Quincy council talks water treatment transfers

QUINCY — The Quincy City Council Tuesday evening unanimously approved giving the mayor ands his staff the power to negotiate a transfer of the city’s industrial wastewater treatment facility (IWTF) to the Port of Quincy.

“This motion is limited to authorizing the mayor to negotiate,” said City Attorney Alan Galbraith. “It does not bind the council, or mandate a transfer.”

“The council must find the terms of the transfer in the best interests of the city,” Galbraith added.

The IWTF treats water coming from the city’s large food processing firms and data centers. According to City Administrator Tim Snead, the city has recently spent nearly $4 million on upgrades to the IWTF, most of that coming from state and federal grants.

Commissioner Brian Kuest, who represents the city of Quincy on the three-member Quincy port commission, said the move to transfer the IWTF improves transparency as the city and the port discuss the future of the treatment facility.

“It allows us all to be a little transparent,” Kuest said. “We’ve talked with the city about transferring the existing facility for a year.”

However, Snead told the Columbia Basin Herald that talks won’t start in earnest until the facility and its main users have their discharge permit from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — permission to discharge treated water into the bureau’s West Canal.

However, representatives of agricultural firm Lamb Weston, which has a major potato production facility in Quincy, were concerned the transfer might affect their pollution discharge permits, and that uncertainty over the fate of the IWTF has caused the company to expand in other locations rather than Quincy.

“We’ve been in the community for 52 years, and we’re the largest employer in Quincy. We’ve paid $27 million into the industrial wastewater facility, and we’re really invested,” said Mark Peterson, plant manager for Lamb Weston in Quincy.

“We’ve passed on two expansion opportunities because of the wastewater issue,” Peterson said. “That’s 250 jobs that went elsewhere.”

“It’s critical to Lamb Weston that the city not rush (into a transfer) without consulting industry,” said Brandon Mauseth, an environmental manager for Lamb Weston in Quincy.

The city also approved sending a letter to Microsoft signaling “the city’s intention to have Microsoft assume management, design, and construction” of the city’s $24 million industrial reuse facility, designed to recycle cooling water used by Microsoft’s data center so that company can minimize the water it pumps from the ground or send to the IWTF.

The city is asking Microsoft to finish installing filtration equipment and water softening equipment specific to the reuse facility, which is under construction and currently only processes industrial wastewater for reuse by Microsoft.

Galbraith said Microsoft can move more quickly to get the reuse facility finished — which needs about $10 million more work to be completed — than the city can.

“This letter helps Microsoft secure funding,” Galbraith said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.