After meeting with local, state, and federal agencies on March 1, Hooper Bay has a plan to fix the hole in its sewer lagoon. It’s been nearly a week since the wall of the coastal community’s sewer lagoon collapsed on Feb. 25, spilling its entire contents onto the tundra. With the lagoon wall still broken, sewage continues to seep onto the tundra as community members use their water systems.
The plan involves getting sand from the beach, putting it into large bags, and using them to fill the opening in the lagoon. But there are many obstacles in the way.
City Administrator Sandra Tall-Lake said that as of March 2, the city’s plows were still trying to clear a path through heavy snow to the beach to access the sand. If city employees are able to reach the sand, transporting it back to the lagoon will be the next challenge. Tall-Lake said that the community needs more transmission oil for its heavy machinery. Plus, she said that the community doesn’t have enough sand or sandbags to completely fill the hole. The opening in the lagoon wall is 40 feet wide and 15 feet tall. That will require a lot of material to fill.
The community is considering filling the remainder of the hole by scraping off the top layer of the rest of the sewer lagoon wall and using that to fill in the rest of the hole. The city administrator said that she did not know when all this work could be completed.
The cleanup of the sewer spill is another issue. Tall-Lake said that the plan with the spill is to leave it to mother nature. That’s according to a plan primarily developed by the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation (YKHC), which has taken the lead in coordinating the response to Hooper Bay’s sewer lagoon spill. YKHC spokesperson Mary Horgan wrote in an email that treating the sewage on the tundra with chemical disinfectants would create additional hazards to community members and the environment. She added that tundra wetlands have the ability to absorb large amounts of toxic substances.
The state has taken a back seat for now. State spokesperson Jeremy Zidek said that Hooper Bay should try to respond to the situation with local entities like YKHC before it turns to the state for help. The state will be footing the bill for these efforts, though, as part of the disaster declaration the governor issued for Hooper Bay last week
And looking much further down the line, Hooper Bay is planning to build a whole new sewer lagoon, a project led by the state’s Village Safe Water program. That project was already in process when the existing lagoon broke, and is expected to be completed in around three years.