At the Soldotna City Council meeting Wednesday night July 26th, Ordinance 2023-023 was addressed, concerning the need for rehabilitation at the City’s Wastewater Treatment Plant.
In April of this year, it was discovered that the outfall pipe which transports all the effluent from the Wastewater Treatment Plant to the discharge into the Kenai River has collapsed and needed replacement.
The outfall had become clogged and was not functioning as designed. Upon further investigation it was found that the outfall pipe had collapsed and needed emergency repair. This outfall was constructed in the early 1970’s with 21” corrugated metal pipe and is now in need of replacement.
Effluent is wastewater which has been reclaimed by water treatment infrastructure, and meets environmental regulations to be discharged back into natural water sources, but is not deemed safe for human consumption.
The Soldotna City Council met on Wednesday night to appropriate $129,724 in the utility fund, and the utility system capital improvements fund in response to this issue.
Soldotna City Utility Manager, Michael Allen shared at the meeting how the outflow failure has not fallen outside permit requirements for environmental standards;
“We’ve made some modifications so we can continue to discharge to the river, but we have not had any failures [which prevent the outflow] meeting the permit requirements.”
On the same issue of environmental standards, City manager, Janette Bower, added;
“We have been in contact with DEC [Department of Environmental Conservation], and DEC is very aware of what is going on and has come out to work with us as well. And CRW will help us with the next steps of what we need to do to fix the issue.”
The funds appropriated will cover the necessary costs by CRW Engineering Group for design, permit, and provide construction management.
Additional funds will need to be appropriated in the future for the repairs once the design is complete.