Long-standing issues with the sewer system at the Cascade County Adult Detention Center have reached a breaking point and county officials are considering their options.

Last week, the jail experienced multiple sewer line backups, following years of system failures in the cast-iron plumbing system that was installed when the jail was built in 1998.

Past failures required partial replacement with copper piping to “maintain basic functionality,” according to the county, and for several years prior to 2019, the sheriff’s office handled facility maintenance in-house rather than in coordination with the public works department, “which limited opportunities for comprehensive planning.”

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Since 2019, CCSO, county commissioners and public works have coordinated to address ongoing infrastructure needs, including more than $6 million worth of capital improvements, according to the county.

During a Jan. 30 commission discussion with CCSO, public works and the county financial officer, Undersheriff Scott Van Dyken said that the jail’s “biggest liability, right now, today,” is plumbing.

Les Payne, county public works director, told commissioners that he had maintenance staff in the jail last week addressing backups. He said county crews broke snakes trying to clear the clogs and the county had to call in a contracted plumber, who pulled out sheets, towels and jumpsuits.

Commissioner Joe Briggs said they’d dealt with similar issues in the past and the city had forced the county to install a grinder to prevent problematic jail sewage clogging the city system.

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Van Dyken said that each toilet is designed to prevent larger items from being flushed, but inmates find away, stuffing while blankets down.

A pipe chase, a cabinet area with plumbing connections, serves four cells, Van Dyken said, and sometimes if an inmate doesn’t like someone in the cell below him, they’ll clog the toilet so it backs into the lower cell.

In some pipe chases, several inches of water will back up and potable water fittings are leaking, Van Dyken said.

Payne said his crews are going through the jail looking for major leaks, tightening things up and doing what they can right away and a plumber is scheduled to do a thorough check of the facility to give the county a cost estimate for rebuilding the pipe chase cabinets.

Officials discussed a potential option of adding water shutoff valves for each section to allow work to be done without having to shut down entire pods.

“It would be a logistical nightmare, but we could get it done,” Van Dyken said.

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Payne told commissioners that the immediate sewer backups had been fixed, but they don’t know if underground lines are compromised and every time pipes are snaked and jetted, there’s a risk of breaking the cast iron. They’ve used cameras each time they jet, Payne said, and aren’t aware of significant breaks.

Plumbing in the kitchen area also needs improvement, including a new grease trap, Payne said.

The county previously cut out part of the kitchen floor to replace pipes with PVC and changed a solution used in the kitchen, which reduced the grease issue. Public Works solicited bids last year to replace the grease pit, but they came back too high so Payne said he pushed the project to this spring in the hopes of better numbers.

Payne said that the county hires people who are essentially custodians, but is then asking them to do higher level work in the jail.

Public Works is “overwhelmed with the amount of work up there,” he said of the jail and they should discuss the possibility of hiring a master plumber.

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Van Dyken said they get the frustration since it’s a “neverending thing of updating this thing just so it functions. It’s just showing its age.”

Sheriff Jesse Slaughter said issues are “piling up” in the building occupied by those who are “avidly going out of their way trying to destroy it. It’s a massive challenge.”

Shortly before discussing jail plumbing, commissioners had been discussing capital project priorities county wide.

“Well, this just blew up the capital plan for a little while,” Commissioner Eric Hinebauch said.

Payne said Public Works works hard, “we just can’t keep up with it,” and that he thinks CCSO or a third party should handle jail maintenance.

Briggs said that’s how the jail was previously handled and why they now find themselves in this situation.

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Payne said it might be time to bring on a master plumber as a county employee who would focus on the jail.

Briggs said it had been considered in the past and should review again, though it wouldn’t help with the immediate jail sewer problems and the county would have to contract for the work.

Between issues at the jail and Expo Park, hiring a master plumber could be worth the cost and a lot of past issues should have been caught before they blew up, Briggs said.

Payne said he’d work with human resources since there will be some union issues and challenges with the pay rate.

“We gotta give it a shot,” Briggs said.

Trista Besich, county finance officer, said she’d look at how much the county has paid contract plumbers in recent years for a comparison to the cost of hiring a master plumber, since the county has been cutting positions, they’d need a straight correlation to fund a new position.

The group discussed the possibility of adding modern features that might make the system more efficient and save money in the long-run while they’re replumbing the entire facility.

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Slaughter said they had previously talked about the possibility of a levy to support jail operations so the county wasn’t reliant on contract beds for revenue.

It could be an option to solve overcrowding and they’d be able to shut down entire sections to work through facility infrastructure issues methodically, Slaughter said.

It might not be palatable to the public, but the plumbing bill could change that.

Another facility in the state is dealing with similar plumbing an infrastructure issues and it has a $10 million price tag, he said.

It the Cascade County jail’s plumbing issues were to require a project that expensive, shifting the revenue model for the jail and lowering the population could allow the county break the project into phases.

Such a plan would cut contract revenue for federal and state beds, Slaughter said, but they’d always have some federal beds since those inmates have to held while appearing at the Great Falls federal courthouse.

Under the current model, Slaughter said the county is “bleeding both ways.”

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Briggs said that he agreed with Slaughter’s logic but historically, if a levy is “perceived to be for the benefit of inmates, it’s not gonna pass.”

He said a factor in jail funding is that the county hasn’t been wholly reimbursed for state inmates for years.

Slaughter said the county may be at a point that a tax increase is needed to keep the jail running as it and “if we’re gonna do that, maybe we should rethink the model. It might be an opportunity to look at this with fresh eyes because we might not have a choice.”

Briggs said the may have to present the options to the public as how many mills the current model requires versus how many mills a model that caters to the county and cuts contract beds would require.

“We need to have the conversation with the public,” Hinebauch said.

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Briggs said the county had issues at Expo Park that were difficult to address because they couldn’t shut down the facility, so when COVID cancelled events, they took that time to do infrastructure work.

They could have a similar possibility for the jail sewer system now, he said.

Briggs said any cost estimate of $2 million or more would trigger a public vote.

If the jail sewer work is emergent at $3.5 million, “we’ve got a problem,” so he said it was important they understand the magnitude of the problem, a repair timeline and if any federal funding assistance would be available.

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“I’m not optimistic that we are not going to have to go out for the minimum of an intercap loan,” Briggs said.

The county is currently using an intercap loan through the Montana Board of Investment toward the gymnasium construction at the Juvenile Detention Center and has used the loan for the Expo Park grandstands replacement and the courthouse roof project.

Historically, the county has put cash reserves away for large anticipated capital projects, but in the case of the jail sewer, the county doesn’t have the cash available, he said, and if the county needs an intercap loan, that will impact other county capital projects.