The City of Ketchikan has secured $6 million to support upgrades to the city’s wastewater treatment facility. U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski approved the congressional spending for Ketchikan and several other communities across Alaska.
Seth Brakke, the city’s public works director, says the money is crucial to meeting new compliance standards.
“This is a great relief for us,” Brakke said. “This will allow us to still meet the requirements of our discharge permit and lighten the burden on our wastewater rate payers.”
The Charcoal Point wastewater facility is operated by the city. Last November, new, higher standards from the Environmental Protection Agency for wastewater discharge went into effect — including lowered allowable amounts of fecal coliform and increased restrictions for what could be discharged into the Tongass Narrows.
The city was given five years to meet these standards. Brakke says for drastic upgrades like these, that’s a pretty tight timeline.
“Five years seems like a long time, but in reality, I think it’ll go by pretty fast,” Brakke said. “So we’re trying to get a jump on it right now so that we meet the timeline.”
Brakke says they are already planning to develop a design to meet the disinfection requirements. The $6 million will pay for design work and testing that’s already been done, additional design work to finalize the plan, and capital improvements to sustain it.
The city has already applied for a $1 million loan through the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, which Brakke says will be forgiven entirely. Without the $6 million in federal funding, they would have needed to apply for another loan. That would have been paid back through customers’ water rates.
The Ketchikan City Council has already approved an 8% water and sewage rate increase, which went into effect earlier Feb 1. Those increases will fund capital improvement projects, wages and maintenance costs. The rate hikes will provide the city with an estimated $610,340 in revenue.
