DAWSON CITY Going to court was probably the last thing John Steins wanted to do on the day after he was sworn in as mayor of Dawson City.

'We went in with real trepidation,' he told his new council members the day after that event.

The town had to appear in court to provide updates on the construction of a new sewage system for Dawson.

Meeting territorial court Judge Heino Lilles wasn't too bad, but the Crown counsel opened fire, the mayor said.

'He gave us a brow-beating like I've never had before in my life,' he said in an interview. 'I felt completely chastised, like I was back in school.'

Steins recalled the lawyer listing what he referred to as Dawson's 20 years of stalling and stonewalling on creating effective sewage treatment.

But, 'our counsel did an admirable job of putting our case forward,' the mayor said.

Still, Steins was terrified when he was asked to address the court.

'My knees were knocking, because I wasn't expecting to have to get up and say anything.'

The new mayor did not reject the need to somehow deal with secondary sewage treatment, but agreed with past mayors that the cost of mechanical treatment is beyond the town's means to finance.

He also reflected the majority of local opinion, as expressed at several meetings over the last two years, that no matter now effective lagoon treatment might be, it would strain local confidence to have such a system located upstream of the town's water supply.

'It's a psychological barrier that people have to locating such a thing on the water aquifer.'

Besides that, neither of the sites picked as possible sewage lagoon locations is near enough to town to be used without a great deal of additional construction cost. The nearest site is located on a placer mine claim that the claim holders don't seem to be interested in selling.

Steins was pleased to report to town council that Yukon government (YTG) engineers have developed a variation on the lagoon technology which might see the entire operation reduced to a size that could be contained in the north end of Dawson itself, in the open ground beneath the Moosehide Slide.

This site was rejected earlier as being too small for a three-cell lagoon system. However, tests held in the tanks beside the screening plant in the fall of 2005 have convinced the engineers that three cells are not necessary for the weak effluent Dawson puts out once its waste water has been screened.

As reported earlier, none of the contaminants were present after treatment in the second cell, and most were gone after one.

Steins didn't have full details, but it appears that a subdivided single-cell aerated lagoon aided by improved screening and filtering may hold the answer the town has been seeking, at a cost it can afford to maintain annually.

'It requires a very small footprint that could fit easily into the north end,' Steins said.

No geotech work for this project has been carried out yet.

YTG will pay the capital cost of construction and the town the O&M.

The mechanical plant was axed when its capital cost hit $19 million and it became clear it would cost about $750,000 annually to run it.

The aerated lagoon proposal was touted to be $12 million at the beginning of the project when YTG took it over after Dawson's last council was sacked in April 2004, with annual O&M of about $360,000

Informed sources indicate the need for new force mains and the cost of facilities for pumping the effluent up the valley have raised the capital cost by at least half and made the annual costs rise as well.

At first blush, the latest proposal is said to be about $7 million.

'We couldn't nail them down on the O&M, but it's looking like around $160,000,' Steins said.

' ... We ended up leaving the court elated. I thought I was going to prison, and I thought I was going to be planning my tattoo for next week, but as it turned out, we left triumphant.'