Borough hits waste water dam at prison

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough’s plans for how to deal with sewage at the soon-to-be completed Goose Creek Correctional Center is in trouble.

The plan is to have Valley Utilities design, build and operate a sewage treatment plant next to the prison. The borough assembly signed off on that plan last month. But recent media attention and a roadblock thrown up on the state level have slowed that process down.

Borough Assemblyman Ron Arvin asked at an April 20 meeting how borough staff decided to ask the assembly to move ahead with the plan last month when the eventual owner of the prison, the state Department of Corrections, hadn’t agreed.

“All throughout the process, Department of Corrections sat at the table and gave all the assurances that they would sign on to a 30-year contract,” said borough purchasing officer Russ Krafft. But then, after the assembly made its decision, the state got cold feet. “At that point, Corrections was told you cannot move forward with this.”

Borough Manager John Duffy added that the stumbling block was the ownership issue. As it stands now, the borough would own the sewage facility after 30 years of payments from the Department of Corrections.

Krafft said that all along the state didn’t think it wanted to own the facility. In a previous meeting, he said a stand-alone facility at another state prison had given the department a number of headaches and the state wasn’t sure it wanted to try owning another one. So, after 30 years, when the debt is all paid back, the sewer facility will be borough property.

“The contract is written that it comes to us, but if we don’t want it we can give it away, we can sell it, it’s ours to do with what we want at the end of 30 years,” Krafft said.

All of this led Assemblyman Jim Colver to call for a special four-hour meeting on the topic, which is scheduled for Tuesday.

“We were told we had to rush it through in one night. Here a month later there’s no decision,” Colver said.

He brought up the controversy surrounding the building of Machetanz Elementary School. Road issues were the stumbling block there. There weren’t, and still aren’t in the borough’s opinion, enough of the proper quality of roads to access the school. The borough can’t find the money to build them.

“History has shown us that when we get into these rushes, the results are expensive,” Colver said.

At the meeting Tuesday, the topic on the table will be rescinding ordinances the borough assembly has passed regarding the wastewater treatment facility. Colver is also calling for an independent audit of the process.

Also at last week’s meeting, Duffy presented an eight-page, point-by-point refutation of the allegations he’s read in the media about the process.

Was Valley Utilities selected improperly over a more qualified, bigger team led by JL Properties? Duffy says no. The team that made the decision included people from the Department of Corrections, the borough and Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility. JL hasn’t been told in detail why it lost the bid because the borough is prohibited from releasing those details until after a contract is signed.

Was a member of Valley Utilities also involved in drawing up the bid package for the project? Duffy says no. An engineering firm drew up that package. The Valley Utilities person in question, Ted Trueblood, has no connection with that firm.

Was the interest rate the borough got on bonds to build the prison abnormally high? Duffy says no. They were higher than the borough could get today but if the borough had waited, those savings would have been eaten up in higher costs of steel and concrete.

Will Valley Utilities charge 10 times more than AWWU charges for the Hiland Correctional Center? It will be significantly more, Duffy said, but that’s because the costs at Hiland are very low. That facility can take advantage of AWWU’s system, which the EPA built for Anchorage and therefore didn’t saddle the utility with a debt burden.

He said that if the prison had been built someplace that’s on a sewer system, Palmer, for instance, the cost to upgrade Palmer’s system would have been $44 million, more than 2.5 times the cost of building a new facility at Point MacKenzie.

Colver took exception. “I’m not buying that,” he said.

“I disagree with you respectfully, Mr. Colver,” Duffy replied.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.