Prison sewage argument misguided

A lot of ink has been spilled, hands wrung and brows furrowed over the idea that the Goose Creek Correctional Center should have been sited closer to existing infrastructure.

We won’t go into why the inevitable public outcry of “not in my backyard” makes that all but impossible.

Instead, we’d like to examine this idea that the prison could have – or should have – been located where it could just hook into a city water and wastewater system and, thus, save the state money.

It’s a fallacy.

First, let’s consider how many existing Alaska prisons are on a city sewer system.

Seward’s Spring Creek Correctional Center isn’t. Palmer Correctional Center in Sutton isn’t. We don’t know for sure, but we imagine farther-flung institutions in Nome and Bethel are not on city sewer systems either.

The Anchorage Correctional Center and Hiland Mountain Correctional Center in Eagle River are on city sewer systems. So is Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau, apparently, and we suspect smaller institutions, like the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility, are.

But anyone keeping an eye on wastewater in the Valley knows that Wasilla’s facility is at capacity, as is Palmer’s. In the Mat-Su Borough, it’s more common for businesses and residences to be served by individual wells and septic systems than to be served by Palmer’s or Wasilla’s limited water and wastewater systems.

We live in a place where even big box stores like Wal-Mart run on septic tanks. But it’s important to note that the water output from even that major retailer is dwarfed by wastewater estimates for Goose Creek.

Given that both Wasilla’s and Palmer’s water and wastewater systems are at, or nearly at, capacity, it is an error in logic to say that either city system could accept the anticipated 250,000 gallons a day from the new prison. Both systems would have required substantial upgrades to accept the wastewater.

But beyond the question of cost, another factor to consider is how the prison wastewater system might expand in the future to serve other nearby business or residential customers that might wish to subscribe. And, thus, spur more development in the Point MacKenzie area.

Overall, we question the wisdom of insisting that the state should only build prisons where they can attach to existing city services, since it would seemingly limit the state from constructing prisons anywhere outside of Anchorage — and maybe Fairbanks or Juneau.

If the prison site selection process here taught us anything, it is that remote areas with fewer neighbors — and likely no developed infrastructure — are in general better suited to house a large prison complex.