CRANE LAKE— In an effort to stretch their dollars, the Crane Lake Water and Sanitary District is looking to make greater use of managed individual septic systems as it pursues its mission to improve water quality in the border lake.

The switch in emphasis, from an earlier focus on expanding the district’s centralized wastewater treatment system, reflects the high cost of laying pipe in a region of shallow soils and abundant bedrock, where installation costs can run as high as $160 per foot.

Since the initial construction of a wastewater treatment plant and central sewer connections in and around Crane Lake’s “Gold Coast,” back in 2004, district officials had envisioned laying pipe as it expanded its service area through a number of different phases. With $3 million from a combination of state bonding, legacy dollars, and IRRRB funds to finance expansion, including the Handberg Road extension, that goal may had once seemed possible.

But the dollars haven’t stretched as far as officials might have hoped. At the same time, the district has faced criticism from some residents for years for not exploring cheaper alternatives, and took flak statewide two years ago over its costly extension of a sewer line to a DNR boat landing on Rocky Road.

It’s all left the district’s board more circumspect as it weighs the next step in its expansion— determining how to best serve about 20 additional, mostly residential parcels on Rocky Road, a spur that juts northwest from Handberg Road to access lake homes across the bay from the Gold Coast. With about $2 million left from their original $3 million allotment for the Handberg Road expansion, District Board Chair Rob Scott said he’s hoping to spend “no more than $1 million” providing service to those properties. Laying pipe to all those properties would cost about $2.4 million according to project engineers, so the district is now looking at a hybrid approach that would target currently failing septic systems for replacement and ongoing maintenance by the district. It’s an unusual approach, but not unprecedented, notes Scott, who learned of the approach from Otter Tail County in west-central Minnesota, which implemented a managed district of individual or clustered treatment systems several years ago.

The Crane Lake board had hoped to move forward with a combination approach at their April meeting, but delayed a decision in order to reconsider whether to extend pipe or look at alternatives for a couple of the parcels located further away from the forced main installed as far as the boat landing in 2015. Scott said he’d like to get the total cost for the Rocky Road work down closer to $800,000, but that will depend on which way the board opts to go on a couple of the properties, including whether to run a pipe to a lightly used garage and office maintained by the Crane Lake Snowmobile Club.

In either case, said Scott, the board is almost certain to opt for a mix of pipe for parcels close to the main, with a decentralized approach in other locations. “I’d predict about 30-40 percent will be centralized, with the remainder decentralized,” said Scott.

The district has already begun moving in a decentralized direction. Scott said the district installed eight individual septic systems last year, using a similar approach as Otter Tail County. That means the district agrees to find the location for new septic systems, hires the engineers to design them, obtains the county permits, and pays the contractors to build them. Once built, the district regularly inspects and maintains the systems to ensure they continue to operate as designed.

The property owner, for their part, pays an initial assessment, typically $7,500, along with a monthly maintenance fee.

The new approach should allow the district to expand its service area significantly further than it could under a purely centralized approach. The cost to install an individual septic system can range from $10,000-$15,000, while hookups to the centralized plant can cost $100,000 or more, depending on the location of the residence.

According to Scott, the district will be focusing initially on replacement of failing systems. “What we’re doing right now is going out district-wide and reviewing all of the current installed systems,” he said. “That’s a pretty good endeavor to take on and it will give us a better basis for determining how to proceed.”

If systems are found to be failing, property owners would have the choice of joining the sewer district and having the district assume responsibility for replacement and long-term management of their septic system, or replacing the system themselves.

Scott said the district is also exploring making offers to property owners with compliant systems to join the district, although they still haven’t determined what a reasonable initial assessment would be for that option. Property owners would benefit, Scott notes, by having the district continue to maintain the system and to pay for eventual replacement.

The change in the district’s approach is winning approval from some of their harshest former critics. Brent Bystrom, an engineer who has regularly criticized the board for what he sees as over-reliance on laying expensive pipe, said he was pleasantly surprised to see the board’s new openness to alternatives. “I think they are going down the right path now,” said Bystrom.

The board is hoping to make a final decision on how to proceed with Rocky Road at their May 3 meeting. If so, work is expected to get underway later this summer.