Graphic courtesy of King County Dept. of Natural Resources and Parks Wastewater Treatment Division
The Brightwater conveyance system is about 13 miles long with the pipelines located in underground tunnels. There are two additional pipelines approximately one mile long that will connect the new Brightwater pipelines to the existing King County wastewater system.

Courtesy photo
Jim Willett holds an anti-Brightwater sign.

Proponents

There really was a happy group of people celebrating April 12 at the groundbreaking ceremonies for the Brightwater project – two, three hundred of them. The festivities took place in a warehouse, which is part of the Brightwater offices along State Route 9 just north of Woodinville.

Brightwater, of course, is a $1.62 billion dollar sewage treatment system, the main facility of which is less than a mile from Woodinville.

Colorful banners were fastened to a chain-link fence across the street from the warehouse that day.

They represented the recipients of the project’s planning and building contracts: environmental engineering and consulting firms, construction companies, the street pavers and tunnel workers union, the brotherhood of carpenters, and others.

In the parking lot in front of the warehouse, people greeted one another with hearty handshakes and bear hugs. It was quite a day.

In the warehouse was a makeshift stage behind which a large aqua and white banner hung. It read “Brightwater Groundbreaking 2006. Dig it!”

A few dozen chairs were placed in front of the stage though most people stood to hear over an hour of speeches full of self-congratulations and thank-you’s. An audience of visiting officials, King County employees, laborers, engineers, consultants and other supporters of the project listened intently, nodded in agreement, laughed and applauded. It was a love-fest only a very few opponents of the project actually got to witness, given it was mid-week, mid-day and Spring Break for families with children.

King County Executive Ron Sims, dubbed by King County Council Chair Larry Phillips as “the greatest executive in the history of the county,” spoke with ease, surrounded by so many well-wishers.

“People will look back,” said Sims, “and appreciate the steps we took (to clean and reclaim water). It really is an extraordinary endeavor. … (Because of it,) the next generation’s lives will be better than ours.”

As he spoke, people holding large yellow signs outside the warehouse covered the windows near the podium, one by one, until the outdoor light was all but blocked. “Executive Aaron Reardon sold us out. Our community is now Ron Sims’ toilet,” they read.

But the speeches continued. Phillips thanked Sims for his “wonderful leadership.”

“(This project) is only meaningful if it protects the environment,” said Phillips. “It is paramount that government keeps its promises.”

He thanked Louise Miller of Woodinville, a former county councilwoman, “for her great work making sure Brightwater would be sited and for making sure that the agreements would stand the test of time.” He pointed to the banner behind him. “Dig it!” he read. “I’m ready to do that.”

Sam Anderson, executive director of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties, said, “We absolutely have to have this facility. This project is going to create a lot of jobs that will create a living wage.”

Ed Triezenberg, speaking on behalf of the Snohomish County Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said, “This is a great day for the people working on this project.”

When the speeches were done, attendees walked across the street to an empty field to watch 100 people with interests in the Brightwater project break ground with silver shovels.

Opponents

A young boy holding one of the yellow anti-Brightwater signs and wearing a clothespin on his nose said, “Fight Brightwater,” as people made their way to the digging ceremony.

A female union worker turned to the boy and said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Another young boy held a cardboard sign written in green marker that read, “Trench the site for $200 K.”

Local residents who oppose the Route-9 plant site have asked King County to trench the entire plant site to determine whether other active earthquake faults exist. Opponents feel their request is reasonable given that one active fault has been found on the site.

There are at least two other suspected faults on the property. One lay beneath the influent and effluent pipeline running into the plant. Though the county has redesigned the plant to push the main buildings between two of the faults, they have stated that they cannot change the location of the incoming and outgoing pipeline, which may cross a fault line. They say they’ve made the pipeline flexible there so that it will bend, rather than break, in an earthquake.

Sno-King Environmental Alliance, or SKEA, who is challenging the siting of the plant in court, wonders why the county would rather pursue lengthy litigation in lieu of doing the trench work that would ultimately give those who would be most affected by the plant a certain peace of mind.

Earth Consultants International, a company that routinely does such work, estimates trenching and analyzing all lineaments crossing the foundations of buildings on the treatment plant site and crossing the pipeline would likely cost in the neighborhood of $150,000 - $200,000.

King County has stated they estimate the trenching costs at more than $8 million. They do not want to divert staff away from completing the final system designs to work on a trenching project. It would delay the project, the county says.

Deputy Mayor of Woodinville Hank Stecker attended the festivities. He later said in an e-mail, “I’m amazed that you can have a groundbreaking for a project and spend tens of millions on construction for surrounding infrastructure when the project hasn’t even cleared the courts for approval.”

King County still has an outstanding SEPA (State Environmental Policy Act) appeal in the courts. It has to do with the evaluation of seismic hazards on the site.

Brightwater spokesperson Annie Kolb-Nelson said in an e-mail, “We have already received many of the permits required to begin site preparation or construction from federal and state agencies and local jurisdictions. Sno-King Environmental Alliance’s appeal does not prevent us from continuing with our current project schedule.”

King County has stated that it will do more trenching per the Development Agreement with Snohomish County.

Nelson stated in an e-mail, “The agreement requires trenching in relation to the two chemical storage buildings on the Brightwater treatment plant site. If evidence of faults is found, we will move these facilities.

“In January, we set a record for the volume of wastewater treated at South Plant and at West Point – we need to have Brightwater online by 2010 or we risk overflows and a possible building moratorium that would affect most of the service area, including Snohomish County.“What we have learned is that earthquake faults, and the potential for earthquake faults, are located throughout our region. There is no way to avoid them. So when planning public facilities, we need to consider the possibility there is or will be a fault nearby and design accordingly,” wrote Nelson.

Stecker stated, “… After King County’s own findings of major earthquake faults on the site, are they trying to make sure no one finds anymore? Is Mr. Sims really concerned about our safety and our future when he takes these kinds of risks? Is he really concerned about our tax dollars when he continues to spend them on a site that hasn’t been certified as safe?

“A Seattle Times April 13 article by Danny Westneat states the following: ‘San Diego is planning (a sewage plant) with nearly twice the capacity for $170 million. Atlanta is building one half the size for $137 million. St. Louis is having a mini-scandal because its new plant is larded with pork and outrageous consulting contracts, tripling the cost to ... $230 million.’

“Mr. Sims, you are heading towards the $2 billion dollar mark. Thank you for your appropriate use of our tax / ratepayer dollars and your obvious choice of the biggest pork barrel site you could find,” wrote Stecker.

Yes, the price tag is approaching $2 billion. And the interesting part is that King County sought no Federal assistance for the project. In order to pay the debt, King County may have to increase rates for current and new sewer customers. It will have to continually add to its customer base. Which begs the question, how many new users, exactly, are going to have to hook up to the sewer system to pay those $2 billion back? Tens of thousands of existing septic-system users forced to convert? Plus hundreds of thousands of new construction hookups? And where is all the new density going? What about the infrastructure?

SKEA believes that if the county fixed the current system’s leaky pipeline, Brightwater wouldn’t be necessary. They say stormwater flowing into the system amounts to 41 percent of the 248 million gallons of wastewater the current system processes every day.

Moreover, they say flows through the system have declined over the past five years. Their modeling indicates that with the current average flows, there is enough capacity in the existing system for at least two decades.

Woodinville City Councilman Mike Roskind also attended the groundbreaking celebration.

He later stated in an e-mail, “I am concerned that King County is bullying their way through permitting processes and buying their way past sound practices, while the site is criss-crossed with surface faults.

“The site was picked for political purposes here in Woodinville, not for physical or economic reasons. If the plant is allowed to be built and any of those faults rupture under a massive $1.6 billion sewage plant, it will devastate Woodinville.”