It would be tough for Coalville Mayor Duane Schmidt to find humor in the Broadway musical “Urinetown,” about a city where people pay to relieve themselves. He’s in a race against time to raise several million dollars to build a new water treatment facility for his North Summit community.

“I’m feeling the squeeze,” he said Wednesday.

The current sewer plant was built 50 years ago on federal Bureau of Reclamation land near downtown. It was a “win-win,” Schmidt said. The lease expires in October of 2014 and cannot be renewed. Unknown at the time, the plant sits below the level of the Echo Reservoir dam. If the dam failed, the plant could contaminate the water, he explained.

Since taking office five years ago, Schmidt said raising money for a new plant has been a top priority and he succeeded. A spending bill in Congress was supposed to pass last September providing the needed funding. Only it did not pass.

“It’s hard enough to put together $9 million for a project, but to do it twice is quite the task. It’s putting together $18 million to do a $9 million task,” he said. “Me and my staff have put in hundreds of hours of work on this project and we haven’t even put a pencil to paper yet.”

Congress was only going to provide half the money. The other half was pledged by the Utah Division of Water Quality. That entity has again pledged about $4.7 million. About a quarter of that is a zero-interest loan to be paid back over several years. The rest is a grant.

The Bureau of Reclamation has said it will extend the lease so long as it sees the city actively building its new plant, Schmidt said. But since it takes more than three years to build one from scratch, there still isn’t much time.

It’s awkward to be searching for handouts, Schmidt said, but $9 million is a big price tag for a city of about 1,500 residents. Coalville, meanwhile, has had to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in maintaining the aging plant over the years. Schmidt estimated his administration alone has spent almost $200,000 modernizing the plant.

“I’m optimistic we’re going to get it,” he said. “We don’t have a choice in the matter water quality is everybody’s business.”