Tammah, formerly known as Basecamp, violated state groundwater standards

JACKSON - For well over a year, Teton County residents and water-quality watchdogs fought state officials and environmental regulators, arguing that a septic system for a glamping resort near Teton Village would likely fail, sending human sewage into Fish Creek.

This October, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality confirmed that those fears had come true.

DEQ Director Todd Parfitt issued Tammah Jackson Hole, formerly known as Basecamp, an Oct. 29 notice of violation for its system.

The wastewater treatment facility, which sits a few feet southeast of the geodomes where guests stay, appears to have leaked wastewater onto the ground. Elevated ammonia levels detected in nearby groundwater have reached seven times the state standard.

When originally proposed, Basecamp planned to haul away human waste.

The DEQ, however, pushed for a septic system arguing that storing waste for hauling has the potential for a larger, catastrophic failure. DEQ is now prohibiting the use of the septic system and requiring waste hauling.

"While we appreciate the DEQ's action here, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone given that this system was constructed in a wetland area," said Dan Heilig, a retired attorney who now serves as a board member for Protect Our Water Jackson Hole.

"I hope we can learn from this experience and do a better job of siting and designing small wastewater facilities in the future, especially in the Class 1 Fish Creek watershed," Heilig added.

Via a public records request, the DEQ on Tuesday released documents that Basecamp submitted Monday showing that it has taken steps to address the problem - including by turning off septic pumps on Nov. 4, the day it received the notice, lining the edge of the mound that appears to have leaked, finding and fixing aerators that weren't working correctly inside septic tanks, and pumping most tanks. Basecamp has retested the groundwater well that showed elevated signs of ammonia, as well as two septic tanks, and drilled a new well to determine whether the problem is isolated.

Ammonia levels in the new well are below the DEQ's groundwater standard, Basecamp officials said in their response.

"This leads us to conclude that the ammonia spike issue is isolated to monitoring well #4, and not caused by the septic system," Basecamp officials wrote, though the response is unsigned.

According to LinkedIn, Jonathan Hooke is the CEO of the Utah-based company that owns the resort, Basecamp Teton WY SPV LLC.

"Basecamp is committed to operating in compliance with our permit. We now feel that we have addressed all of the issues that were noted by DEQ," the company wrote in its letter. "Basecamp requests that we be allowed to operate the sand mound promptly."

Basecamp officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment Tuesday. DEQ officials did not say by press time Tuesday whether it has lifted restrictions on operating the septic system.

After a week-plus closure, the rebranded company plans to reopen its resort today, according to the voicemail on its main line.

In Wyoming, Class 1 water bodies like Fish Creek are afforded the highest level of protection, and state law prohibits "no further water quality degradation by point source discharges" other than dams.

Fish Creek, which starts flowing near Teton Village and meanders through Wilson before dumping into the Snake River, already is impaired by e. coli, a sign of pollution from human feces.

The DEQ is on track to designate the creek impaired by nutrients, nitrogen- and phosphorus-based compounds that can promote plant growth but cause widespread fish kills. At the same time, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department also is trying to understand why annual counts of cutthroat trout in the creek have plummeted - and whether nutrient pollution is to blame for the decline.

Ammonia, a nitrogen-based compound, can be toxic to fish when found in surface water, and scientists have long documented connections between groundwater on the West Bank with surface waters like Fish Creek. The two are intertwined because the aquifer on the West Bank is porous and gravel-based. In the spring, groundwater levels can rise enough to push groundwater above the surface.

The presence of ammonia in groundwater around septic systems also is a problem for another reason. It indicates that the system isn't working.

In other words, it's a sign that a septic system isn't moving toxic compounds from "a more harmful state to a less harmful state," said Teton Conservation District Executive Director Carlin Girard.

Basecamp, now Tammah, has come under fire for over two years, well before state officials approved its operations on roughly 4.6 acres of state trust lands, which are managed to generate money for Wyoming's K-12 schools.

Teton County officials have sued the state, which has argued the county should have no oversight of development on state lands. Watchdogs like Protect Our Water Jackson Hole also have filed lawsuits, including one that led DEQ to admit that it improperly granted Tammah a permit to install a septic system.

That kicked off a public process where hundreds of people raised concerns about the development impacting Fish Creek.

As fights raged about Teton County's ability to police development on state lands, Basecamp refused to work with county regulators and, later, built its first septic system too close to wetlands, leading community members to mistrust the company.

The DEQ ultimately made Basecamp move the septic system, but granted it a permit to build a separate raised mound system.

In doing so, the DEQ put the onus for building the system properly on Basecamp, which Teton County residents opposed because of the company's failure to build its first system correctly.

The DEQ did, however, require Basecamp to test the system for leaks before it opened. Afterwards, the DEQ required Basecamp to sample groundwater monitoring wells for pollutants each quarter.

"To its credit," Heilig said, "DEQ did require a ground water monitoring program. And it was those monitoring wells that determined the exceedances of the ammonia standard. Without that, we would have never known that the system was not functioning properly."

In May, Basecamp opened, rebranded as Tammah.

Test results before opening came back clean: Groundwater results for ammonia, fecal coliform, nitrates, chloride and pH were below state standards. But in September, after roughly four months of operation during the busy summer months, those monitoring wells kicked back a concerning result, according to DEQ's notice.

Samples sent to DEQ on Sept. 17 indicated that the ammonia level in a well was 2.26 mg/L. That's roughly three and a half times higher than the state standard for ammonia in groundwater, which is 0.5 mg/L.

The DEQ directed the company to resample the well, and state officials visited the resort on Oct. 11. When they did, they found another problem: Water on the eastern side of the raised mound septic system, which sits in the middle of the resort's operation.

"The approval of Basecamp's permit application was premised on the standard design of a sand mound septic system where effluent in the sand mound septic system should percolate downward and not outward," DEQ Director Parfitt wrote in the notice. "Water observed at the edge of a sand mound system is an indication that the sand mound septic system is not operating correctly."

When Basecamp resampled the monitoring well for ammonia, the result was even worse. On Oct. 22, the company reported levels of 3.86 mg/L, about seven times higher than the standard.

The DEQ issued its formal notice of violation seven days later, accusing Basecamp of violating its permit by improperly building the septic system and reiterating that building it was the company's responsibility. The violation could cause the DEQ to fine Basecamp up to $10,000 for each day the violation occurred, issue a temporary or permanent injunction against the company - or both.

The DEQ ordered Basecamp to immediately stop using the septic system and instead haul away human waste.

State officials also gave Basecamp 20 days to evaluate and propose "corrective action" for the sand mound septic system, the water pooling on its east side and the elevated levels of ammonia. After that, the company has another 10 days to provide DEQ with a report summarizing its evaluation, fix and operational plan.

In its response, Basecamp said it immediately turned off the pumps and has since identified a layer of clay that was preventing water from percolating down into the soil and causing it to move laterally. Basecamp "penetrated" that clay layer, excavated trenches around the sand mound and filled them with gravel and protective material. That caused downward percolation, the company said.

"We anticipate no further standing water," Basecamp wrote, adding that DEQ's Teton County Engineer Brad Ellis observed the work.

Basecamp closed Nov. 3, according to the company's voicemail, but was set to re-open today. The News&Guide stopped by the resort Tuesday morning and spoke with an employee who said she couldn't speak to the issue but would pass the reporter's contact information along to someone who could. The News&Guide also sent an email requesting comment to Basecamp's old email and its new, rebranded Tammah email, and left a message with CEO Jonathan Hooke. Nobody from Basecamp returned those requests for comment as of press time Tuesday.

Luther Propst, chair of the Teton County Board of County Commissioners, commended the DEQ for "upholding the law."

"Basecamp has operated with reckless disregard for water quality, and I'm glad that DEQ has shut down that septic system," Propst said, citing the notice of violation as evidence.

When the State Board of Land Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve the glamping business, the company had promised the state $60,000 a year and a 10% share of any annual revenue over $600,000.

Jason Crowder, acting director of the Office of State Lands and Investments, did not return a call asking whether that money had come through.

Tammah charges $405 a night for family suites and $328.50 for king suites in December. In mid-October, the company joined the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce.

This story was published on November 14, 2024.