Assembly approves septage study

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough unanimously approved a resolution at their meeting on Tuesday to pay for a feasibility study to examine if borough wastewater and septage could be treated at the city of Palmer’s wastewater treatment plant. After years of examining the possibility of constructing their own wastewater treatment plant at the central landfill, an unexpected turn from the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility to leave the Turpin Street disposal station open to Mat-Su septage haulers has changed the deadline of the issue.

“The city of palmer with the upgrades to their wastewater treatment plant is in a position now where they have excess capacity and it may be feasible to use that plant for septage treatment,” said Public Works Director Terry Dolan. “The question is do we want the borough to provide septage treatment as a service to our residents number one and if the answer to that is yes then this offers a way forward. If the answer is no then the Assembly can turn this off and we can stop working on the issue.”

Dolan noted that in examining how the borough could handle its own septage with their own facility, staff had never considered using an existing facility. Mat-Su Borough Manager Mike Brown posed the question as whether the Assembly wanted two septage treatment facilities in the Valley or three. Dolan said that the Palmer plant does not have the ability to treat industrial wastewater called leachate that would still need to be hauled into Anchorage. Dolan said that estimates are between 12 and 14 million gallons of septage that are hauled into Anchorage from the Mat-Su each year to be dumped. Former Assemblyman Jim Sykes was the only member of the public to speak on the issue, and Sykes spoke in favor.

“We actually have to solve the problem because it’s a public health and water quality issue,” said Sykes. “We don’t know what the future is going to be with the MOA or the EPA, but we’re going to end up dealing with our own septage one way or another.”

Sykes suggested a preliminary engineering report be added to the feasibility study, which Assemblyman Tim Hale asked Dolan about. Dolan said that the study would likely not be necessary at this time, and estimated the cost of the study to be between $20-25,000. Dolan did note that additional construction would be required if the Palmer plant was deemed feasible to allow for septage trucks to dump at the site, but that USDA grants were likely available for such improvement.

“The city certainly could benefit in the use of their excess capacity to generate revenue,” said Dolan. “We do not have any kind of a financial agreement with the city of Palmer on this project at this point so any funds that we would invest in analyzing this would be solely on the borough.”