Mountlake Terrace forum: regional water and sewer leaders warn of aging infrastructure and rising costs

Mountlake Terrace hosted a regional utilities forum where leaders from Everett, Alderwood Water and Wastewater District and the City of Edmonds outlined pressing water and wastewater challenges, described major ongoing projects and urged residents to prepare for rate decisions tied to deferred maintenance and rising construction costs.

Gary (Mountlake Terrace public works director) opened the meeting by stressing regional interdependence. "This is really a team effort here," he said, describing Mountlake Terrace as a single point of receipt for Everett-supplied water and reviewing the city's system footprint: about 90 miles of water mains, three storage tanks across four pressure zones, 70 miles of gravity sewer main and four lift stations.

The forum's central message was the same from each presenter: much of the region's system is aging, key pieces must be replaced and costs have climbed sharply. Ryan Sass, Everett public works director, said Everett's system "provides water for about a little over 3 quarters of the population of Snohomish County or about 670,000 residents," and highlighted two "generational" projects: replacement of Reservoir 3 and upgrades to Everett's water filtration plant. Sass noted construction inflation has pushed costs higher: "we had 26% increase in construction costs in 1 year over…