Board pledges need for local waste treatment facility

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Wastewater and Septage Advisory Board is reaching a critical point in the history and purpose of the WSAB. In November, engineering firm HDR will have completed the 200-page Request For Proposal for a public private partnership septage and solid waste treatment facility.

“Since I started working on this project, every time I go to Anchorage I see a septage truck,” WSAB Chair Mike Campfeild said.

The history of the WSAB since inception in 2011 has been leading to this point. The WSAB received two responses to the Request For Expressions of Interest that it released last year. The RFEOI’s were not binding, but the 200-page RFP is the real deal.

“This is the type of project that comes along every 10, 20 years, so we’re being very deliberate and slow in putting it together and that’s frustrating some people,” Campfield said.

The Mat-Su Borough began exploring options for a regional septage treatment facility in 2006. Currently, 93 percent of Mat-Su residents rely on private septic systems, necessitating septage haulers to pump and transport septage to the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility in Anchorage. The transportation of Valley septage results in 500,000 miles of travel annually, putting stress on the drivers of 3,000-pound loads of septage and the roads they drive on. Engineering firm HDR completed a septage handling and disposal plan in 2007 which eventually resulted in the creation of the WSAB in 2011 with a purpose to determine how to efficiently manage septage in the Mat-Su Borough.

“After a while, it doesn’t make sense to keep doing that when you have this many people here with this many gallons of septage, so the question then becomes what is the break even point? How much can we spend or somebody spend and still be able to compete with the cost of that,” Campfield said. “There’s 100,000 people in the Valley now and we seem to have reached critical mass where it might make sense to build a septage treatment facility locally.”

The 2016 estimate of cost per trip to take septage trucks to either of the Turpin Street or King Street facilities in Anchorage is $223. AWWU Project Engineer Will O’Malley reported to the WSAB at their Oct. 2 meeting that AWWU anticipates to close upgrade their King Street facility beginning next summer. AWWU would then close the Turpin Street facility in the middle of 2021 and increase rates in 2022 while performing a cost of service study, according to O’Malley. AWWU currently operates on a waiver to the clean water act, and is held to different standards than wastewater treatment facilities nationwide. Campfield believes that a regional septage treatment facility at the landfill would not only reduce the negative impacts to the environment caused by septage having to travel half a million miles annually, but save borough taxpayers money in the long haul.

“This is actually our way of protecting borough residents from potential future rate hikes,” said Campfield. “It’s been talked about for a long time, I’m excited to make it happen if we can.”

Not only is the WSAB sending out an RFP for a new septage treatment facility, but plans to build a leachate treatment facility next summer as well. Leachate is the liquid that collects in liners at the bottom of each cell at the central landfill. As the landfill prepares to close cell three and move into cell four, more leachate is generated. Like septage, leachate is hauled to Anchorage to be dumped. The WSAB had been considering lumping the leachate and septage treatment facility projects into one, but decided against it in 2018. The leachate project is funded through a loan from the Alaska Department of Conservation Clean Water Program with a budget of $5 million. The WSAB narrowed down site selection to the central landfill in 2015 and held a public open house in July of this summer. While septage haulers have clamored for a new facility for decades, property owners in the surrounding subdivisions voiced their concerns over the site selection and possible hit to property values at the Oct. 2 meeting.

“We are going to be supplementing the borough because the borough has chosen to not acquire monies to acquisition a property in a more appropriate place,” Howard Hinden said.

According to Campfield, Mat-Su Borough Assessor Brad Pickett said that there was no demonstrated loss of property value in his analysis. Campfield believes that with less dependency on AWWU, Borough residents pay lower costs and see less negative environmental impacts due to the hauling of septage and leachate. Campfield says that the concerns of the public have been worked into the RFP being completed by HDR.

“We’re playing within the rules that we have and those rules are there to protect the environment. So we’re not going to, we certainly don’t want to impact the neighbors at all. We wish that they didn’t hear the landfill or smell the landfill as it exists now but it’s somewhat inevitable when you live near a landfill that you’re going to smell it on certain days when the wind blows,” Campfield said. “We’re writing into the RFP that hey, we want to have no odors off site. So put in your proposal how you’re going to control the odors and that will be something that we evaluate when we pick who we are going to go with.”

Campfield said that odors, noise, and property value are the main concerns that have been brought forward by borough residents. The process of the RFP will not be immediate, but it is what the WSAB has been waiting for since 2011. The proposals will be reviewed by an evaluation committee and the selected proposal will be brought before the WSAB and the assembly before passage.

“What we’re proposing is much more environmentally sound than what we’re doing,” Campfield said. “Our goal here is to save money for our borough residents.”