Columbia Falls Public Utilities Open House
The City of Columbia Falls hosted an open house to review its current public water and wastewater/sewer infrastructure on Thursday, November 20, 2025. Click here to view the slides and video from this meeting.
The city will host an additional open house after additional study is performed to assess future needs in February 2026. Additional upcoming meetings include:
Thursday, December 11, 2025 (Planning Commission) and Monday, December 15, 2025 (City Council)
These will include a discussion about a decision framework to address current utility capacity and near-term development applications.
High-level key points:
Current utility rates are too low to cover the costs of service delivery, maintenance, and modernization of the systems.
The current rates were set in 2018 with only a modest increase over prior rates and without a mechanism for incremental growth over time.
Columbia Falls currently has some of the lowest water/sewer utility rates in Montana.
Near-term development proposals with likely max-out or exceed wastewater/sewer capacity in the city.
Phasing of larger developments may be required to accommodate system upgrades concurrently.
Wastewater collection and treatment
Preliminary Engineering Report (Morrison Maierle - CR Leisinger, Dom Goble, Rika Lashley)
Current system capacity is 0.68 million gallons per day.
Can be increased to 0.71 million gallons per day by eliminating porta potty use.
Can be increased to 1.4 million gallons per day by adding an additional bioreactor.
Based on the diagram below, this would future-proof the system to accommodate growth well beyond 2045.
Current capacity of 0.68 million gallons per day will be reached in 2028.
The city sewer system currently contains 10 lift stations.
Two of these lift stations (noted on the map below) are currently deficient during peak season (July), when capacity of these lift stations is exceeded.
An additional lift station will be deficient based on near-term development proposals (dark blue noted on the map below).
There is also some piping that is currently deficient during peak season (red lines on the map below).
There is an additional section of piping that will be deficient based on projected growth over the next 20 years (light blue line on the map below).
In addition to another bioreactor, the wastewater treatment plant will benefit from additional upgrades for performance and redundancy. See the diagram below for more details.
The most immediate needs are:
UV Disinfection System - poor condition, limited reliability, no seasonal redundancy, immediate need.
Solids Dewatering - immediate need to improve performance to comply with county landfill regulations.
Blowers - limited redundancy, near-term need to increase capacity.
Bioreactor - limited redundancy, near-term need to increase capacity.
Public Water System
Preliminary Engineering Report (WGM Group - Stephanie Reynolds, PE)
System Overview:
Three municipal wells, one 2.1 million gallon ground-level concrete storage tank.
~44 miles of transmission and distribution piping.
2,292 individual metered service lines.
One pressure zone with static pressures ranging from 60 to over 110 PSI
The top 3 categories for water use in Columbia Falls are:
Residential (non-multifamily)
Commercial
Irrigation
Current System Assessment Based on Modeling (peak hour of maximum day demand):
Pressures are good throughout the system.
The water main leading away from the water storage tank has higher levels of headloss than desired, indicating that it is undersized.
There are quite a few fire hydrants that do not meet goals for fire flow based on land use criteria.
Existing [well] source capacity is too low based on Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) guidelines.
Maximum day demand is 3.49 million gallons, but capacity with the largest source well offline is only 3.02 million gallons.
The system is undersized for current requirements, so additional sources of water will need to be developed.
Existing water storage capacity is nearly at capacity based on DEQ guidelines.
1.87 million gallons of water storage is required, and the current capacity is 2.05 million gallons.
Overall, Columbia Falls will need to make strategic improvements to both its wastewater/sewer and public water systems to not only accommodate future growth, but in some cases to fix current deficiencies in the system. Future conditions modeling will continue over the next couple of months to determine more specific future needs, and this information will be presented in February 2026.
