Use it or lose it.

That’s the message taking shape as Kalispell faces future capacity shortages in a major sewer line that runs along Meridian Road and serves some of the city’s highest growth areas to the north and west, with no money set aside to put in new sewer lines for a fix.

A recent sewer analysis found one bottleneck in the line and estimated that with existing flows and capacity promised for future projects, the line has enough unallocated capacity to accept sewage from only about 24 more houses.

City officials plan to try to address looming shortages in the short term by enacting a new policy that takes back any unused sewer capacity from stalled development projects if their sewer allocations expire at the state level.

Tim Calaway hopes Kalispell does that so his project can move forward. He wants to build a 65-unit apartment complex on North Meridian Road near Three Mile Drive.

The Meridian Apartments project was stuck on hold through the recent recession, but Calaway is now ready to go. He’s got a conditional use permit from the city. He has stubbed in water and sewer lines at a cost of about $60,000. 

The only problem is that there’s not enough unallocated sewer-line capacity left for him.

“At this point I’m ready to proceed,” Calaway told the City Council during a work session on the issue. “I do hope you understand what I went through to get this far. I’d like to go forward.”

The city’s proposed fix? 

Take back sewer capacity that was promised to Bloomstone, a 185-unit subdivision the city approved on Four Mile Drive. The sewer capacity was allocated but never used as the project ground to a halt during the recession.

The developer of Bloomstone has put in several hundred yards of streets and curbs plus water and sewer lines, city officials estimated last week. But the development hasn’t been finished within three years. That means its sewer allocation has expired with the state of Montana. And with that state expiration, Kalispell can take that sewer capacity back and allocate it to other projects, forcing Bloomstone to the end of the line.

“We could do that,” City Attorney Charlie Harball said about the policy the City Council will consider at a meeting tonight. “It wouldn’t just be for Bloomstone. It would have to be for everybody. If in three years it expires, then your place in line expires.”

The policy could have ramifications for many projects in the city. 

Kalispell annexed large tracts of land for subdivisions that got mothballed during the recession. Such vacant land now makes up almost 40 percent of the area inside city limits.

Yanking sewer capacity back from Bloomstone would make some room in the pipe — enough to accommodate Meridian Apartments and the developer of the Fox Trotter subdivision that says he’s also ready to build.

“That probably extends us out a couple more years,” Susie Turner, Kalispell’s director of public works, said about the amount of sewer capacity that would be freed up.

The policy would not create enough sewer capacity for Willow Creek, a 471-lot subdivision that the city approved on Foy’s Lake Road. 

To have enough sewage capacity, Willow Creek must build a force main and lift station to route its flows around the bottleneck to a line that’s closer to the wastewater treatment plant and still has lots of excess capacity.

Willow Creek is offering to join with the city on an estimated $1 million project to enlarge that force main and lift station as the first part of the westside interceptor, a three-phase project that would install large-diameter lines up to Three Mile Drive and then along Stillwater Road and West Reserve Drive. 

The interceptor is the long-term fix for sewer capacity shortages in north and west Kalispell.

Members of the Kalispell City Council are starting to wrestle with some big questions about the westside interceptor project: If or when its various phases need to be built and, trickiest of all, how to pay for it.

Plugging the three-phase, estimated $13.5 million project into the city’s sewer impact fees increases them significantly.

A proposal already on the table to increase the minimum sewer impact fee from $2,499 to $4,257 to pay debt for the city’s $22 million wastewater treatment plant expansion has been stuck in review by members of the Impact Fee Advisory Committee for more than a year. The committee has had no stomach to vote to recommend the City Council increase the fees by that amount. They argue such fees would grind growth to a halt even as the local economy starts to recover.

Recalculating the sewer impact fee to be able to pay the debt for the westside interceptor would increase the minimum sewer impact fee to about $5,700.

There may be some options to buy more time and forestall the westside interceptor’s need, but the project has been in the city’s facility plans for years. 

Kalispell could try to make developers pay for the sewer lines in exchange for reimbursement through latecomers agreements. It could try to dump some or all of the project’s cost on existing sewer customers through higher rates. Or it could just not build the westside interceptor and let growth eventually be limited by existing sewer line capacities.

Phil Guiffrida III said Kalispell needs to start having a serious talk about how to pay for such capital improvement needs — a talk the city has been avoiding.

“We need to get serious about how to fund all this stuff. We can’t put it all on the backs of impact fees or on the backs of rate payers,” Guiffrida said last week. “Whatever comes out of this, funding, funding, funding. We need to get serious.”

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.