Flushing tax dollars

Protecting and preserving public waters should be a priority. But a worthy goal doesn’t justify squandering limited tax dollars on projects of little or no benefit to the environment.

It’s nothing more than a nice payday for lobbyists, who earn their keep leveraging public dollars, and engineering firms, who rack up fees for questionable projects. Aiding the process are legislators who put bringing home the bacon ahead of serving the best interests of taxpayers.

When limited funds go to projects with minimal to zero value, it means less money for more critical projects elsewhere. And every wasted tax dollar comes from your pocket.

Consider the case in point — the proposed replacement of an existing and perfectly adequate bathroom facility at a public boat launch in Crane Lake with a vastly more costly facility. The current facility sits atop a watertight vault with waste pumped at least once each year from the holding tank and trucked to the waste treatment facility in Crane Lake. Annual cost for pumping the tank is about $200.

But the Department of Natural Resources, under a mandate from the Legislature, is now planning to replace the facility with a new bathroom equipped with flush toilets. The agency has $300,000 earmarked for the project.

Of the 1,600 bathroom facilities at public landings across the state, the vast majority use holding tanks. Barely half a dozen have flush toilets, and most of those are in the metro area, where access to water and sewer lines already existed.

The $300,000 allocated by the DNR is just the beginning of the cost of this potential boondoggle. Extending a pipeline 6,000 feet from the Crane Lake treatment plant to the landing will cost about $800,000. And don’t forget to add in the several thousand dollar hookup charge to the line and monthly sewage treatment bill. All told, the bill will total more than $1 million for what is essentially an outhouse, and the annual operating cost of the facility will mushroom under the plan. Don’t even think of calculating the cost per gallon of sewage treated— it will only make your head spin.

To be fair, the mile-plus pipe extending to the landing could eventually serve more than the DNR. There are 13 residences that could potentially hook up to the sewer line. But other than some interest voiced by a handful of property owners, the Crane Lake Water and Sanitary District has no guaranteed customer other than the DNR’s gold-plated outhouse. Yet even if all of the residences hooked into the line, the cost would still exceed $100,000 per residence. That’s at least five times the cost per residence of alternatives, such as cluster systems or independent septic systems.

How did such a proposal ever see the light of day? It’s about money. Lobbyists and engineering firms see big potential in the new honey pot created by the Legacy Amendment. While many of the projects funded under that program are legitimate, this one doesn’t make the grade—but that apparently doesn’t matter to those who stand to benefit financially either way. What’s worse, this was originally sold as a means of improving water quality at Crane Lake. Legislators were told the current outhouse was leaking (there’s no evidence for that), and that it could serve as a dumpsite for houseboats and RVs. But there’s no longer any mention of that in the plan. In the end, it’s a million-dollars plus to upgrade an outhouse that presented zero risk to water quality. This project, in effect, was sold on false pretenses.

A new sewer line may, in the end, be justified, but there’s no evidence for that either, at least not yet.

Sara Heger, an on-site sewage program specialist with the University of Minnesota Extension Service, is assisting Crane Lake with the development of a comprehensive assessment review that will examine whether a sewer line extension is the best option for the residences along Handberg Road. Heger has already questioned the urgency of installing a pipeline before an analysis of the treatment systems is complete. At this point, no one knows how many existing septic systems might be failing. And even if some are, it’s a stretch to suggest a pipeline is the best option before more economical options, such as an on-site mound system or a cluster system, have been explored. These options often yield better water quality for the environment than a centralized plant. At a minimum, the Crane Lake Water and Sanitary District should hold off on the sewer line project until they can actually justify it.

The Crane Lake Water and Sanitary District was formed to respond to a legitimate threat — the discharge of sewage along Gold Coast Road that compromised the waters of Crane Lake. And the district has a continuing mission — to ensure that on-site treatment systems in place stay maintained and properly handle waste.

But somewhere along the line, the mission changed into finding more customers for a sewage treatment plant that has too much capacity. It’s created job security for engineers and lobbyists, but gives nothing but lip service to the environment the districts presumes to protect.