The borough assembly on Tuesday approved spending about $42,000 to find out how much diesel and other contaminants may have leaked into the soil around Wrangell Municipal Light and Power’s generator building on Case Avenue.
The site assessment will drill down and take samples from 14 different points around the facility and the property next door to help determine if any environmental cleanup will be necessary.
The power plant houses the city’s diesel generators, which serve as backup to electricity from the Tyee Lake hydropower station. The older portion of the building is used for storage.
The “old concrete” portion of the building is structurally unsound, Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad wrote in a presentation for the assembly. “The newer steel frame generator building is structurally integrated into the old concrete structure, as the old building constitutes the fourth wall of the new building. A solution to the situation needs to be determined.”
To find a solution to the deteriorating building, borough officials said they need to understand the environmental conditions of the property.
“The environmental conditions of these sites must be known in order to understand if any significant environmental cleanup effort may be necessary,” Al-Haddad wrote. “Both parcels have had several underground fuel storage tanks on site and there have been a few known buried fuel lines on site.”
The Anchorage-based environmental consulting firm Shannon & Wilson will conduct the assessment, similar to the work it is doing at the borough’s public works yard.
Assemblymember David Powell questioned why the city was paying for the power plant site assessment. It costs money, he said, and the city was looking for trouble. If they find contaminations, the borough would have to spend more money to clean up the site, he said.
Al-Haddad said the more information the borough has going into the project, the better prepared they will be. If construction began and they discovered unexpected contamination, that would bring construction to a halt and incur additional costs.
Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen said the site assessment was part of being good stewards of public land. Plus, she added, if the borough just bulldozed and rebuilt on the property without a site assessment, there could be legal ramifications.
“If somebody comes back after the fact and says, ‘There was contaminated soil there and you didn’t look at it,’ and you built or you did whatever, and now you have to go back in and dig it up after you’ve got a brand new building sitting there,” she said.
“I think maybe my sensitivity to contaminated sites might be a little stronger than others, but I think that it’s absolutely essential to know what you have and know your hazards,” said Assemblymember Bob Dalrymple, a retired U.S. Forest Service district ranger for Wrangell.
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