As borough staff finalize the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, the Capital Facilities Department is requesting $350,000 toward a fuel tank project to bring the high school and Public Safety Building into regulatory compliance by replacing underground diesel storage tanks with aboveground tanks.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation inspected the now almost 40-year-old underground tanks in 2020 and determined they were out of compliance with regulations, and recommended they be taken out of service and removed.
The Public Safety Building tank can hold 4,000 gallons; the high school tank 10,000 gallons.
Capital Facilities has hired RESPEC, an engineering consulting company with offices in Juneau, to provide a fee proposal to design the project for new aboveground tanks, “in order to ensure we have compliant fuel tanks to supply both the backup oil‐fired furnace and the standby generators for full building power, at both locations,” Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad wrote in a request to an April 27 budget assembly work session.
Al-Haddad expected a report from RESPEC this week on design for the new tanks. Company personnel have made a site visit to both locations.
Al-Haddad estimates environmental and engineering services to cost $125,000 and the new tanks and installation to cost $225,000. Capital Facilities is seeking half of the money from general fund reserves and half from the federal Secure Rural Schools fund reserves to cover the costs.
Capital Facilities has connected with Shannon & Wilson, a geotechnical and environmental consultancy, for services associated with the tanks’ closure and site assessment, “which will require a certain level of environmental sampling to determine if fuel releases have occurred,” Al-Haddad wrote.
The borough is not under contract with RESPEC to perform the work, nor has funding been approved, Al-Haddad said last Thursday. The assembly will take action on the budget request before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.
“In the future, with the ‘install’ design in hand, the construction work will be competitively bid,” she said.
Similarly with Shannon & Wilson, they have been asked to provide a fee proposal for the environmental assessment around the underground tanks and possibly design the removal of the tanks.
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