No on Sewers

They came, they listened, they said no. If the informal vote taken at Bremerton Councilman Will Maupin’s district meeting Tuesday night on going ahead with sewer planning is representative of what Rocky Point and Marine Drive residents think, area homes will remain on septic tanks for the next few years.

The meeting was held at the Norm Dicks Government Center downtown. About 100 people attended.

Mr. Maupin, who is retiring this year, invited residents of his district (district 8) as well as Rocky Point Water District (RPWD) customers. The RPWD is in unincorporated Kitsap County but is adjacent to the 8th district. The meeting’s purpose was to discuss the Shoreline Master Program (SMP) update and plans for installing sewers. This post focuses on the latter.

I have lived on Rocky Point a long time. This is the first time I remember anyone from the city of Bremerton reaching out to include us on “topics of mutual interest” (Mr. Maupin’s description of the meeting). Rocky Point is landlocked by city boundaries, but we have no say in Bremerton’s government. I suppose we could petition to be annexed, although that is a controversial subject beyond the scope of this post.

At the meeting Public Works director Alan Lobdell explained that city boundaries and sewer district boundaries don’t always coincide. (The area served by the Bremerton wastewater treatment plant has 50 percent more people than the population of Bremerton. Rocky Point is in that sewer district.) But even with that as the reason for including RPWD residents at the meeting, I still welcome Mr. Maupin’s gesture. Most of the time Rocky Point is ignored.

The sewer infrastructure would be put in by a LID (local improvement district). Mr. Lobdell went through the steps, which are laid out in state law. There are several takeaways. Local residents need to kick things off by petitioning the city. After that enough people must show interest at a public hearing for it to move forward. Throughout the process there are several chances to back out, but after assessments are made, residents must be proactive to kill it (by having owners of properties representing 60 percent of the assessed costs say no). At that point a nonresponse is a yes. The process can move quickly (it takes a year or two), so really it is best to stay involved the whole time, no matter which side you are on.

The assessments would pay for the lines and pumping stations. The preliminary estimate for infrastructure is $3 million for Marine Drive and $13.3 million for Rocky Point. This doesn’t include the cost of hookups and something called “grinder” pumps, which many properties (including mine) would need. The pumps can cost up to $17 grand installed.

The city engineer explained that most of the system would have a low-pressure main line with some parts of Rocky Point relying on a gravity system.

Septic tanks would be abandoned in place. That’s the way the Gorst project was handled.

Mr. Lobdell repeated several times that the city is required by law to do sewer planning and that whether sewers are installed is up to us. Also that the purpose was to provide information, not to make decisions. He did note that low water quality in the area creeks and surrounding salt water allows the department of health to have a say. So far water quality isn’t a factor.

A lady slyly asked him if he was planning to take an informal poll. He said he was but only after the Q&A session wound down.

After a few more questions we got to the vote. It was informal—done as a show of hands. For those favoring sewers, the vote was not encouraging. For Marine Drive 17 out of 56 people were interested in moving ahead with exploring the LID process. For Rocky Point Mr. Lobdell didn’t note the exact vote but said it was one-sided with around 34 people voting and only 8 wanting more information.

Although I don’t think we have heard the last of this, perhaps I should have my septic system inspected.