Water plant tops prelim capital request list

Borough officials placed two items related to water use atop the 2014-15 capital budget request list.

The list itself has yet to be completed. Borough assembly members said at the Nov. 12 assembly meeting they would work to revise items lower on the list, and possibly break one big-ticket item – the purchase and development of the former Mill property -- up into phases, which might be more palatable to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which plays a role in evaluating the requests, officials said.

The items atop the list would likely remain unchanged, based on board member discussion at the Nov. 12 meeting. They are: $750,000 to build a connection between the water treatment plant and the borough's upper reservoir, and $150,000 to conduct a Water Treatment Plant pilot study. The third item on the list is Wrangell Medical Center construction, with an estimated price tag of $39 million, though the contribution requested from the state has yet to be determined, according to the draft list.

Officials say the projects are necessary in part because an earlier study conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had determined that a capacity-building reconstruction of the dam holding the upper reservoir would cost $40 million, though the estimate is dated and would require revision based on increased costs, officials said.

A connection to the borough's larger upper reservoir – already partially constructed – would allow plant operators the option of draining and cleaning out one reservoir while drawing water from the other, said Public Works director Carl Johnson.

"We have a couple problems with our water, one of them being that we have a dirty water source," Johnson said. "It's basically a muskeg pond. It looks like coffee. It takes a lot of effort to get it clean."

The treatment system, known as a slow sand filter, does provide water clean enough to meet state and federal standards for clean drinking water, and residents have no reason to look askew at their taps, Johnson said.

The existing water treatment was designed to operate from clean sources of water, and has trouble keeping up with demand, Johnson said.

"It can produce, at most, a little over 1,000 gallons a minute," he said. "In the summertime, as fish production ramps up, it doesn't produce enough water. We get into situations where our treated water storage tanks start getting low."

Officials then end up in a situation where they have to essentially choose which people get water, Johnson said.

"We don't want to restrict industry in town," he said. "We don't want – when processors get into full swing and summer at its peak – to be hassling all the time about turning down the water. That's not a good way to do things."

Officials have also considered Sunrise Lake on Wronofski Island as a potential source of potable water, though the distance involved could cause issues with reliability, Johnson said.

"It's hard to beat having that water right there," he said.