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Highway dirt to save Cd'A $1 million

by Ralph Bartholdt Staff Writer
| February 21, 2018 12:00 AM

Discarded highway dirt could turn into a windfall for the city of Coeur d‘Alene.

Council members banked on it Tuesday, when they elected to use 125,000 cubic yards of dirt, scheduled to be excavated from an upcoming Interstate 90 project, to level the broken and angled ground at the former Atlas Mill site. The city hopes to turn the former mill site into a model of open space and commercial development.

In a unanimous vote at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, members opted to move forward with a plan for the city to pay $495,000 to purchase the highway dirt and have it moved to the 47-acre project area located between Seltice Way and the Spokane River.

Buying the dirt from an ongoing construction site at I-90 and Sherman Avenue — where the highway department starting in April plans to remove the soil as it lowers the highway — will save the city more than $1 million, city administrator Troy Tymesen said.

If the city purchased fill dirt at market rates, it would cost about $1.6 million, Tymesen said.

“A million dollars in savings catches my interest,” Tymesen, the former city finance director turned city administrator, said. “It can happen now, it can happen at reasonable cost, and increase value at the (former Atlas Mill) site.”

The city is finalizing the purchase of the 47-acre Spokane River waterfront property that was once a lumber mill. It wants to create permanent, public waterfront access and economic development there. The official purchase of the site is slated for May. In the meantime, the city is making plans for improvements that include leveling the ground, stabilizing the shoreline and digging test holes to further evaluate if the site contains any hazardous material. So far, none has been found.

In addition, the council approved spending $45,000 in grant and permit applications and conceptual designs depicting ways to aesthetically stabilize the site’s almost 3/4 mile of shoreline.

“The erosion is working pretty hard at certain points on that river, and we’d like to shore that up,” Tymesen said.

Council members also approved spending an additional $35,000 to pay for more soil test holes at the site.

Council member Kiki Miller questioned the timeliness of some of the expenditures.

“Do we really have to do this now?” Miller asked.

“Wouldn’t it be wise to first let the community chime in on how it wanted the shoreline used, before the city pays money for permits to stabilize and design the waterfront?”

Tymesen said the paperwork process will take a year, which should be adequate time to gather public input.

Council member Dan English said using the dirt from the highway project to add value to the Atlas site seemed appropriate.

“It sounds like a great recycling process,” English said.