Stephen Allen, Chief of Staff for the Lincoln County Commission, called into the Weekday Wake-Up on Monday, July 14 with a recap of a meeting held last week between county, civic and business leaders regarding future plans for how to handle septic waste in Lincoln County.

A full transcript of the interview can be found below.

(0:00) Joining me live over the phone this morning is Lincoln County Commission Chief of Staff (0:04) Stephen Allen. Good morning Stephen, how are you today? (0:08) Good morning Duke, how are you? (0:09) Hey doing well, appreciate your time today and updating us on an issue that’s popped (0:14) up around Lincoln County with septic systems and where to dump septic waste. (0:19) Understand the county was part of a meeting last week with civic leaders and some businesses that (0:24) were involved in the industry regarding a study that was released and some information.

But (0:29) Stephen if you could go back to the beginning on this, tell us what the issue is for maybe those (0:33) who are unaware of it and what’s going on. Absolutely, the three commissioners identified (0:40) early on about understanding how important it is to protect the watershed in Star Valley, (0:45) both in the upper and lower valleys. And so last year they commissioned this report (0:50) to look at opportunities for handling the septic waste better.

And we know that the (0:57) conservation district up there is working with WARS on another water study. And so we’re looking (1:02) at the results of those as well, which we hope will come out in the next six months. And then (1:07) of course through our planning and zoning, we’re also doing some sampling of some areas to look at (1:12) what the watershed’s doing.

And our whole plan was to take all three of these, (1:17) come together and say, what are better ways for us to protect the watershed? (1:21) What is it actually doing now and getting a scope of what we need to do in the future (1:26) to keep it moving forward? So that’s where we all started. And although it was a fairly pretty (1:33) shallow report, it really touched, we asked them to look at Alpine and talk to them because they (1:39) have a membrane system treatment plant. We asked them to talk to Afton because Afton has a lagoon (1:45) system.

And then of course we asked them to look down in South Lincoln County due to the industrial (1:50) growth and how do we handle sewage with industrial plants. So we kind of looked at the county as a (1:55) whole. It was meant to be a jumping off point.

So this meeting we had, I got to thank all the (2:01) cities and the mayors and the community that came out and supported coming to the septic meeting and (2:08) really giving the commissioners all their great input about what they’re dealing with, what (2:13) they’re willing to do, what they’re capable of doing or not capable of doing. And of course we (2:18) had the septic dumpers there so they could tell us their perspective and some of the things that (2:24) they’re having problems with. Once we gathered that information from that meeting, we’re now (2:28) going back and saying, okay, give us some hard data.

You know, if you could help out, what’s the (2:35) amount that you could take on a daily or weekly or monthly basis? We’ve asked the septic providers (2:40) to give us what’s the tonnage you’re dealing with on a month-to-month basis, both in septic (2:46) and porta potties as well. We identified that as an additional issue. So RV dumping seems to be (2:53) pretty well contained and that we have enough RV parks and of course Afton’s got the RV dumping (2:59) right in town and most of your large truck stops have that availability.

And even Diamondville’s (3:06) got the ability to dump RVs. So that was, you know, porta potties and septic seem to be what (3:12) we’re narrowing it down to and we’re just taking it to that next level and we’re probably doing (3:17) this for another year easily in putting something together. But ultimately I think we all take a (3:23) responsibility.

We know Afton still has about 60-plus septics into their city and of course (3:30) Star Valley Ranch is all on septic and all of those septics, we’re the only ones through (3:35) planning and zoning that can permit those for the state of Wyoming. And that was something that (3:41) came out of this as well is that I think the city’s finally understood that the county can’t (3:46) operate into enterprise accounts because we don’t make laws in the county, only the cities make laws. (3:51) So cities can set up water and sewer and force people to get on those and assess them to get on (3:58) those systems for central water and sewer.

The county however only operates based on statute, (4:04) what the legislators have given the county’s authority to do. So when we go out and permit, (4:10) it isn’t really permitting for the county, it’s permitting for the state DEQ. So that was one of (4:15) I think some of the highlights that we kind of understood a little bit about whose role is what (4:19) governmentally and then we started the open process.

But it was a great conversation and (4:25) everybody participated and was very positive about going in the same direction for solving (4:31) this problem. Steven, this issue became a little more urgent recently as you know with the town of (4:37) Afton and their council making the decision to no longer accept septic waste from outside the town of (4:46) determining that it was causing problems to their system. And so that kind of made the issue a (4:51) little more urgent.

Now this waste has to be shipped out of the county which is increasing (4:55) costs and so do you feel like that is pushing the timeline a little bit or trying to make this (5:02) and what do you see as the end goal solution? Do you see a dumping location within the county (5:08) outside of the municipalities? That is a possibility and we’re looking at some (5:15) opportunities specific in South Lincoln County. We’ve got the Wyoming Business Council coming in (5:20) and looking at a project that we’ve started to address the industrial piece of that and we (5:27) think we can add a septic dumping there. But we’ve really had great output from Copeville, (5:33) Opal, LaBarge that want to take on septic dumping which would help a lot to release some of that (5:41) and still keep the pricing of that fairly reasonable so they don’t have to go (5:46) all the way to Marbleton or over to Soda Springs and so on.

I think the real thing is that (5:53) really came about as far as what happened in Afton and I think Afton did a great job in (5:59) handling that. We certainly respect their municipal authority to what they want to handle but their (6:05) lagoons are in the county and one of the practices that had been allowed in the county for some time (6:12) is dumping directly into sewer drains. Whether that agreement was a handshake or what but (6:18) obviously the dumpers felt like that was something that they were allowed to do and (6:22) obviously that kind of backed up and really created kind of like you said the urgency of this problem.

(6:28) So the dumpers have been really gracious to understand they can’t do that anymore (6:33) and that we’ll work hard to move that forward to help them out on that and give them other (6:38) alternatives. And even Star Valley, the leisure valley there, what we call the wagon wheel (6:47) has offered to look at taking septic as well. So we’ve got several opportunities that have (6:53) come out of this meeting that I think will get us to that urgency and solution.

(6:59) Lincoln County Commission Chief of Staff Stephen Allen on the weekday wake-up this morning. Stephen (7:02) appreciate your time in the update. So just walk through again what’s the next steps, (7:08) what’s taking place now after that meeting held last week? Well next steps was I reached out to (7:13) the dumpers, asked them for what their tonnage is.

I’ve reached out to the cities and said which (7:18) ones are willing to do what. I’ve already had some great responses like I said Copeville, LaPalle, (7:24) LaBarge and Leisure Valley or Star Valley Ranch. So those four we’re looking at I just need to get (7:32) them some numbers and say what does that look like and then turn around and say can your existing (7:37) processes handle some of it and then what do we need to do to expand the facilities to handle (7:43) future.

But until I get all of the numbers from the dumpers of what they’re actually dumping, (7:49) you know I can’t tell the cities what to expect. So that’s kind of the next thing we’ve got to get (7:54) those dumping numbers, know what’s really being dumped and then turn around and apply it to see (7:59) which cities can take what and then maybe divvy it out after that. Lincoln County Commission (8:04) Chief of Staff Steven Allen on the weekday wake up.

Steven thank you so much for the update we (8:09) appreciate your time today. My pleasure always always thank you Duke. It’s all part of the (8:13) weekday wake up this morning on the SBI radio network.