Water situation back to normal

Public Works changed its summertime water management conservation level back to normal last week, ending a month of minor restrictions.

Up until last Friday, users of Wrangell’s water utility have been advised to use less water starting in mid-July, when the city entered the first of a three-stage response status. Better water management has been a key issue with the city this year, with an emergency response plan formally adopted in April.

Last summer demand outpaced the water treatment plant’s ability to supply, prompting the borough manager to declare a state of emergency that July as reserves were drawn down to worrying low levels. Conservation measures ended up disrupting service for Wrangell’s two seafood processors, which during their summertime production increase overall demand for water considerably.

The problems stem from the plant itself, which has treated the city’s municipal water supply for most of the past two decades. It has two sets of filters for treatment, with a preliminary roughing filter preparing water for slow sand filtration. All of the city’s water – upward of a million gallons per day during the summer peak – passes through four of these filter bays, and is also chemically treated before heading to the storage tanks.

Over the life of the plant facility, the sand in these filtration bays has never been replaced as designed due to cost considerations. The plant’s staff of two have had to take different measures to clear and skim material from the bays over the years, processes which have varied in efficiency and can be resource- and time-consuming to undertake. One filtration unit can take 15 or 16 hours to take offline, clean and bring back into service, in the meantime reducing overall production by a quarter.

Hoping to head this off at the proverbial pass, the Borough Assembly approved the hiring of four temporary staff to assist with operations for the summer. The added manpower has made cleaning the filters less time-consuming, and more regular cleanings have made the filters more productive as well. As such, the plant has been better able to keep up with demand this year.

Along with the new staff, plans to update and improve the design of the plant’s roughing filter have been approved. Pending approval of the new design by the state, work on the improvements will likely take place during the winter downturn, when demand is at its lowest.

A color-coded, three-phase response plan was also adopted to keep the public thinking more conservatively, with yellow, orange and red threat levels denoting increasing severity. The “yellow” stage was more cautionary than anything, with a series of restrictions and even fines taking effect only in the more stringent stages.