Wrangell’s polishing pond, which is one of the two treatment ponds at the community’s wastewater treatment plant, flooded on Saturday. Staff also noticed that the outfall line wasn’t flowing. That’s the line where treated sewage water flows into the ocean.
During Saturday’s heavy rains, high water alarms at the plant notified employees. Public Works Director Tom Wetor said that’s common during rain storms. But then they saw the flooded polishing pond and noticed that something blocked the outfall line.
An anchored vessel near where the outfall line runs in Zimovia Strait could have damaged the line.
“The information was pointing that the line was blocked somewhere underwater, which is inaccessible to us because our outfall goes about 1200 feet off the beach, and it’s located in about 120 feet of water,” Wetor said. “There’s really no way for us to be able to work on that.”
So Public Works ended up cutting the sewage treatment line on the beach by City Park, right near KSTK’s radio tower. That way, the wastewater plant could stay in operation and the treatment pond could drain out.
Wetor said if they didn’t cut the line, many other issues would have risen, including flooding on Zimovia Highway and compromising their ability to treat wastewater.
“We kind of had no choice, really, other than to breach the pipe on the beach so that we could maintain function at the wastewater plant,” he said.
Wetor said Public Works staff stabilized the issue Saturday night.
He said they did all the mandatory reporting to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation Sunday morning.
Inspectors will do an underwater inspection
Local operators will do an underwater inspection this week.
“I think that there’s going to be limited capabilities with that underwater drone, but we’re going to see what we can do,” Wetor said. “If not, the good news is we have a team of underwater drone operators and divers that happen to be coming to town next week.”
Wetor said a drone will attempt to access where the compromised location of the pipe during the inspection. From there, they’ll work with the regulatory agency to work on potential solutions.
He said many unknowns exist right now. That will change when they find out where the damage is in the pipe.
They do not have a definitive timeline for when this problem will be fixed. Wetor said the city is posting signage, including tape, out to the beach.
He said, “The community should be advised that they should avoid City Park beach and especially recreating out on that beach, and especially, especially harvesting any shellfish or anything like that, clams or anything like that on the beach there, until this is resolved.”
Wetor said that throughout this process, testing and sampling will happen in the area until it’s back to normal.
