Cheney departments honored

Several city of Cheney departments were honored with awards and statewide recognition at the City Council’s first meeting in September Tuesday night.

The city’s wastewater treatment plant was honored for the second year in a row with an outstanding performance award from the state Department of Ecology. The plant was in “perfect compliance” with all requirements under its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, a task the city’s public works director, Todd Ableman, said is not easy given Cheney’s size and complex challenges.

The permit is required because it discharges its treated effluent into natural wetlands, processing about 1.4 million gallons of wastewater per day. It can be difficult enough dealing with the incoming waste streams that change as the four seasons change, Ableman said, but in Cheney’s case that is compounded by the fact it is a college town, with population fluctuations not only on a seasonal basis, but on a daily basis too.

Ableman said the award was given based upon the efficiency of the plant’s operators in areas including effluent monitoring, spill prevention and overall management of the plant. Ableman said the plant personnel, represented at the meeting by Dan Ferguson, Jeremy Myers and Mike Hooe, are a “talented” group.

“I would trust them to even fix my car,” Ableman added.

The council also received word that the city’s police department and municipal court had received a perfect audit for the second year in a row by the Washington State Patrol of the city’s ACCESS — A Central Computerized Enforcement Service System — program. ACCESS is managed by the police department’s communications division, headed by Cathy Munoz, who Police Chief John Hensley and Court Administrator Teri Cooper said deserves all the credit for the 100 percent compliance rating.

Eastern Washington University’s police department utilizes the city’s communications system, and also received a 100 percent compliance rating.

Hensley and Cooper both said it is “unheard of” to receive two perfect audits in a row, given that the communications division handled over 36,000 inquires a year over the last two years. The perfect score means that over all these data entries, records searches, reports filed, nothing was incorrect or out of place.

“Our goal is to do three (years),” Hensley told the council. “That’s quite a feat, but what are goals for. I think it’s feasible.”

In the only action item on a short agenda, the council unanimously approved a contract called a “Joint Resource Planning and Acquisition Agreement” with the Northwest Intergovernmental Energy Supply (NIES) and the Northwest Energy Management Services (NEMS) that will allow the city to meet its wholesale power needs not being served by the Bonneville Power Administration.

The agreement supersedes a pair of other load sharing agreements. Light Department Director Joe Noland said the new agreement provides more local flexibility and control and is much more simple than previous contracts.

“This agreement before was 39 pages,” Noland said. “It’s now 19.”

Councilman John Taves agreed with Noland, adding his years of experience working in the power generation industry with BPA to his endorsement of the contract.

“I have a background in this area, some expertise, and I would also recommend this agreement,” Taves said.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].