Around 20 Heeney residents made their way to the Lower Blue Fire Protection District and Community Center building May 29 to listen to a presentation about a sewer feasibility study, ask questions and provide feedback.

Summit County completed a feasibility study on building a sewer system in Heeney this year. Dan Hendershott, Summit County’s environmental health manager, said he has received inquiries from residents asking why no system exists for nearly 20 years.

Hendershott presented findings from the study to the board of commissioners May 13, and design engineer Ryan Gomez and project manager Simon Farrell from JVA Consulting Engineers, which completed the study, joined him for the presentation in Heeney two weeks later.

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“The next steps will be up to the community on whether or not you go forward with a sewer system or continue with the on-site wastewater system treatment that we’ve been working with for decades,” Hendershott said.

With Gomez and Farrell, the second presentation went more in-depth than the one for the commissioners. 

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Gomez gave an overview of how sewer wastewater systems work. Farrell discussed the alternatives assessment, or the different options JVA looked into for treatment and discharge, as well as details about the proposed collection system, funding and sewer district organization.

Hendershott emphasized a few main points — the county is not trying to push a sewer system onto Heeney, it would be an expensive undertaking and, especially in a place with lots as small as Heeney, a sewer would provide some benefits over the current on-site wastewater treatment systems.

“The setback from a leach field, or soil treatment area, we call it, to a well is 100 feet,” Hendershot said. “You can see the problem. When a property is only 100 feet long, and you’re trying to get these separation distances, it becomes a real challenge.”

Once Hendershott, Gomez and Farrell were done presenting, Hendershott read off a list of questions some of the residents had provided. The questions asked about details of the proposed system, how the study was conducted and if engineers had considered certain possibilities and challenges.

The 26 presubmitted questions covered a range of topics, like why specific plots of county land were not proposed to be used, whether a discharge pipe would have to cross U.S. Forest Service land, if the treatment facility would stink and how the system would affect Green Mountain Reservoir’s water quality. 

The presenters’ answers gave more insight into the study, clarifying what information its findings do and do not provide. Hendershott said the study was a “10,000 foot-level evaluation of what a system might look like,” and there would need to be more in-depth engineering done to move forward with the project and concretely answer some of the questions.

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Residents asked about the finances of the project, from the funding of the study to the financial impact on Heeney residents if the sewer project were to happen. The county spent $25,000 on the study, and one resident questioned why it did not use that money for something like road repair.

“I mean, a significant amount of the budget does go to roads and bridges,” Hendershott said.

“Not here!” a chorus of Heeney residents responded.

Commissioner Nina Waters attended the meeting and took the opportunity to address the residents’ dissatisfaction with road maintenance. She said she was not on the board when it approved the sewer study, so she can not speak to that decision, but pointed out that the county’s 2025 budget allocates a record amount, nearly $11 million, to roads.

“We’re still trying to figure out how we’re going to continue to do that at a pace that doesn’t necessarily bankrupt the county,” Waters said.

One resident said Heeney has other more urgent issues that need to be addressed and called attention to the ages of the residents in the room, most of whom were older.

“We try to look, you know, decades into the future,” Hendershott said. “My guess is eventually sewer is going to come to Heeney, just like it has to many other small communities in the state. The question is just when.”

Several questions asked about how a sewer system would be funded, and Hendershott gave a similar response each time.

“‘What are the estimated monthly costs to the people connected to the system?'” Hendershott read from the list of questions. “I don’t have a good answer for that, because there are so many different ways you can fund a system.”

As just a few examples of the variability in funding, Hendershott said a wastewater district could impose a tax on everyone within its borders or use fees to only target those connected to the sewer. 

“The tricky part is the variability in funding and the variability of how you service that debt,” Farrell said. “Even for the same treatment system, you could have monthly user rates that are wildly different for the same capital cost.”

Another question asked if participation would be mandatory, and Hendershott said, generally, it would not be required. If an on-site treatment system fails and there is sewer available within 400 feet of the property, though, then the homeowner would have to connect.

Hendershott added that it would be up to the district, but it would be likely that homeowners with older on-site systems would need to prove their systems worked properly instead of waiting for them to completely fail.

“I’ve seen homes in Heeney where you flush the toilet and you see it come out in a little rock hole in the ground in the backyard,” Hendershott said. “That is not a very safe system for protecting surface or groundwater, so I’d probably support those kinds of systems needing to connect.”

The full report from the study is available on the environmental health page of SummitCountyCO.gov. A recording of the meeting is available on the Summit County Colorado YouTube page.