There’s in-fighting in Teton Valley.
Idaho towns on the west side of the Tetons and their elected officials are caught up in a tangle of lawsuits over typically sleepy and stinky, yet crucial infrastructure: wastewater treatment plants. Tensions go back decades but have recently reached a tipping point.
How the latest battles – including a mayoral recall effort – play out could determine how much the mountain towns develop. In 2025, the federal government sued Driggs, Idaho for violating federal water regulations and dumping dirty water in nearby rivers. Then this March, the down-valley town Victor sued Driggs for what the town’s elected officials allege is a bad partnership sharing Driggs’ plant. Victor residents then sued Victor. On April 4, concerned residents held a town hall to get to the bottom of how the towns’ water treatment infrastructure has gone down the drain.
KHOL’s Jenna McMurtry sat down with the editor of Teton Valley News, Kira Corasanti, in her Driggs office, to hear how the two towns got here.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. – Ed.
Jenna McMurtry: Victor residents are suing over the city’s approval of a big annexation. That land would likely be used to build the wastewater treatment plant. Can you talk us through how exactly we got here?
Kira Coresanti: I came into the editor position at Teton Valley News in November [2025], which was about 19 years too late to a 20-year dispute. I think tensions have been growing for a long time, at least from talking to people around town and reading reports from the last two decades. A lot of this escalated in this past November, with the pre-context of Victor pulling away from a joint wastewater treatment plant with Driggs last March. Then in November, Victor wanted to explore coming back with Driggs to create a joint wastewater treatment plan again. And that’s kind of where I think things started to fall out.
We’ve gotten in a situation where these elected officials have had either confusing counseling or miscommunication breakdowns that have led to a lawsuit and a recall petition and multiple other lawsuits and concerned citizens.
JM: What are residents’ top concerns when it comes to this whole debate on the wastewater treatment plant?
KC: A general consensus from many people I’ve talked to is that they’re not against Victor pursuing its own wastewater treatment plant. They’re just against the methods that Victor has taken to get there. I know a prime concern for many residents in this valley is the environment and pollution and what’s that going to look like if a wastewater treatment plan is sitting right down the road from them. So I think people have concerns about the location of the annexed land and concerns about a council that miscommunicated. I think people are more angry with the lack of transparency than them pursuing another site.
JM: Why are folks upset about this specific parcel of land?
KC: This land sits just outside of Victor. [Town councilors] sought to annex it starting last summer, 2025.
Basically the wastewater treatment plant would be kind of against those codes and so I think people were concerned that Victor is not following its own code. They’re concerned because they think that Victor made steps to annex this land before a public hearing, before asking Victor citizens about it. They are upset that they were not included in the process. This recent lawsuit that Victor residents have filed on April 3 is about that situation, that they think Victor was not catering toward hearing its residents opinions before annexing the land.
JM: So we have Victor suing Driggs, the Feds suing Driggs, Victor residents suing Victor. Are those all the lawsuits?
KC: Yes, as of right now, those are all the lawsuits. So Victor is asking for what they propose, a $35 million wastewater treatment plant. They’re asking a judge to deem it a necessary expense.
JM: I’m wondering how this fits into the larger picture of mountain towns, especially since 2020. We’ve seen this interest in people moving here and towns not really keeping infrastructure up with the desire to grow. Do you feel that’s representative of what’s going on?
KC: I think that growth is like the crux point, for lack of a better term, for this dispute. I think there are a lot of people that believe that having three wastewater treatment plants — Tetonia has its own wastewater treatment plant — in this valley is important.
I think those projections say that we’re supposed to hit 40,000 people in the valley by 2050, which is more than double the population right now. People are like, ‘Yeah, where is all that poop going? We need another wastewater treatment plant.’
I think a lot of residents, and obviously not speaking for all, would agree that they aren’t against development. They’re just against irresponsible development.
JM: Thank you so much for being an expert on this topic for us. It’ll be really interesting to see where it all goes.
KC: Thank you. Can I just say it’s funny that we’re just fighting about poop? We just need a place to put our poop and it’s erupted into basically three lawsuits, a recall petition [of Mayor Will Frolich], and concerned citizens.
