Ever wonder what happens when you flush? KCAW’s Katherine Rose visited Sitka’s wastewater treatment plant to sniff out why a $10 million dollar revitalization project is in the works for the facility that was built almost 40 years ago.

In the Disney classic “Finding Nemo” a clownfish escapes the clutches of a dangerous child by flinging itself into a sink. Washed down the drain, his aquarium buddies wave goodbye, but they’re not worried. All drains lead to the ocean, after all, right?

Well, in Sitka that’s true…but first they lead here…

To the wastewater treatment plant.

“So that’s your raw wastewater. And this is what I would call a low-flow time of day,” says Shilo Williams, environmental superintendent for the city. She’s giving me a tour of the wastewater treatment plant- a huge building on Japonski Island that houses some of the biggest infrastructure in Sitka. Williams and her team deal  with the three key stages of waste…sludge, scum and grit. Oh, and all of the detritus they capture that Sitkans shouldn’t flush.

“This rack that you see right there?” Williams points to a grate that a small river of raw wastewater is running through as it enters the plant. “That’s a bar screen. What we’re collecting there are all of those things that people shouldn’t flush.” Williams says things like flushable wipes and feminine hygiene products are common catches. “We have to actually manually rake that every single day.”

After they strain all of the big junk out of the raw wastewater, they slow down the water, separating the heavy grit. Then the water is pumped to clarifiers — big pools where the “sludge” settles to the bottom and the “scum” is scraped off the top. The remaining water is pumped back into the ocean. Then the sludge goes to the “thickening” room.

“This is one of the stinkier areas of the treatment plant,” Williams says as she leads me to a big circular tank where they remove more water from the sludge.

After the thickening process is complete, they pump the dehydrated sludge to the “belt filter press.” Williams says they run the press once a week

“What happens is literally squishing the sludge and getting all the water out,” Williams says. “One final squish right here and it’s going to fall into this hopper.”

Then that dehydrated, flattened and rolled up sludge is doused with lime and dropped 20 feet into a big box that they roll out to the landfill once a week.

Each piece of equipment involved in the process is huge, expensive, and aging. But it’s the more invisible parts of the wastewater treatment plant that Williams says are in desperate need of an upgrade — the ventilation system and key electrical wiring that powers all of the systems. Here’s why: Waste produces a gas called hydrogen sulfide, and hydrogen sulfide is highly corrosive. Back in her office, Williams keeps a science experiment on her desk to show just how corrosive the environment is.

“This is the money that was in my desk drawer here,” Williams says as she holds out a handful of blackened pennies and half-dollars. “You can see a lot of it is unrecognizable, due to the corrosive environment.”

She shows me a piece of copper pipe that she pulled out of the ground in last September. She says it was shiny several months ago, but it’s unrecognizable as copper today.

Williams says the ventilation system has been funneling some gases from treatment plant back into their office space, making a lot of office equipment obsolete fast. Computers have to be encased in protective gear. Lab equipment has a shorter shelf life. And they have to use home printers instead of expensive, heavy duty office printers, because they break so often.

“Some of them will last a few months,” Williams says. “Mine I think I’ve had for about eight months. It doesn’t always function.” Williams says she and staff often blame the “wastewater gremlins” when a piece of office equipment suddenly stops working.

It doesn’t just impact the hardware. Williams says it affects humans too. Worst case scenario, hydrogen sulfide exposure can be deadly.  She says the levels aren’t that bad, but they’re noticeable, often causing nausea, along with burning of the throat and eyes.

But the project to revamp the wastewater treatment plant is costly. When speaking to the Sitka Assembly last month, it was clear that in order to fund the $10 million dollar project, the assembly would be required to move ahead with a plan to raise rates. But assembly member Aaron Bean wondered if they couldn’t figure out a way to patch things up at the plant without spending so much money.

“We need to do what we have to do to make what we have work. If we’re making the environment safe that should be an alternative. It shouldn’t be bulldoze it and replace it, is my point.”

Public Works Director Michael Harmon said they’d already figured out how to make the project as cost efficient as possible.

“This is by no means bulldozing the project and starting over, you’d be looking at probably 60 million to do that,” he said.

Back at the plant, Williams says it isn’t about making the plant glamorous, just safe.

“The wastewater plant isn’t ever going to smell pretty, because it is a wastewater plant. But it will be much better, it won’t be as terrible as it is now.”

Just like the filter in Nemo’s scuzzy aquarium, Williams hopes the renovations will help the wastewater team continue to keep Sitka’s scum and sludge and grit at bay.

The City of Sitka shut off water supplied from Blue Lake after registering high turbidity levels early Sunday morning, shown above in the hydro electric afterbay. Environmental Superintendent Shilo Williams said the green water is a sign of glacial silt introduced to the water by heavy rains this weekend. (Photo courtesy of Shilo Williams)

The City of Sitka used a different water source on Sunday due to high levels of turbidity at Blue Lake. They supplied water to Sitkans through back-up storage tanks. By Sunday night, turbidity levels had dropped to an acceptable level and the flow from Blue Lake was restored.

But what exactly is turbidity?

“Basically the cloudiness of water,” Shilo Williams, the environmental superintendent for the City and Borough of Sitka, said. “The cloudier the water, the higher the turbidity is going to be.”

Turbidity is caused by tiny particles that are suspended in water, Williams said. She added turbidity is just one of the many things the public works department monitors to ensure Sitka’s drinking water is up to federal standards.

“We have a computer program that is tracking data all the time,” Williams said. “we know what the turbidity is coming into our system all the time. We know basically everything that we need to know at all times.”

The reason for the high regulation? Blue Lake is one of 10 bodies of water in Alaska that does not have to be filtered. The federal Environmental Protection Agency granted the City of Sitka a filtration waiver because of the lake’s purity.

Instead of being filtered, the water is disinfected using ultraviolet radiation that inactivates most pathogens. In other words, water drawn from the lake is blasted with light to kill waterborne bacteria and viruses.

Treating water using ultraviolet radiation is a lot less expensive per-gallon than using a filtration system, which is more labor intensive and requires the use of chemicals. But without a filtration system, Williams said, the EPA requires that turbidity levels in water be very low. 

Turbidity is measured with what’s called a nephelometer. The device shines a beam of light into the water and measures the amount of light that bounces into a detector set to one side. The amount of light that’s detected is directly correlated to the density of particles within the water. The EPA requires that turbidity in water from Blue Lake be less than 5 NTUs or Nephelometric Turbidity Units.

These samples of water are used to calibrate the nephelometer that monitors the level of turbidity in water drawn from Blue Lake. The EPA requires that turbidity in water from Blue Lake be less than 5 NTUs or Nephelometric Turbidity Units. Shown above from left to right are samples of water with 10, 20, 100 and 800 NTUs. (Photo by Enrique Pérez de la Rosa)

The cloudiness at that level is imperceptible to the the human eye. Water at 5, 10 or even 20 NTUs can look just like water that has no particles at all. But if the level of turbidity is too high, pathogens attached to particles in the water can bypass ultraviolet treatment and contaminate Sitka’s water supply, Williams said. 

“If we have high turbidity there’s a good chance that our disinfection won’t be achieved and that can cause gastro illnesses, diarrhea and stuff like that,” she said. “It’s really important to keep that turbidity low.”

If the level of turbidity exceeds federal standards, the filtration waiver could be rescinded. High turbidity events cannot occur more than five times within a 10-year span or more than twice within one year. According to Williams, the last high turbidity event in Blue Lake occurred on October of 2017. This is the fourth such event in four years.

So, what changed since 1983, when the City of Sitka started drawing water from Blue Lake? Williams points to the expansion of the Blue Lake Dam in 2014, which has caused the level of the lake to rise and fall and bring glacial silt from the lake’s surroundings into the water.

“And I think that is getting disturbed with the new lake levels,” she said. “And of course, when you have a lot of rain, that brings more glacial silt into the lake itself and making its way to our intake.”

The system is designed to shut off the Blue Lake intake when water exceeds EPA standards for turbidity. But Williams stresses the importance of the Blue Lake system in the long term. The Assembly will have a special meeting on Blue Lake and the upcoming federal inspection of the whole system on December 4.

The Blue Lake Road opened last week- it is one of few municipal watersheds in the country that doesn’t have to be filtered, only chlorinated. (KCAW Photo)

Downloadable Audio

The Blue Lake Road reopened last week, but for the City of Sitka and the U.S. Forest Service, increasing public access comes with a price. Community Affairs Director Maegan Bosak and Environmental Superintendent Shilo Williams joined us to talk about how citizens can protect the Blue Lake Watershed- the community’s main source of drinking water.

The sewer crisis Friday (02-02-18) happened below ground, when Thomsen Harbor Lift Station flooded and the city lost the ability to send wastewater to the treatment plant on Japonski Island. Instead, the water flooded the dry well, below this manhole cover. The city’s water, wastewater, and public works crews responded, along with Sitka Electric and Juneau-based Boreal Controls. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

The City of Sitka dealt with a messy situation Friday (02-02-18), when a vital part of the sewer system failed. The Thomsen Harbor Lift Station was down for 36 hours, meaning all raw sewage on Baranof Island had to be diverted into the harbor so it wouldn’t back up into homes and businesses. Quick thinking crew members and local businesses were able to cobble together a solution.

Downloadable audio.

If all roads lead to Rome, all sewer pipes (at least on the Baranof Island side of Sitka) lead to the Thomsen Harbor Lift Station. The facility is underground. Environmental Superintendent Shilo Williams peers over the edge of a hole in the ground, lined with pipe painted light blue and a ladder.

“Underneath this can is a whole room that houses three very large pumps,” Williams said.

The dry well at the Thomsen Harbor Lift Station flooding with sewage early Friday morning. City crews spent all day emptying and cleaning the dry well. (Photo courtesy of Shilo Williams)

That room, known as the dry well, also houses the electric equipment necessary to power the pumps that move Sitka’s sewage off Baranof Island to a treatment plant on Japonski Island.

Around 4:45 a.m. Friday morning, one of those three pumps broke apart.

“This dry well, which is never supposed to be wet, started filling with sewage. And it knocked out of all the equipment. The lift station was completely dead,” Williams said.

The water was rising fast. Williams says it was several feet high by the time a flood light went off and facilities operator Bob Reid arrived.

“This was a catastrophic failure. We’ve never had anything like this happen before. I will say that the crews handled it impeccably. The repair couldn’t have gone any smoother, any faster, any better than it did.

Williams is unmistakably proud of her crew, who worked around the clock to get the situation under control. That included salvaging equipment submerged in sewage and giving the dry well a thorough cleaning. It was messy, back-breaking work. When asked how her crews managed to deal with the smell,  Williams chuckled.

KCAW: Because I imagine when they opened it up it must have been kind of horrific, you know?

Williams: You know. They always say it takes a different breed to be a wastewater operator and to be honest, it’s hardly anything we even think about.

To prevent that river of sewage from backing up into homes and businesses, crews temporarily redirected the wastewater towards a storm drain and into the harbor. The pollution posed an environmental concern and City and Borough of Sitka issued a PSA calling for Sitkans to limit their toilet flushes and shower times until further notice.

The City and Borough of Sitka broke the news early Friday morning, encouraging residents to limit their time at the sink and shower and conserve toilet flushes. (From CBS Facebook page)

Williams said that conservation effort made a difference throughout the 36 hours the lift station was ultimately down. She estimates 800,000 gallons of raw sewage entered Thomsen and Eliason harbor in that time. “I know 800,000 gallons sounds like a lot, but in the scheme of things, into the water it’s discharging into…it could have been a lot worse,” she said. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and other environmental agencies were alerted to the situation.

Come Saturday morning, the city had some lucky breaks. It didn’t rain, so sewer flow was low. The two remaining pumps dried out. Crews were able to restore the sewer connection by 5 p.m. that evening. That’s in large part due to the work of Sitka Electric and Boreal Controls of Juneau, installing new electrical equipment above ground.

Parts aren’t easy to come by on an island of 9000 people, so equipment had to be expedited through Alaska Airline’s GoldStreak program or plucked from surrounding facilities. “We were able to rob some components from some of our infrastructure that we had,” Williams said. “Silver Bay Seafoods was able to get us the big conduit that we needed. It was really a kind of community effort.”

Adjacent to the dry well is the wet well, the the holding tank for the city’s raw sewage. The white tube is the “grinder,” which breaks down solids before pumping the wastewater into the dry well and across Sitka Sound for treatment on Japonski Island. During the emergency, all sewage ran through the grinder before entering the harbor untreated. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

With the nightmare over, Williams has begun to investigate what went wrong. She suspects that gravel is the culprit, which naturally accumulates over time and may have slowly chewed away at the pump.

Built in 1982, the lift station (like many pieces of Sitka infrastructure) is prone to failure. “It’s all of our wastewater that’s collected right here and then sent over,” said Community Affairs Director Maegan Bosak. “So the fact that it’s aging infrastructure really is a cost for concern. If these fails continue to happen, it’s really a cost for taxpayers.”

Despite its age and importance, the Thomsen Harbor Lift Station is not high on the city’s punch list for public works projects. The 2012 Municipal Sewer Master Plan suggests upgrades in 10 to 20 years. The recent failure has kickstarted a conversation about what can be done sooner and the city has ordered a new pump. Now that electrical equipment has been installed above ground, away from potential flooding, Williams said she’d like to see it stay there.

The city will isolate the water mains in sections. Environmental Superintendent Shilo Williams says sectioning allows for a scouring action to take place. The mains are flushed out using hydrants and blow-off valves and in the process, sediment and biofilm are washed away.

This maintenance work will follow the schedule below. Residents of those neighborhoods may experience low water pressure during the flushing event or cloudy water. If your water is cloudy, residents should to run the cold tap until the water is clear. This process does not create any health issues. Those with questions can call the Public Works Department at 747-1804.

• Oct 30th – Outer Lincoln Street
• Oct 31st – Monastery Street and Verstovia Street neighborhoods
• Nov 1st – Downtown Area
• Nov 2nd – Sawmill Creek Road
• Nov 3rd – Sawmill Creek Road
• Nov 6th – Edgecumbe Drive, HPR and side streets off HPR
• Nov 7th – Edgecumbe Drive, HPR and side streets off HPR
• Nov 8th – Japonski Island

Unlike past breaks, there was no need to shut off the water to customers to make this repair. “It was a best case scenario,” says Williams. (CBS photo/Shilo Williams)

A 1960s-era water main cracked under Lake Street for the fourth time in a year, but utility crews were able to make quick repairs.

Environmental superintendent Shilo Williams says she noticed a wet patch in the street in front of the Senior Center on Lake Street on Wednesday (5-10-17). On Thursday she brought in a team to try and isolate the leak using listening devices, but the street had dried up. However, the park area between the road and Swan Lake still was really saturated.

Today, crews excavated a hole and found a crack in the water main that almost fully encircled the pipe. Williams says they were able to use a wraparound to stop the leak, but she calls the repair “a bandaid.”

This week the Public Works Department opened bids on a full water main replacement from the roundabout, down DeGroff St. to Hollywood Way. She expects work to get underway in about a month.

She says, “We’re obviously replacing the right water line.”

The crew made the repair in about five hours, beginning at 8:30 a.m. The street was reopened by 1:30 that afternoon. Williams says, “I’m lucky to have such a hard working crew.”

The boil water notice, as posted on the door of City Hall on Saturday (1-18-17). Because it was so localized, the notice was hand-delivered to residents. (KCAW photo/Kwong)

Sitka residents living along Halibut Point Road near Blatchley Middle School were placed under a boil water notice Friday (3-17-17), after a water main ruptured in the vicinity.

The school itself, and AC Lakeside Grocery were also under the notice, as well as Crabapple and Lakeview drives.

Crews were working on the repair by 12:30 in the afternoon Friday. They located the break and made repairs by 9 that evening.

Williams believes that these bolts were installed in a project in 1995. “Nowadays, we build to a higher standard,” she said. (CBS photo/Shilo Williams)

Deputy environmental superintendent Shilo Williams says the bolts connecting the valve between the main and Crabapple Drive are to blame for the break. She believes the bolts were installed as part of a project in 1995.

Williams says that Sitka builds to a higher standard than it did twenty-two years ago. The bolts on the replacement valve are stainless steel.

Sitka experienced a series of three water main breaks in January this year, all during bitter cold weather. Friday’s break also occurred during cold conditions, but Williams says the ruptures and the weather are coincidental. The affected pipes are far below the frostline.

The boil water notice was lifted at 6:30 p.m. Saturday. Blatchley Middle School principal Ben White says neither the break or the notice caused a disruption at his building. Students were away on spring break when the rupture occurred, and all repairs complete by the time school resumed.

The water main running beneath Shotgun Alley was repaired by city crews today (01-06-17). A resident reporting the water leak last night. The pipe was installed in 1980 and is made of ductile iron. (Photo courtesy of Shilo Williams)

Two serious water breaks occurred in Sitka in the past 24 hours.

The first took place at the Rocky Gutierrez Airport. Staff discovered a small crack on the incoming water main, fifteen feet below the ground.

Jeremy Woodrow, spokesperson for the Department of Transportation, said the cause was likely due to the age of the pipe, not the cold weather.  “It was noticed because there hasn’t been any rain for quite some time and there hasn’t been any water seeping from the ground. So that was brought to the airport manager’s attention on Wednesday (01-04-17). We took quick action,” Woodrow said.

Excavators broke apart the pavement to located the water main break and repaired with with a band. (Photo courtesy of Shilo Williams)

Water was temporarily shut off. Portable toilets were brought in for airport customers. The Nugget restaurant remains shut down for the day. The state DoT then contracted with the city and local company Coast Excavation to access the pipe and put a clamp on it to keep water inside. Some work remains to be done, but for the most part, the pipe is fixed – for now.

KCAW: At what point are you going to replace the pipe and what’s the cost associated with that?

Woodrow: Don’t know the costs associated with replacing the entire pipe. Obviously right now it’s cheaper to do these small fixes when needed.

Corrosion was to blame for a water line break in town. On Thursday night (01-05-17), the water main running down Shotgun Alley broke. City crews mobilized heavy equipment and covered its holes with a repair band this morning  (01-06-17). They have also completed backfilling of the excavation site. Shilo Williams, the deputy environmental superintendent, says the pipe itself was installed in 1980 and is made of ductile iron.

Aging infrastructure is also responsible for several short power outages this year and the closure of the Green Lake Dam. In an e-mail this morning, City Administrator Mark Gorman said that the dam progress is underway and could be completed today.