(Courtesy City and Borough of Wrangell)
A small landslide Friday morning (October 6) destroyed an area of Wrangell’s solid waste transfer station, according to borough officials. The burn pit is closed until further notice.
Wrangell Public Works Director Tom Wetor explains that the pit where borough staff burn combustible waste is located near some steep cliffs.
“Some smaller rocks started coming down, so it was pretty apparent that something was going on there,” Wetor said. Then, at about 9:30 a.m. a larger slide happened. “Luckily, nobody was injured. But a pretty good amount of rock did come down and took out our entire burn racks, the concrete blocks and the steel racks and I-beams and everything that we have there, all of that was completely destroyed. Luckily, that was it.”
Wetor says staff have barricaded off the area on the north end of the solid waste transfer station and won’t be accepting most burnable materials for at least the next week.
“There is some concern with the stability of the cliffside there and some additional material that appears like it might be coming down also, so we have barricaded the area off,” Wetor says. “Right now things are pretty unstable there. And I think we need to give it some space and let it do its thing.”
He says the burn pit will likely have to be rebuilt in a different area.
“We’re going to try to salvage what materials we can try to rebuild what we can, and we’ll probably rebuild the burn pit more towards the closed landfill that’s there where the cliffside isn’t quite as high and the rock appears to be more stable than then what’s right above where the burn pit is now currently,” Wetor says. That’ll happen “once we’re able to safely get in there and start digging through the materials and see what we can salvage.”
The burn pit is one of the only ways Wrangell disposes of waste on-island. The vast majority of Wrangell’s solid waste is baled and shipped south in closed containers by barge and rail.
If parts of the pit are unsalvageable, a new burn pit could come at a steep cost. Wetor says the locally-sourced metal racks used to burn large materials – like construction waste or felled trees – cost around $10,000 apiece.
Wetor says if Wrangell residents are able to hold onto burnable materials for a little while, he’d encourage them to do so.
“It was a pretty big near miss there this morning,” Wetor says. “We’re gonna have to assess some of that hillside and ultimately, we’re going to try to rebuild and get acceptance of burnables back online as soon as we can.”
He says the solid waste transfer station will still accept small burnable materials like paper, cardboard, or very small amounts of yard debris while staff work to salvage the burn pit and resume normal service.
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