Published December 2003

Public-private pipeline project presses onward

Snohomish County Business Journal/JOHN WOLCOTT A $25 million pipeline project under way in Everett includes a deep-diffusion wastewater pipeline into Port Gardner Bay south of the Port of Everett alumina dome (on the left).

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

Work has begun on a $25 million wastewater pipeline project in Everett that will clean up discharges into Everett’s inner harbor as well as in the lower Snohomish River north of the city.

Currently, the Kimberly-Clark paper mill pours 35 million gallons of treated wastewater from its manufacturing process into the inner waters of Port Gardner Bay daily, and both Everett and Marysville sewage treatment facilities pour more than 15 million gallons of cleansed water into the river.

Now, after six years of planning, designing and negotiating, a public-private partnership has been formed between the mill and the two cities that will resolve each one’s pollution problems, and save millions of taxpayer and corporate dollars.

Treated wastewater from all three sources will flow through Kimberly-Clark’s new pipeline project that will extend 4,200 feet offshore and 350 feet into the depths of Port Gardner Bay. The cities of Everett and Marysville will split the cost proportionately with Kimberly-Clark.

The 54-inch, high-density polyethylene pipeline, which is expected to replace an aging, leaking, 50-year-old wood-stave pipe by next summer, will save Everett and Kimberly-Clark about $10 million each compared to installing separate pipelines.

“The partnership gives us a better project because more people are benefiting from it and it’s benefiting more elements of the environment,” said Tom Thetford, Everett’s public works director.

The project includes:

• A new, 6,600-foot-long land-based pipeline from the Kimberly-Clark plant to Port Gardner Bay at a point south of the Port of Everett’s alumina storage dome.
• A shallow, 1,400-foot-long marine pipeline that will be buried in an intertidal zone.
• A 2,800-foot-long deep-water diffuser line, held in place at 350-foot depths by large concrete weights.

The mill expects to pour 35 million gallons of wastewater a day through the pipeline, along with another 10 million gallons a day from Everett’s treatment plant and 6 million gallons a day from Marysville.

The new pipeline will enable Marysville’s expanded treatment plant to increase to 12 million gallons a day soon, with the potential for reaching 20 million gallons in the future, according to city spokesperson Doug Buell.

In September, the Marysville City Council awarded a $9.6 million contract to Imco General Construction of Bellingham to build a 3.7-mile-long pipeline from Marysville’s treatment plant to Everett’s plant, remodeling a control building, adding a new maintenance building and improving the treatment facility’s filtering system.

Traveling from the Everett plant, wastewater will flow over the Snohomish River instead of into it, as before, then through the new Kimberly-Clark pipeline into Port Gardner Bay. The pipeline’s capacity of 105 million gallons a day allows considerable room for growth for all three users, city officials said.

Everett will be spared the expense of burying a pipeline along Everett Avenue, from East Marine View Drive to the Kimberly-Clark plant, because an unused water pipeline under the street can be linked into the new pipeline network.

Plant officials said they will be able to use treated municipal wastewater as a coolant in their manufacturing process, eliminating millions of gallons daily that Kimberly-Clark now draws from the city’s mountain reservoir.

Also, the outfall project will enable the city to restore a natural beach next to Pigeon Creek No. 1 by removing riprap and old landfill in the area. The Port of Everett will provide a trail and a public access viewpoint next to the restored beach.

The land portion of the pipeline should be completed by Jan. 31, 2004, with the near-shore and deep-water diffuser line finished by the fall. The beach restoration and viewpoint should be completed before next spring.

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