The roughly 200 residents of Old Harbor, on the southeast end of Kodiak Island, have running water again, after going days without last week. City officials said the power to the well pumps, and subsequently the water pressure, was cut in half, but they aren't exactly sure why.
Glenn Clough, the Vice Mayor in Old Harbor, said around Nov. 1, the water treatment plant operator, Mondell Slade, discovered the community’s water tank was getting low - down to roughly 3 feet of water out of the more than 20 it usually has. Clough said not enough water was being pumped in from the local lagoon.
“At first we thought our pumps possibly had issues so we changed a couple of pumps. But that was not increasing the water flow. So it wasn’t until we finally contacted one of our techs, he had us go back and look at a few things and we realized that we weren’t getting the power to the pumps that we should have been," he said.
Clough is referring to the amount of electricity going to the water pumps that allows them to draw in between 70 and 80 gallons of water per minute until the tank is filled.
So the city shut off the community’s water for three days to troubleshoot with support from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. Clough said the group found that something happened to the sensors within the water tank and reduced the pump's output. He said he still doesn't know if it was a power fluctuation or what the cause was.
Also compounding the problem was a huge run of pink salmon that returned to the Old Harbor lagoon to spawn this season. Hundreds of dead humpies piled up by the water pump house, according to a post on social media from the city. The State of Alaska said in its boil water notice for Old Harbor that fish waste likely clogged up the water line going into the water treatment plant, which caused the pumps to overheat and water pressure to drop.
Clough said the high returns of pink salmon locally certainly didn’t help the community’s water woes.
“The other thing that contributed to that was we didn’t have any big rains. And usually what happens is when we get those big rains, it helps to clear out a lot of our system," he said. "But when you don’t get that, then the salmon go up and they spawn just like they do in any water system and eventually if you can’t get the water to move and get that stuff flushed out, then you’re going to end up with sediment.”
Regardless, Clough said it was a real community effort to make sure each household had enough water from one of the local creeks, fed through a hose behind the school, for drinking water and to flush their toilets while the main water supply was shut off. According to the Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor, each household was given a 32-gallon trash can with filter lids to keep out debris, which could hold stream water that could then be boiled and used as needed.
“Everybody in the community that could help was helping," Clough said. "Between the tribe, the city and all hands on deck, so that was good because it definitely took us all. We had people working on the plant and people to help deliver water to people that couldn’t do it.”
In the meantime, the local school was also closed for a few days last week while community water was shut off, but Clough said they plan to have make-up days for the lost class time later in the spring.
As of last Thursday on Nov. 6 the city had restored water to the community.
