Water and Sewer facing lawsuit, capacity issues

Bigfork Water and Sewer District is facing a lawsuit from Snowflake Land Ventures, LLC alleging it didn’t honor a 2004 easement agreement requiring the district to annex the property and to provide water and sewer hooks-ups.

The owners of the 24-acre property at 795 Holt Drive, Andrew and Bonnie Matosich, were allegedly informed that the district did not have the capacity to serve their needs. 

“The District is not excused from its obligations because the waste line that would likely serve the property is at capacity,” said attorney Susan B. Swimley, who represents Land Ventures, in a press release. “For 20 years the District has known that it has an obligation to annex and provide water and sewer to the property. Instead, the District willingly granted capacity to others at such a pace that apparently the line was at capacity in 2009, just five years after signing the easement. What is particularly concerning here is that despite the District being aware for over 15 years that the sewer line was at capacity, the District has failed to upgrade the line.”

District representatives planned to meet with Land Ventures’ representatives on Sept. 27 and refrained from comment. 

During their Sept. 13 meeting, the Water and Sewer board of directors worked to understand the capacity of existing systems in the face of population growth.  

To determine the capacity of the wastewater plant, flow data has been compiled for three years during peak use times, such as the Fourth of July, to be compared to what equipment processes in the plant are capable of handling. The plant lift station, which half of flow passes through, will also be assessed. Staff estimated that the lift station is currently close to capacity.  

A summer storm a few weeks ago knocked out power, highlighting that the majority of wastewater lift stations do not have generator backup. District manager Julie Spencer estimated one generator installation would cost $125,000. 

“It wasn’t usually a problem back in the day, it was the [population] growth. A lift station that would take all night to fill up is needing to come down within a couple of hours routinely throughout the night,” operations manager Sergio Lopez said. 

The Sunset Drive asbestos-concrete pipe replacement project is expected to begin paving the week of Sept. 23. Sandry Construction Company was paid around $136,000 for work to date. The district also has until Oct. 16 to submit an inventory of lead and copper pipe to the DEQ as part of a larger EPA project to remove and replace the fixtures. 

The EPA’s list of emerging contaminants, which will eventually become a part of required mitigation, lists manganese as a potential concern. While Bigfork has relatively low manganese in its water, Woods Bay tested near the recommended limit two years ago. The district received a letter that a new monitoring requirement will be issued and a public notice for those affected must be posted. The next scheduled EPA testing is May of 2025.  

The next Bigfork Water and Sewer District Meeting is scheduled for Oct. 9.