Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
COALVILLE, Summit County — Coalville certainly isn't the biggest city in Utah. With about 1,500 residents, it's not even the biggest city in Summit County.
However, Duane Schmidt still decided to drive nearly five hours from his southern Utah home to be in Coalville Wednesday morning for a big event.
"I couldn't be happier. It's beautiful," said Schmidt. "I wanted to see it through to the end as far as seeing what the final product was."
Schmidt is the former mayor of Coalville, serving two terms from 2006-2014, before he decided not to seek re-election and retire to the St. George area.
The big event was the celebration for the city's new water treatment facility.
"This is probably the biggest project that Coalville has ever undertaken," said Schmidt.
Getting the plant involved a lot of work.
It ended up costing about $12 million, but without it, city leaders say no new homes could be built because the old plant couldn't handle any growth.
"If you talk about even wanting to build a house, if you don't have water to it, you can't. If you don't have a way to get rid of the sewer, you can't. So yeah, it's very important," said Trever Johnson, Coalville's current mayor.
When city leaders started looking into allowing new building permits back in 2006-2007, they wanted to know if their old water treatment facility could handle it.
"We've had development wanting to come in, four or five houses here, four or five houses there, and the reality is Coalville, in its current state with a 50-year-old infrastructure, cannot supply even minimal fire flow standards to be able to issue a permit to build," said Johnson.
... The reality is Coalville, in its current state with a 50-year-old infrastructure, cannot supply even minimal fire flow standards to be able to issue a permit to build.
–Trever Johnson, Coalville Mayor
When city leaders looked to possibly expand their old facility, they needed permission from the Bureau of Reclamation, since the land the facility was on was leased to Coalville by the Bureau of Reclamation.
When Bureau of Reclamation officials got involved, they discovered the old facility was built in the lowest spot in Coalville and were concerned if nearby Echo Reservoir ever flooded, the water would get into the treatment facility and possibly contaminate the reservoir.
The Bureau of Reclamation told Coalville their lease was going to expire and they needed to move the facility.
"We had a wastewater treatment facility that had millions of dollars invested in it, and the federal government was basically telling us your lease is up and we're not going to renew it," said Schmidt.
Schmidt began trying to figure out how a city with 1,500 residents was going to be able to afford a $12 million facility, which works out to about $8,000 a resident.
"The mathematics doesn't add up. There's no way the folks in this community could pay for that," said Schmidt.
Coalville applied for federal grants to help pay for the costs, but when the economic collapse hit in 2009-2010, that money was no longer guaranteed to Coalville.
"We were there. We were there. We had all the money put together. We were a month away from putting this thing out to bid and the money fell through," said Schmidt.
Coalville had to go through the entire process again, but eventually received the money.
Federal grants will pay for about $9 million and the city will have to come up with the other roughly $3 million.
The city took out a 30-year payment plan to pay for its portion.
"Their water treatment bills have gone up, but to be honest, if we would have stayed in the old facility, their bills would have gone up more because we wouldn't have been eligible for the grant money that we received," said Schmidt.
Wednesday, though, as Schmidt cut the ribbon on the new facility, all that fighting to get federal money is in the past.
Coalville has a new facility that should last 50 years with plenty of room for growth.
"We poll the citizens of the state, what's most important to quality of life, water is right up there. Aside from security, there's nothing we value more than water," said Walt Baker, the director of Utah's Department of Environmental Quality. "If you can't have drinking water and you can't treat your waste water, those are fundamental needs for quality of life in any community, especially in a rural community like Coalville."
"It's pretty hard for somebody to say it's beautiful when it's a waste water treatment facility, but it's beautiful," said Schmidt with a laugh.
For him, it was well worth the drive to see.
Contributing: Stuart Johnson
Related Story
New sewage treatment plant becomes a priority
It's usually difficult to get people excited about a sewage treatment plant. But residents of Coalville are looking forward to the new facility because they faced the prospect of losing the sewer treatment plant they already have.
