Watchdog challenges county’s Holland Lake septic variance
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) A watchdog group is questioning Missoula County’s conditional approval allowing the Holland Lake Lodge to use an old storage tank for sewage this summer.
Last week, an attorney for the grassroots organization Save Holland Lake sent a letter to the Missoula City-County Health Department and the Board of Health questioning the Board’s decision to grant a health-code variance to the Holland Lake Lodge. The variance allows the Holland Lake Lodge to temporarily use a holding tank for wastewater while the U.S. Forest Service replaces the wastewater lagoons that serve the lodge and neighboring campground.
During the February Health Board meeting, Health Department staff expressed uncertainty about approving the use of the decades-old tank because they didn’t have enough information about its size, soundness and water tightness. The members of Save Holland Lake said that should have prompted the Board to delay its decision until more was learned about the tank.
“Save Holland Lake was disappointed by the Board’s decision to approve the variance despite substantial uncertainty in the record regarding the holding tank’s actual size, structural integrity, and watertightness, and the Lodge’s projected wastewater usage,” the letter said. “Proceeding without verified baseline information raises serious questions about whether those findings can be supported by the record.”
The storage tank with its crumbling concrete is more than 50 years old. The septic service providers say it’s in acceptable condition, but no one knows how big it is. The septic service providers have pumped 2,000 gallons from the tank but one provide estimated it might hold as much as 4,000 gallons. Save Holland Lake estimates the tank holds 3,171 gallons if it is 15 feet deep.
The Save Holland Lake letter said the typical sewage flows would be 3,650 gallons a day, based upon an occupancy of 50 guests and 20 employees. That means the tank would have to be pumped daily if not more frequently. If the Lodge hosts a wedding with 200 guests, as advertised on its website, the tank would definitely fill rapidly, although the county has allowed them to use chemical toilets as a backup.
“They’ll have to have a septic hauler come in once a day or more to pump it down. It’s just nasty. How would you like your wedding going on and have the pump truck show up twice a day? And every time the tank alarm goes off at 75% (full), they have to shut down food service. So what happens when you’re in the middle of the reception and the alarm goes off?” said David Roberts of Save Holland Lake.
However, the biggest issue for Save Holland Lake is whether the old tank is watertight or not. The tank is buried less than 100 feet from the lake and 175 feet from a public water supply. If it leaks, the sewage could contaminate the groundwater and ultimately Holland Lake. According to the letter, Roberts reported to the Board that he had found standing water in the tank on Feb. 13 after it had been pumped out four months earlier. If no water was left in the tank in October, the standing water would indicate the tank is leaking.
So the Board is requiring that Holland Lake Lodge owner Eric Jacobsen conduct a two-part test to demonstrate that the tank is watertight. Health department staff will be present during critical parts of the test. Save Holland Lake said the leak test should run for at least 48 hours, not just 24, to allow time to detect leaks in the old tank and the tank should be cleaned and dried before the test is run.
If the tank isn’t watertight, then Jacobsen can’t use the tank, but the variance won’t be voided, said Missoula City-County Health Board Director Shannon Therriault in an email. As one alternative, Jacobsen would have to get a new storage tank and have it inspected by the county and the Department of Environmental Quality prior to installing it. If Jacobsen wants to propose a different alternative, he would have to request an amendment to the variance.
During the February Board meeting, Save Holland Lake proposed a different alternative: pump the wastewater to the existing 8,000-gallon septic tanks on the hill above the Lodge. Therriault told Roberts that she had also mentioned this option to Jacobsen, according to the letter.
Roberts said the Health Board should have required Jacobsen to use the septic tanks or install a new tank from the start.
“No matter what, (the old tank) shouldn’t be used as a holding tank. The piping is all wrong for a holding tank. It means the waste is basically backing up into the sewer mains to the lodge and the cabins, which means they’re likely to clog. It’s something they’re going to have to replace and why he doesn’t just replace it, I don’t know. But it’s money out of his pocket, as opposed to the lagoons, which the Forest Service owns,” Roberts said. “To approve the variance, they have five criteria that Jacobson has to meet. The point of the letter is they didn’t really meet three, maybe four of those. It’s like they went out of their way to bend their own rules to grant a variance that doesn’t make long-term sense.”
Finally, the variance is good until the end of 2028, which covers three summer seasons at the Lodge. Save Holland Lake said that length of time is unnecessary, because the Forest Service is proposing work this summer to repair and enlarge the wastewater lagoons. Since the work is projected to finish in the fall, the variance shouldn’t allow the tank to be used for an additional two summers.
Save Holland Lake is also concerned about the Flathead National Forest proposal to repair and enlarge the wastewater lagoons, which the Forest Service presented at a public meeting in Condon Monday night. The project would enlarge the volume of the lagoons to five times what it is now and Save Holland Lake questions why that’s needed if Jacobsen doesn’t intend to expand the Lodge.
"What they’re proposing is something that would support expansion bigger than POWDR’s at taxpayer expense. Jacobsen could do what he wants to do and then sell it to a POWDR in five years,” Roberts said. “(Flathead Forest Supervisor Anthony) Botello said they’d be willing to consider doing something smaller, but then he wasn’t specific about how that would come about. It seems unlikely, when they’ve gone this far in the design process, that they’d suddenly say, 'Let’s go back to the drawing board and go 50% less.'”
Save Holland Lake was formed in response to concerns that POWDR, a Utah-based adventure resort corporation and former part-owner of Holland Lake Lodge, was pushing to expand the Holland Lake Lodge into a facility that would cater to three times the number of visitors, not only in the summer but year-round. The higher numbers of tourists would put a greater burden on everything in the Swan Valley from roads to emergency services.
One of the services Save Holland Lake focused on is the sewage lagoons that serve both the Holland Lake Lodge and the nearby Holland Lake campground. The group found in 2023 that the lagoons had been improperly built and maintained, and the liners of the wastewater lagoons had failed and had been contaminating the groundwater for at least two decades.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.