The Town of Plains has secured the last piece of funding to relocate its wastewater treatment facility. Last week, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) announced a grant worth $5,148,500 for the project. That represents nearly 90% of the project’s funding.

“The grant will allow us to finish the project and protect the Clark Fork River and save rate payers millions of dollars,” said Plains Mayor Dan Rowan. “This is the biggest part of the funding package. I was extremely excited.”

In February, the Plains Council voted on a plan to relocate the wastewater treatment facility. The plan calls for an aerated lagoon with a continuous discharge, the same procedure currently used by the town. The project will cost $5.3 million and with operating and maintenance costs of about $145,000 a year.

Rowan said the FEMA grant was only awarded to one project in the state of Montana, so the state recommended the town’s project to the federal program. He added that Montana’s senators Steve Daines and Jon Tester both wrote letters in support of the project.

“The town really appreciates the senators getting behind the project and helping us,” Rowan added. “I’m not sure we would have received it without their support.” Staff from the senators’ offices were the first to call Rowan and notify him the town had received the FEMA grant.

Rowan said the town council preemptively voted to raise sewer rates in anticipation of needing more funds for the wastewater project. “I don’t know that we’ll need another rate increase with this grant,” he noted. Current rates for the Town of Plains are $26.81 per month for sewer with $4.50 per 1,000 gallons of usage and $23.31 a month for water with $1 per 1,000 gallons used.

The current lagoon was created in the 1980s, but has been losing shoreline to the Clark Fork River each year. In 2018, the river swept away 47 feet of shoreline in a two-week period and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had to replace tons of riprap along the shoreline of the lagoon property and that of resident Randy Garrison, who owns the adjoining property. After that, the town began actively working on a plan to relocate the wastewater treatment facility.

Plains has already received $300,000 from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the project, $500,000 from the Treasure State Endowment Program, $450,000 from the Community Development Block Grant and $125,000 from the Renewal Resource Grant/Loan program.

Rowan said that now the grant administrator and engineering partners will work to finish the design for the wastewater treatment facility and then put the project out for bid. He said the town hopes to break ground on the project possibly in April or May and hopefully by fall have a new working facility.