School, sewer department agree on hookup

By ALEX STRICKLAND / Bigfork Eagle

After going back and forth for months over costs and regulations, the Bigfork Schools and the Bigfork Water and Sewer Department reached an agreement recently to allow the high school's new concession building to be fully serviced.

Frustrated by what the school district deemed the too-high cost of hooking up to Bigfork's water and sewer system, the district drilled a well near the football field to provide water for irrigation as well as water for the restrooms in the new concession building.

But Julie Spencer of the Bigfork Water and Sewer District said that according to her district's regulations, wells can only be used for irrigation inside the water district and that any buildings have to hook up.

"They're not allowed to do it for human consumption," she said to the Eagle at the time.

Eventually, it was deemed that because of the building's sparse intended uses over the course of the year, it did not constitute a public water supply and thus could be served by the district's well. But the building would still require a sewer hookup to the Bigfork Water and Sewer District that would cost about $19,000. A public water supply is defined by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality as serving more than 25 people at least 60 times per year, a number Bigfork Schools Superintendent Russ Kinzer said the building would not reach.

However in recent weeks, the two entities hammered out a deal that would credit the school for getting rid of the 2-inch meter previously used to irrigate the football fields, thus lowering the cost of a hook-up to $3,365.68.

"The capacity for a 2-inch water meter is a lot," Spencer said. "It will actually help us in the long term because we won't have them using all that water."

Spencer said that between 300,000 and 500,000 gallons per month were used on the football field during the summer months.