Hayden approves HARSB budget under protest as sewer capacity tightens

HAYDEN, ID: The Hayden City Council approved the regional sewer board’s fiscal year 2027 budget Aug. 11, but the unanimous vote came with an unusually strong warning from city officials about dwindling treatment capacity, future infrastructure needs and a dispute over how the regional system is governed.

Councilman Matt Roetter, Hayden’s voting representative on the Hayden Area Regional Sewer Board, read a formal city position statement into the record before making the motion to approve the budget.

The statement says Hayden “fundamentally disagrees” with the Hayden Lake Sewer District’s approach to budgeting and believes the district has imposed conditions that increase long-term risk to the regional treatment system.

Council President Ed DePriest, Hayden’s alternate representative on HARSB, put the dispute in much stronger terms.

“We’re being extorted,” DePriest said during the meeting.

He said Hayden had little practical choice but to approve the budget because failure to do so could have serious consequences for HARSB operations.

Roetter’s written position statement reaches a similar conclusion, though in more formal language.

“The City cannot let that happen, so it is choosing the District’s flawed budget over no budget at all,” the memo states.

The Hayden Area Regional Sewer Board operates the regional wastewater treatment system used by the City of Hayden, Hayden Lake Sewer District and Kootenai County.

HARSB was created through a Joint Powers Agreement, or JPA. Each member appoints one voting representative.

Most HARSB decisions require a simple majority. Certain “Major Decisions,” including adoption or revision of the operating budget, require approval from each member’s governing body and a unanimous vote of the HARSB board.

That structure is part of the current dispute.

The Hayden Lake Sewer District required an addendum to the FY27 budget that places additional conditions on eight budget items.

Among other provisions, the addendum requires unanimous approval before HARSB awards bids or proceeds with construction on the listed contingent projects. It also prevents money budgeted for those projects from being transferred to other budget items during the fiscal year.

Hayden argues that those additional requirements interfere with the decision-making process already established by the JPA.

The city’s memorandum says the district is using the budget process to “circumvent the Joint Powers Agreement relating to major and minor decisions” and says similar actions have delayed projects in the past.

The documents reviewed by Hayden Reporter establish Hayden’s position. They do not independently establish that the Hayden Lake Sewer District has violated the JPA.

Behind the budget dispute is a more basic concern: how much treatment capacity HARSB has left.

The Fourth Amended Joint Powers Agreement establishes the treatment plant’s current design capacity at 69,565 Wastewater Units, or WUs.

One standard residential connection equals six WUs, making the current plant capacity equivalent to about 11,594 residential connections.

An Aug. 12 HARSB capacity breakdown divides those 69,565 WUs into three categories:

Together, those categories account for the plant’s full 69,565-WU design capacity.

In a report dated Aug. 14, HARSB staff said that as of Aug. 5, 1,821.30 WUs remained — the equivalent of approximately 303.55 residential connections.

That is a more precise figure than the roughly “350 hookups” that has been discussed publicly.

The number 350 has a specific meaning in HARSB’s governing agreement.

The JPA says that when unallocated capacity falls to the equivalent of 350 residential connections or fewer — 2,100 WUs — special rules governing transfers of unused capacity between HARSB members begin to apply.

HARSB is now below that threshold.

But “350 hookups” should not be understood as 350 future buildings.

A residential connection normally requires six WUs. Nonresidential users are calculated differently and may require more or less capacity depending on wastewater flow and the amount of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and solids they discharge.

A commercial user, for example, could require three WUs or more than 10.

That means HARSB’s remaining capacity is better described as residential-equivalent treatment capacity, not a literal count of future sewer pipes, subdivisions or buildings.

HARSB projects capacity could run out in early 2028

The Aug. 14 capacity report goes further.

HARSB staff reviewed the rate at which treatment capacity has been allocated during the past five and 10 years.

The five-year average is approximately 207.73 residential equivalents per year. The 10-year average is about 197.2 per year.

At those rates, HARSB staff estimates its currently available capacity could be exhausted in approximately 17 to 19 months — around January to March 2028 — if additional capacity is not made available.

The same report says developers have begun asking HARSB about available treatment capacity and the timeline for future plant upgrades, and warns that demand could exceed the capacity currently in inventory.

Hayden’s position statement is even more cautious.

The city says it has shared an analysis showing HARSB has “likely already over-allocated more capacity than can be treated by the facility” if all of the capacity already allocated were actually used.

Hayden Reporter asked Roetter and DePriest to explain the basis for that conclusion, including how it relates to current wastewater flow into the plant.

Neither had responded as of publication.

The capacity issue has an important wrinkle.

HARSB Administrator Ken Windrum told Hayden Reporter that the plant currently receives an average of about 1.2 million gallons of wastewater per day — a level he said has remained relatively flat for more than 10 years.

That is well below the plant’s current 2 million-gallon-per-day design capacity.

Windrum said HARSB believes several factors help explain the flat influent rate despite growth in the service area, including low-flow plumbing fixtures, front-loading washing machines and other water-saving devices.

He also credited the City of Hayden and Hayden Lake Sewer District with locating and correcting sources of inflow and infiltration — groundwater or stormwater entering the sanitary sewer system.

That creates an important distinction.

HARSB is approaching the end of its available capacity on paper, but the plant is not currently receiving wastewater equal to all of the capacity that has already been assigned or reserved.

Some capacity is committed before it is actively used.

That helps explain how the treatment system can be nearly fully allocated while actual wastewater flow remains considerably below the plant’s design limit.

Hayden’s position statement identifies the H3 Lift Station as an important part of the capacity problem.

The city says the existing H3 limitation prevents the treatment facility from taking advantage of the higher capacity available in other parts of the plant and argues that HARSB should be preparing to fund construction, not only design work.

The FY27 budget includes funding for H3-related design work but does not show funding for construction.

Windrum later clarified to Hayden Reporter that the proposed new plant effluent pump station would replace the existing H3 pump station, which is located on airport property rather than HARSB property.

Windrum said most of the treatment plant is capable of handling approximately 2.4 million gallons per day, while the existing effluent pumping system limits current overall capacity to about 2 million gallons per day.

He said replacing that pumping system would increase theoretical plant capacity from about 11,594 residential-equivalent connections to approximately 13,913 — an increase of about 2,319 residential equivalents.

Construction funding for that replacement has not yet been placed in the HARSB budget, according to Windrum.

For many residents, the sewer system is invisible when it works: toilets flush, drains work and sewer bills get paid.

Nothing in the records reviewed by Hayden Reporter indicates existing customers face an immediate loss of sewer service.

The issue raised by Hayden officials is what happens next.

HARSB has only a few hundred residential-equivalent connections of current capacity left to allocate, and its own staff projects that capacity could be exhausted in early 2028 if recent demand continues.

If that happens before additional capacity is available, the most immediate effect appears likely to involve new development and new connections, rather than existing residents suddenly losing sewer service.

The longer-term effect on existing residents is less clear.

Additional treatment capacity and major infrastructure must eventually be designed, built and paid for. The records reviewed by Hayden Reporter do not yet establish how those future construction costs would be financed or whether existing sewer customers, developers, HARSB members or some combination would bear those costs.

That is an important unanswered question.

It is also why the dispute over when to fund construction matters.

Delaying a project does not eliminate its cost. But the records currently available do not allow Hayden Reporter to tell residents that their sewer rates or taxes will increase, by how much, or when.

Despite its objections, Hayden voted unanimously to approve the FY27 HARSB budget and the Hayden Lake Sewer District addendum.

The city said refusing to approve the budget could leave HARSB unable to pay employees or bills and could create what its position statement called a catastrophic outcome.

Hayden Reporter sent follow-up questions to Council President Ed DePriest and Councilman Matt Roetter seeking clarification about the city’s over-allocation analysis, what actions they believe need to happen now and why the issue should matter to residents whose sewer service is working normally today.

As of publication, neither councilman had responded.

Their statements from the Aug. 11 council meeting remain part of the public record.

For now, the basic picture is clearer than the terminology suggests:

HARSB’s sewer system is working today.

But most of its current design capacity has already been committed, HARSB staff says the remaining inventory could be exhausted in early 2028, and the next major capacity improvement has not yet been funded for construction.

The disagreement is over what should happen before the system gets there — and who gets to decide.

Hayden Reporter reviewed the following records in preparing this report: