, and or buts about it,” he said. “It’s a sewer treatment plant. We all know what goes on there.”

Jim Frank, the owner of Greenstone Homes who semiretired and gave control over day-to-day operations to his son several years ago, said the proposed change would not have required a change to current zoning. “The zones out there allow a wide range of uses,” Frank said. “We were just doing a preliminary plat.”

Adams said he’s not sure how many odor complaints have been received by Greenstone or the city, but the district receives between four and six complaints a year. Most of those come from people on the east side of the Trutina development, since the prevailing winds go in that direction.

“We have received odor complaints from existing residences,” Adams said.

Frank said Greenstone has received only a few complaints. “The odors from the treatment plant are a very difficult kind of thing,” he said. “I’ve never smelled it. I don’t live there, of course. There’s no history of a lot of complaints.”

Frank said there are options to cut the odors from the plant, including adding chemicals. “I don’t think this is a big problem, but if it becomes a big problem, it’s incumbent on the sewer district to mitigate that,” he said.

Adams said controlling odors, which they already do as much as possible, isn’t as simple as simply using chemicals. One of the most common ways of doing it is to cover the open air basins. “Our facility was constructed in 1982,” Adams said. “It was not constructed to be covered. If you cover our basins, they’re concrete and you create a corrosive environment.”

Covered basins are designed and built in a way to accommodate for corrosion, Adams said. Trying to do it after the fact will cost at least $10 million and will only benefit a small number of people in part of one neighborhood, Adams said.

“The financial burden on our ratepayers would be extremely high to benefit a small group,” he said.

Adams also has his doubts about whether covering the basins would actually work. The Post Falls and Spokane County sewer plants have that type of a system and there are still odors, he said. “They’ll never be eliminated,” he said. “It’s really difficult. I mean, it’s a sewer plant.”

The stakes could be high if more complaints about odors are made. There are rules and regulations about odors that are enforced by the Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency, Adams said. Each complaint has the potential to result in a $1,000 fine.

Those concerns were laid out in a letter from the district to the city on January 20 requesting that the city deny the modification to the Trutina plat unless several requirements were met, including having Greenstone create an odor buffer, help pay for new odor control technologies and disclose on the title report of every Trutina property that the property is directly downwind of a sewage treatment plant.

“The proposed change would compound the potential conflict between residents within the development and odors from the sewage treatment plant,” the letter reads.

The letter also pointed out that there were no complaints about odors from the facility until the Trutina development went in, since all other areas served by the district are to the south and west.

“It is undeniable that the odors from the District’s sewer plant did not have a negative impact until the development additions were constructed and the new residents to the area began to complain,” the letter reads.

Greenstone chose to withdraw the amendment request in February. “We decided to restrict the plat to what it originally was,” Frank said. “Out of an abundance of caution, we decided we didn’t want to expose people living in single family housing more than necessary.”

But Frank made it clear that the decision to withdraw the plat amendment doesn’t mean that the land on the northeast corner of Harvard and Indiana will stay vacant, regardless of any odors from the sewage treatment plant.

“There will be some development there,” he said. “As time goes on, we’ll figure out if it’s a big problem or not.”