COEUR d'ALENE - The court case is on hold, but the phosphorus levels are still under the microscope and the improvements just over the horizon.

Not improvements like public art, which has cropped up around the Coeur d'Alene wastewater treatment plant in the last year, adding an aesthetic perk around the plant's campus in the middle of the education corridor.

Rather, it's something bigger.

Like $32 million in enhancements, as ordered by federal Environmental Protection Agency standards.

"It's a double-edged sword," said Sid Fredrickson, wastewater superintendent, on the improvements that could make the Coeur d'Alene plant the second-cleanest, most-efficient wastewater plant in the country behind Spokane Valley - Coeur d'Alene's downstream neighbor involved in the same clean water conundrum as Coeur d'Alene. "We want to be good stewards of the environment. But there's going to be a point we have to ask ourselves: How clean is clean enough?"

It would be great to have one of the best plants around, but an important part of the job is keeping user rates affordable, he said.

"Because this stuff does not come cheap," he said.

To pay for the enhancements, the city is considering borrowing the money and raising user rates to pay the $32 million bond off over 20 or more years.

And because the EPA is requiring all wastewater dischargers along the Spokane River to lower levels under the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System, the city is considering asking a district judge to order the improvements as ordinary and necessary. That means, unlike most bonds, the city wouldn't have to get voter approval to take on the debt, rather a judge can give them the go-ahead.

And if the city decides against implementing the improvements?

It could be nailed with a $37,500 per-day, per-violation fine.

Options may be limited.

"We're going to have to do this, whether we do it through the voters, whether we do it through a judge or whether we do it at the point of an EPA gun," City Councilman Mike Kennedy said last week as the City Council set a public hearing for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 18 in the Community Room of the Coeur d'Alene Public Library on whether it should ask a judge for the authority to take the money.

At that hearing the City Council could decide to send it to the voters, or ignore the federal standards.

Meanwhile, the city is researching how much user rates would be affected to pay for roughly $32 million in improvements. Those numbers aren't final, but will be shared with the City Council at an early January meeting.

Currently, wastewater fees charge about $25 a month for single-family homes, and around $2,800 for single-family homes to hook up, which is a one-time capitalization fee.

More than $30 million in improvements on the plant, which discharges treated wastewater into the Spokane River, would increase the plant's tertiary treatment capacity to five million gallons a day within five years.

The plant capacity is currently 3.8 million gallons per day.

It wouldn't be the first time a judge gave the city permission to take a multi-million dollar bond to improve the treatment plant.

In 2007, the city secured a $15 million judicial order to pay for upgrades. The city is refinancing that loan from 3.75 percent to 2.06 percent, saving more than $1.6 million for users that will be incorporated back into the rate study.

Coeur d'Alene was a part of a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency around two years ago, claiming the agency violated the Clean Water Act by approving a permit plan for Washington dischargers developed by that state's Ecology department.

However, the case is on hold pending a compromise between the Idaho agencies and EPA that could ease the original proposed permit from an average of 36 phosphorous parts per billion to 50 ppb.

The agencies discharge between 900 and 1,000 ppb now. Phosphorus encourages algae growth, which then depletes oxygen from the water that fish need to live.