Haines will need to add more rigorous treatment at its wastewater treatment plant to comply with a permit soon to be reissued by the federal government.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Tuesday it plans to propose a new Clean Water Act permit for Haines that would require the wastewater plant to “significantly reduce releases of bacteria to local waters within five years.”
The announcement came in conjunction with a tentative decision this week to reissue a permit for Wrangell with stricter limits on pollution from sewage discharge into Zimovia Strait. Those limits will require Wrangell to add disinfection to its treatment process, according to an EPA press release.
Along with the Wrangell permit decision, the EPA said it would follow suit with five other Southeast Alaska communities, including Haines, in imposing stricter limits on municipal wastewater discharge.
“This was completely expected and discussed with each of the six southeast communities with Clean Water Act Section 301(h) permits from EPA for quite some time,” Alaska Wastewater Discharge Authorization Program Manager Gene McCabe wrote in an email to the CVN. “Nothing has changed in that respect, other than Wrangell being the first of the six permits EPA Region 10 has placed on public notice.”
It’s too early to know exactly what the decision will mean in terms of engineering plans and costs for the Haines plant.
“It is going to be something that I am going to be coming back to you and talking to you more about – what that impact will be on our water and sewer treatment plant,” Haines Borough manager Annette Kreitzer told the Haines Borough Assembly Tuesday.
Haines, Wrangell and four other Southeast Alaska communities received waivers from the EPA in the 1980s that have allowed them to discharge wastewater without full secondary treatment (a step that reduces organic waste before discharge). The Clean Water Act was amended in 1972 to allow waivers on a case-by-case basis.
“Some municipalities that discharged into marine waters…argued that (the secondary treatment) requirement might be unnecessary on the grounds that marine treatment plants tend to discharge into deeper waters with large tides and substantial currents, which allow for greater dilution and dispersion than their freshwater counterparts,” according to an Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation fact sheet.
The EPA is supposed to reissue Clean Water Act municipal wastewater permits every five years but Haines has been operating on the same one for well over a decade.
If the EPA reissues Haines’ permit, the state might require Haines to shrink its mixing zone — the area in Lynn Canal where discharge interacts with seawater — and “disinfection is incredibly effective (at that),” Alaska Division of Water director Randy Bates said in June. He added that disinfection would reduce the radius of Haines’ mixing zone from 5.5 miles to a matter of yards.
With regards to the cost of an upgrade, estimates vary from town to town. McCabe said “early planning figures range from $1-15 million based on past loans” through the state loan program that helps municipalities fund wastewater plant upgrades. “The wide range reflects the vast difference in requirements between each unique treatment plant,” McCabe said.
Water-sewer plant operator Dennis Durr told the CVN in June he wouldn’t anticipate the permit reissuance to incur significant costs.
The Haines plant removes solids from the wastewater stream through a process that consists of pre-filtering, settling, screening and clarifying.