The Clancy Water and Sewer District and Jefferson County are moving closer to improving the water going into properties in the Clancy area, as well as trying to clean up the wastewater on those properties.
At separate meetings held simultaneously on July 27, the district board in Clancy further discussed a centralized well system and the grants it hoped to receive to fund it; in Boulder, the county’s health board approved a Special Management Area and Septic Maintenance Program for the same geographic area as the Clancy district. The Special Management Area and Septic Maintenance Program are under county authority and are not administratively part of the Clancy Water and Sewer District, despite covering the same area.
Both meetings were part of the continuing saga of Clancy’s water contamination issues.
A 2017 Montana Tech survey revealed nitrate and uranium levels in Clancy’s water. According to Clancy’s 2018 Treasure State Endowment Program grant application, elevated nitrate levels create a health risk—especially to infants, who can develop blue baby syndrome, which is caused by reduced oxygen in the bloodstream and can be fatal. Uranium, according to the grant application, “can cause kidney damage and has been linked to cancer.”
The Special Management Area and Septic Maintenance Program are the county’s attempt to address one of the main factors behind the increased nitrate levels: aging and failing septic systems within the boundaries of the district.
“The district is already defined because of the CWSD and that is where we are trying to get the problem fixed,” County Sanitarian Megan Bullock explained at the health board meeting. Former district board President David Leitheiser objected this spring to the county’s plan to use the district’s boundary as the boundary for the Special Management Area, calling it “arbitrary.” He resigned in May over the proposal.
“There is the Special Management Area, and basically in a nutshell what it’s saying is that anyone putting in a new septic system will have to do non-degradation calculations. They have to demonstrate when they put this new septic system in that they won’t raise nitrate levels,” Bullock said.
The Septic Maintenance Program would include: requiring residents to not exceed four years between septic pumping; owners repairing any identified problems in their system; obtaining permits for repairing, replacing or altering existing systems; and providing documentation to the Environmental Health Department regarding inspections.
Bullock conceded that the regulations may mean that some residents would have to replace their existing septic systems and prove that a new system would not raise contamination levels. This could mean installing a “level-two” septic system that has an additional secondary treatment stage to reduce effluent entering the ground. Previously, Bullock quoted the cost of such a system as between $12,000 and $20,000.
“We have gone past [the 30-day comment period] so tonight is when we decide if we are going to adopt those two sections to the regulations,” Bullock said of the proposal to add the Special Management Area and the Septic Maintenance Program therein to existing county regulations. Both were approved without pubic comment on July 27.
Leitheiser has criticized the heath board for scheduling its vote on Clancy septic management for a meeting in Boulder held at the same time as the Clancy Water and Sewer District was meeting in Clancy—a conflict he said would prevent interested parties from attending the county meeting.
At the Clancy Water and Sewer District board meeting in Clancy, board members discussed ARPA funding, possible sites for a test well and an interest in further testing of the water within the district. Though not present at the meeting, a project engineer and architect from Great West Engineering, Collette Anderson, informed the district board in writing of the current status of all ongoing projects, which included the search for a test well site, as well as ARPA funding.
Anderson also informed the board of the funding requests made to the state’s Competitive Grant Program of ARPA funds.
“The water [centralized well project] application included an application to the State’s Competitive ARPA program for $5,476,000. Currently, the total estimated cost for the project, including Phase 1 and Phase 2, is $7,749,000,” Anderson wrote. The district hopes to bundle the $5.4 million grant with other grants it already received, as well as a $748,000 State Revolving Fund loan “assuming half of the loan will be forgiven (essentially a grant),” to fully fund the $7.7 million needed for the centralized well project.
The district also applied for funding for a wastewater system in the hopes of addressing the root cause of the nitrate issue. The wastewater system, first discussed in 2012, would bypass failing private septic systems. The 2012 proposal did not progress, due to concerns over the total cost. Now, however, the availability of ARPA funds has resurrected the district’s plans for a wastewater system.
The district submitted an APRA grant application for $8,553,500 to fund a wastewater system in Clancy.
The district recently received $250,000 of ARPA funds from Jefferson County, which it plans to put toward the projects as match funds. The district board had requested $500,000 from the county. Because it has less match money than anticipated, Anderson said previously, the district has a lower chance of getting both projects funded. The $250,000 will go toward the project that gets selected for funding. The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation will present its ranking of the water and sewer projects from communities across the state to the Infrastructure Advisory Commission on August 15, which, according to Anderson, will give the district “an idea if either project gets funded after that.”
For the centralized well project, Anderson said, Great West Engineering identified three more possible test well sites. One is “in the general vicinity of Railroad Way,” one is “property adjacent to Clancy Creek and west of town,” and one is an “area located on or near [the] Buckley or Gruber property.” At the time of the meeting, owners of those properties had yet to be contacted by Great West to discuss the proposed test wells.
Board Member Bill Hammer, a former environmental specialist at the state Department of Environmental Quality, suggesting further testing on the groundwater in Clancy. He argued that contaminants traveled through shallow groundwater in a way that might not be detected by sampling wells alone, and that sampling groundwater at depths shallower than surrounding wells could show contamination.
“We don’t really know how widespread this plume [of nitrates] is,” Hammer explained, arguing that contamination was more widespread than what has been detected. “The contamination, I don’t believe, is only where there is a contaminated well. The contamination is floating in the shallow groundwater and as you get deeper the water gets cleaner. If you have a well that is 50 feet deep, you’ve probably got a clean sample, but does that mean there is no contamination there? There is. Everyone in Montana is entitled to clean water. I’m kind of on a soapbox here but I believe … if you had X-ray vision to view underground, I have a funny feeling [the groundwater] smells like sewer.”
Hammer also suggested testing for pharmaceuticals, which Board Chair Lori Gilliland worried was expensive.
“It is,” Hammer replied. “[Testing for] pharmaceuticals is like doing a fingerprint—we might find that some wells have a lot of chemicals present that others don’t, and it would help us identify if there is one sewer system failing or if it is multiple systems failing.”
Hammer said that the increased testing could be “more ammo” to justify the well and wastewater projects.
