River poses substantial threat to town

PLAINS- As of late, a committee of four concerned citizens have been tackling what is in their minds a very viable threat to the town of Plains.

The committee, known as the, “Middle Clark Fork Plains Reach Recovery Group Leadership Committee (MCFPRRGLC),” which is comprised of four citizens, is a group of representatives of “stakeholders” and “interested parties” from the Plains community who are concerned  with the “...ongoing erosion and man-made unnatural changes in the river channel in the Plains Reach,” taken from a 2012 MCFPRRGLC letter laying out their concerns during a trip to Helena, Montana. The trip was to find and express to the proper governmental agencies.

MCFPRRGLC is an established “Leadership Committee” that was formed August 16, 2012 to, “establish priorities, seek out possible sources of funding, locate cooperators-both public and private-and facilitate the resolution of these problems both near term and longer term,” taken from the letter taken to Helena during the December 2012 trip to Helena,

The primary problems caused by the changing meander of the Clark Fork that the MCFPRRGLC are concerned with are the Plains Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) is at risk of being eroded away, and property erosion of the Lawyer Nursery, the Keith Property and that of property owners along the west channel. In addition, the possibility of parts of River Road West could be eroded away is also a concern.

The MCFPRRGLC is backed by Carol Brooker of the Sanders County Board of Commissioners and Mayor Greg Eitelberg, who have been representing the group in state legislative meetings. Despite the powers of the MCFPRRGLC, they must go through city and county officials to request grant money for projects, once financial figures have been determined.

The most recent accomplishment of the MCFPRRGLC was a grant of 75,000 dollars, which paid for the national engineering firm, RESPEC, to do an assessment  of the Plains Reach. A “reach” is a determined section of river or moving body of water between two points. The “Plains Reach” has been declared to be between Henry Creek and Lynch Creek.

RESPEC determined “14 preventive, integrated projects for remediation throughout the Plains Reach,” taken from a letter written to Govenor Steve Bullock and the Chairman of Longe-Range Planning Committee of the DNRC. The most important of the 14 projects the firm found was the repair of riverbank along the WWTP.

Recently, Greg Dicken, an employee of the city who works at the treatment plant, has documented the ever encroaching river along the property. He noted that within three weeks large amounts of land being washed away. “The other side of the river is where the main flow used to be... and the river just keeps coming at us.”

Dicken reported that, on Friday the 13, a manhole that went to a discharge pipe that fed treated water into the Clark Fork washed away into the river, along with the large feed pipe. As of now, only a small section of the pipe is exposed along the steep riverbank, which is continuing to be washed away, feet by feet.

“The problem is when we get a high water, it actually encircles our plant. It is actually coming from the front and the back,” said Dicken, as he described that the most imminent threat is to a UV building, which prevents the bacteria used in water treatment from being able to reproduce in the river.

In a worried tone, Dicken said, “When we get high water, it could happen sooner or later. It could be three years, it could be five years, it could be this Spring, we don’t know. We won’t know until it happens.”

On January 26, 2015, Mayor Eitelberg and Commissioner Carol Brooker, on behalf of the MCFPRRGLC, sent an application for the RRGL grant of 125,000 dollars to Governor Steve Bullock and Rep. Mike Cuff of the Long Range Planning Committee. The grant would be used for design and permits for the repair along the riverbank of the WWTP. The final estimate to repare the bank, as determined by RESPEC, would be 884,000 dollars.

RESPEC estimated the grand total for all 14 projects, the WWTP included, to be just shy of 10,000,000 dollars. This includes planning, construction and a 20% contingency.

“I’ll tell you, if we lose our lagoon, it’ll cost more than 10,000,000 (dollars),” said Mayor Eitelberg, as he explained the reasoning behind backing the proposed plan. He described the washing away of the WWTP as an, “astronomical mess,” and a, “catastrophe.”

The WWTP services just under 600 homes and businesses, and if the plant was to wash away, the town would be unable to use its water. Also, the natural damage to the ecosystem would affect the river for miles.

John Lawyer, the chairmen of the committee and owner of Lawyer Nursery, who has lost 25 acres of, “good farmland,” continues to say, ”The bridge in John Lawyer’s opinion... is the root cause... if you want to pin it on one thing, that is what it is.”

Lawyer believes that the first Plains bridge, which was built in 1910, started the problem, but only minimally. In his opinion, when the second bridge was put in, in 1975, the piers were left from the first bridge, and the second bridge’s piers shifted the dynamic of the currents. “What happens is when you put a bridge in you change the dynamic flow of the river... and the reason they didn’t take them out is they didn’t have any money,” said Lawyer, as he explained that people just want to pass it off as a “natural phenomenon.”

According to Lawyer, it is not completely known what would be done to remedy the problems, or how RESPEC would attend to the 14 projects, including the WWTP. Proposed to the legislature, DNRC and Governor Steve Bullock is that in order to safeguard the repairs to the WWTP bank, the other 13 projects must be completed in order to prevent the repairs from being destroyed.

“What we need is stronger community support, letters, phone calls, ringing the bell that something has to be done,” said Lawyer.

As of right now, the town and the MCFPRRGLC are waiting for the the grant to be passed to begin the process of repairing the bank. Only a minimal amount of rip-rap (large stones piled together) is protecting a portion of the WWTP’s bank. With the coming warming temperatures and rising waters, everybody is on edge.