The city of Deer Park has begun a $7.5 million project to replace the plastic liners in its three effluent storage lagoons, which together can hold up to 135 million gallons of wastewater. 

Roger Krieger, community services director for the city, says the current lagoons have been in existence for more than 20 years. They’re located in the 1300 block of East Sixth Street in Deer Park. 

“We’re having the contractor take out the old liners and install new ones, and hopefully they’ll last another 20 years,” he says. 

There will actually be two layers of liners in each lagoon, Krieger says, with a leak detection system in between. 

Work began on the project in late October, Krieger says. Contractors Northwest Inc., of Coeur d’Alene, is the contractor. J-U-B Engineers Inc., of Spokane, is the engineer on the project. 

“Their schedule shows it done by the end of 2016; I think that’s optimistic,” he says. “It depends on how the winters go, and how soon they can get into the liners.”

Currently, sludge removal has been completed on two of the lagoons, and earthwork is under way on those, Krieger says. The lagoons are essentially large pits in the ground, he says. 

“They’re basically just excavated dirt, and then the liner goes in them,” Krieger says. “Then they put ballast rock on them, so they end up looking like gravel ponds.”

The project is being funded primarily through a Centennial Clean Water Fund grant from the Washington state Department of Ecology, Krieger says. The department prioritizes funding for projects based on several factors, Krieger says, such as the size of the project, size of the community, the income level of the citizenry, and possible water contamination levels. 

“It’s rated as the No. 1 project in the state by the Department of Ecology,” Krieger says. “You secure more money the higher you are on the list … it depends on the finances of our citizens, and one of the cells has a leak, so we can’t use the whole thing.”