THE INSIDE POOP

Everybody poops and it all runs downhill -- if you’re lucky. But only a few will show up to a meeting to examine the cost of poop. Last night in Valier attendees included the four council members, the mayor, the three town employees, two engineers, one funding expert, and four citizens. Reasons for not attending included: 1) you’re going to do what you want anyway, 2) I never know when the meetings are because I don’t read the Valierian because there’s nothing in it anyway, 3) Wednesday is church night, anyway. Maybe we should rename the town “Anyway.”

There really is a certain amount of attendance fatigue setting in. Meeting after meeting to approve ever larger amounts of money for projects required by the State of Montana. Only a few years ago we went through a big sewer improvement project which did NOT keep us from having one violation after another when we sent in our sewage samples. So the same engineers were called back to propose more changes. The two town workers had said they thought there probably just needed to be more aeration to get oxygen to the “bugs” that eat the bad stuff. The engineers presented three fancy systems to do that. The first one, the cheapest and most obvious, is a cover like a hot tub cover supporting a baffle and a system of pipes with holes in it to blow air through the sewage. The other two depended on fancy systems of digestion, sludge handling, and so on. Naturally we voted for the first alternative, but I wonder why that wasn’t proposed as part of the last big push.

The engineers assured us that we had enough lagoon cell capacity to handle six hundred people. This cheered the people who want Valier to develop dozens of new houses because “the oil boom” is bringing in "tons" of inquiries to the mayor about such projects. (She says she can’t tell us how many. I wonder why not. Maybe she doesn’t WANT to tell us. Simple enough to keep a tally or even a mailing list. How much is real estate agents cruising the boom areas of Montana?) Lagoon cell capacity is simply how much storage we have for sewage to sit and “cure.” The other processes involved, like the UV sterilizer that we were assured would work but didn’t, are clearly over capacity.

We are fortunate in one respect. Our “finished” effluent can go in a little unnamed stream (anyone for a naming contest?) that runs to Bullhead Creek which has no fish in it. Otherwise, to protect the fish we would have to remove our ammonia from the sewage, which a very expensive process. One engineer, whose enthusiasm for “bugs” energizes his presentations, said he thought that things could go too far. For instance, he thinks that if the state wants to limit hormone disruptors (most insecticides work by interfering with the “bugs” ability to reproduce which also interfere with human hormone systems) that’s probably going too far though hormone disruptors are powerful causes of human disorders.

All these improvements will raise our rates from between $12 to $80 more than we are paying now. In short, badly managing this process by making poor choices on treatment strategy and by failing to take advantage of grants, loans and subsidies from various sources, can mean some Valierians will not be able to afford their homes. The main way to secure funding from various entities is to assure the funders that everyone in town is on board, in favor, supportive, and grateful. There was no evidence of that at this meeting.

We repeat to each other, “Oh, everyone is going through this. All the infrastructure was built about a hundred years ago, so what do you expect?” That might be valid, but should it be reassuring? It means increased competition for funding.

We say, “People here are old. We can’t afford these fees. We’d better build housing for young people.” But houses in Valier stand empty because their owners have died and the heirs can’t decide what to do. There is no renovation plan for recovery of usable houses. No one has taken a pencil to the back of an envelope to see how many present tax-paying citizens are likely to be gone in five years. Well, at least moved over to the cemetery. The people already there knew how to make do, recycle, adapt. Their grandchildren want everything new and convenient. They want their cars sparkling and their lawns green. It’s a matter of pride.

The grain elevator uses city water. Evidently they have not been billed in the past. No one has ever checked to find this out earlier. People are pretending they don’t know about the new shuttle elevator in Conrad that will probably shut this one down. The elevator is the most prominent bit of architecture in town, except for the new water tower, but we don’t think about it. Building it was in the distant past, deconstructing it is still in the future.

We all live in bubbles, going up and down the same streets, sticking to the same schedules, thinking about the same problems. One of the hardest parts of being citizens is thinking “outside the box.” Instead we tend to want to know what the other town’s box is like so we can copy them. I didn’t think to ask last night how we could get this electrically driven blower aerating system off the electrical grid. Photovoltaic? Wind? (We’ve got plenty of both.) I didn’t point out that despite the population of older people, the pressure to build, the need for jobs, and the repeated desire for housing for the elderly who need a little help, NO ONE has come up with a practical plan for such a project, not even rehabilitation of the empty houses in town.

I’m also becoming increasingly paranoid about exploitation of small towns by big city slickers. Yes, engineers. There were thousands of dollars of hourly billed study and illustration in last night’s presentation, all dressing up a project that is simple (aeration and covering) and was obvious in the first place. WE paid for it all that fancy stuff and then we didn’t even attend to hear about it. I’m reading about frakking and the high chances of underground water contamination and wondering if this is why there was a big push to get Valier hooked up to the Tiber Dam long-range water piping system. Every time I see the road being upgraded, I ask, “What industry would justify all this? Transportation of oversize modules? Heavy trucks for drilling?” Yup.

Here are photos of some of the houses standing empty. They range from hopeless to pristine. Some of them are listed for sale: http://eastsloperealty.com/valier_residential/residential.html

This one is across the street from me.

This is on the next corner south.

If I'd been rich twenty years ago, I'd have bought this old church.

This house is a greenhouse in back.

This house has a frightening back story.

This house is across from the school.

The tree to the left are a little orchard.

This one is on the highway.

A huge fenced yard here.

An old man lived down in the middle of this for years.

That's the lake in the background.

Not maintained.

Maintained.

Good old-fashioned sun porch.

A gingerbread house.

Might be occupied.

Kitty corner from the post office, which is not in imminent danger of closing so far House to the right is also empty.