Wrangell’s existing water treatment plant has been experiencing issues for years – too much organic material in the water and not being able to produce enough water at times.
The gravity fed plant filters water through sand. But organic matter often clogs the system, leaving operators to treat the water with chemicals to meet state water quality standards.
The problem with that is the chemicals react with the organics, which creates disinfection byproducts – or cancer causing, long term carcinogens.
The borough government has been planning a new water treatment plant to distribute cleaner water to the community for years, and it’s finally almost done.
Wrangell’s Capital Projects Director Amber Al-Haddad said the borough designed the existing water treatment plant to produce one million gallons a day. The new dissolved air flotation water treatment plant will be capable of producing 2.26 million gallons a day.
Wrangell’s Capital Projects Director Amber Al-Haddad said the new water treatment plant is now in its commissioning stage. That means an entire team of contractors, engineers and others has been working on site to reach the end result. The team consists of their general contractor, electrical and mechanical subcontractors, the staff and filter manufacturer representative and engineers.
The commissioning effort involves charging up the new dissolved air flotation system and filters, instrumentation, calibration and chemical feed pumps.
On the way to potable water
There’s also a lot of water sampling and testing with the state Department of Environmental Conservation to ensure potable water safety. They’ve been adjusting coagulation dosage, adjusting pH levels for alkalinity analysis, turbidity (cloudiness of the water) and other water quality standards.
“There’s a big heavy lift and we’re at the end now,” Al-Haddad said. “We should be (done) by the end of March, sending new treated water out to the community.”
Al-Haddad said they’re 87% done as of the end of January.
‘Our two federal funding agencies move to approve…pay request’
She said the borough started this project with a pilot plant study in 2016.
She said the city’s expecting 100% reimbursement from state and federal funds. But right now things are a little unclear with the new federal administration’s pause on grant and loan funding.
She said it does appear federal funds will come through.
“Just this week, we have had our two federal funding agencies move to approve the most recent progress pay request from our general contractor on this project,” Al-Haddad said.
She said for all the construction costs to date, they’ve submitted reimbursement requests and received much of that already.
Roughly $5 million left to be reimbursed
Borough Manager Mason Villarma said they’re expecting roughly $5 million more in reimbursement. He said the federal funding pause doesn’t really have anything to do with Wrangell’s infrastructure.
“At the end of the day, there’s nothing fluffy about it,” he said. “There’s no DEI involvement, there’s no gender ideology criteria, there’s no climate criteria. There was some provisions, but I don’t see why that would influence a major water treatment plant, critical infrastructure.”
He said the borough feels confident they’ll get the water treatment plant done, even if they don’t get reimbursed for the last amount of funds. He said the city has buffers in place for emergency circumstances and they could cover it.
In total, the water treatment plant project has cost roughly $23 million. That includes the engineering design, permitting and construction.
