(Sage Smiley / KSTK)
Wrangell’s Assembly has approved a $19.5 million contract for a new drinking water treatment plant for the community. Borough officials say the new plant will solve issues with water production and treatment that have plagued the old plant for decades.
Wrangell’s gravity-fed water treatment plant sits on a hill about a mile outside of town. And since it came online in 1999, the plant has been plagued by problems.
“This has been a long time coming, and hopefully our community will have clear good water,” said Wrangell Mayor Patty Gilbert. On October 11, Wrangell’s Assembly took a major step toward addressing those issues – approving a $19.5 million contract with Sitka-based McG Constructors to break ground on a new water treatment plant that’s been years in the making.
One issue the new plant will address is the amount of organic material in Wrangell’s source water. The current water plant cleans water by filtering it through sand, and gets easily clogged – it’s not the right kind of plant for the organic-heavy Wrangell water. It means water operators have to add chemicals at the end of the treatment process to meet state water quality standards.
But the chemicals react with the organics in the water and create cancer-causing, long-term carcinogens, called trihalomethanes (TTHMs) and haloacetic acids (HAA5s), also known as disinfection byproducts.
The slow-sand filtration plant also strains to keep up with peak water demand. Bafflingly, some parts of the plant seem to have been built backward.
Today, no one knows why the plant was built the way it was – the lead engineer on the project passed away in 2019 and borough officials have long stated there’s a lack of comprehensive records on the plant’s process.
The new water treatment plant will be run on what’s called a “Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF)” or DAF system. It works by using a chemical reaction to make organic matter in the water clump together. Little bubbles of air are streamed through the water, floating the balled-up gunk to the top, where it’s skimmed off.
The plant’s since-retired operator told KSTK in 2021 that a new DAF plant should solve both the issues with flow and with disinfection byproducts.
One of Wrangell’s huge hurdles in making a new water treatment plant a reality was finding funding. In 2018, when Wrangell’s Assembly first approved a plan for a DAF plant, the estimated cost was $9 million. But skyrocketing costs and inflation since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic more than doubled the cost today. The engineering for the project alone cost almost $1.5 million.
“For the public, the total project funding that we are securing as of tonight is $23,362,366,” Mayor Gilbert said. She commended the work of borough staff on finding the funding to make the much-needed project happen.“There’s what, 10 different sources of money cobbled together? It’s amazing. It’s truly amazing.”
The funding comes from local savings, state and federal grants and loans. The last piece of funding fell into place at the same time the assembly approved the construction contract, a $1.95 million loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Borough officials say they plan to cover the debt service for the loans through local water utility revenues and interest on the borough’s Permanent Fund. But it shouldn’t come at a vastly increased cost to users – the borough’s finance department has proposed a 5.5% increase to water rates next year, to keep up with inflation. Water rates in Wrangell jumped around 10% last year, and 30% the year before – in large part to lay the groundwork for paying for the huge water plant project.
“I mean, it’s just been a ton of work,” said Borough Manager Jeff Good. He congratulated borough staff – including Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad, Finance Director Mason Villarma, and Public Works Director Tom Wetor – on their work to secure funding for a new plant.
“It’s been a group effort to try to get to this point where we could actually get this award,” Good said, “And this gets us started on a replacement of our treatment plan. So just a huge thank you to all of them for the amount of work that’s gone into this to get it done, and then also the assembly as well for continuing to push and get us over the hill.”
So, the long dreamt-of new water plant will finally be a reality for Wrangell. Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad told assembly members that construction could begin as soon as next month (early November).
The contract stipulates that construction should be finished by September 2024, although borough officials say they plan to apply for funding extensions and extend the construction contract to account for the late construction start and long lead times on some materials needed to build the new water plant.
Get in touch with KSTK at news@kstk.org or (907) 874-2345.
