The borough assembly has directed the administration to pursue an updated cost estimate for solving Wrangell’s deficient water-treatment plant.
Progress on replacing the treatment process has moved slowly since a 2017 cost estimate of nearly $10 million, while Wrangell now faces key deadlines to retain $9 million in federal assistance that was approved for the work between 2017 and 2019.
The likelihood of higher costs since 2017 is another hurdle, should Wrangell proceed with the project.
Borough officials said at a July 13 assembly work session that the pace needs to move quicker to complete construction by the federal aid deadline of 2023, or at least to get close enough to completion to succeed with a requested extension.
The sand filtering system to clean sediment out of the community’s muskeg water supply is old and inefficient, and the borough has struggled for years to meet Wrangell’s water supply needs and state water quality standards.
The city has planned to upgrade the plant from sand filtration to what’s called a “dissolved air flotation system,” which uses a coagulant to attract and bind together waste to air bubbles, which rise to the surface for removal .
Upgrading to a better treatment system has been on Wrangell’s to-do list for years. Amber Al-Haddad, capital facilities director, said the borough received a loan and grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as well as a grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration between 2017 and 2019.
“Each of the agencies, they have a five-year term on their funding,” Al-Haddad said. “So here we are. That was 2017 and 2019, and we’re at 2021.”
Assemblymember Anne Morrison asked for a particular date of when the funding would expire, and specifically how much of the project needed to be completed by then. The water treatment plant would need to be completed and closed out by September of 2023, Al-Haddad said.
Assemblymember David Powell wanted to know why the city had been so delayed in this project.
Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen said there were several delays in the process. The first was it took two years for the borough to receive the EDA grant. Attorneys from the two different agencies also spent months determining if the company that did the engineering report on the project would be eligible to bid on the work.
“Those delays had not anything to do with us,” Von Bargen said.
The second issue is the estimated costs for the project may no longer be accurate.
“That (water treatment) project cost and the funding provided for it is based on our preliminary engineering report, which was initially developed in the fall of 2016,” Al-Haddad said. “The report was finalized March 2017. We’re five years beyond those cost estimates.”
The assembly is now faced with either moving forward with reevaluating the costs of upgrading the water treatment system, or starting over and revisiting all available options for upgrades.
It would cost about $25,000 to update the costs for the air flotation system, and Al-Haddad said they could get the results back by September.
There was no firm estimate on how much it would cost to look at all of Wrangell’s options again, she said, but it would be somewhere around $65,000 and take longer.
“I understand the two years for the funding and the one year of lawyers and all that stuff,” Powell said. “Do you honestly think that we are going to pull this off? That’s my honest question.”
“We need to put together a project schedule so that we are meeting that deadline,” Von Bargen answered. “That being said, both of them (the federal departments) said the end date can be extended. They just don’t like to. It’s made at the Washington, D.C., level. I believe we have the capacity to go to the delegation if we are making meaningful progress, and I mean meaningful progress, to go to them and ask for an extension. There are ways to get this done.”
Assembly members discussed the pros and cons of revisiting the cost of one possible upgrade versus relooking at all alternatives before coming to an agreement that they should move forward with the air flotation project and get the costs reevaluated for that work.
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