The Homer City Council passed Ordinance 24-36 at their last regular meeting on Monday, Aug. 12, appropriating $208,000 from the Sewer Capital Asset Repair and Maintenance Allowance Fund for construction work associated with rehabilitation of the Beluga lift station.

The lift station is a “major piece” of Homer’s sewer system and transports all sewage from the Spit and from the Lakeshore Drive and Ocean Drive neighborhoods.

According to a memorandum submitted to the council by Public Works Director Daniel Kort, the mechanical and electrical components and the concrete structure comprising the lift station are “seriously corroded” and “continue to do so.”

“Rehabilitation is necessary to extend the useful life of this lift station and protect the neighborhoods it serves,” Kort wrote in the memo.

All sewage from the Spit flows through the Beluga lift station, but flows are substantially reduced in the winter, leaving sewage to sit in the pipes longer than it does during the summer peak season. This gives the sewage time to generate “substantial volumes” of hydrogen sulfide. In the presence of water, the memo states, the hydrogen sulfide gas creates sulfuric acid.

“Over time, the acid has caused the concrete structure of the lift station to crack, spall and otherwise deteriorate. This is putting the structure at increasing risk of failure. Likewise, the acid adversely affects the valves, pipes, controls and other mechanical/electrical systems, decreasing their useful life,” Kort wrote.

The Public Works department previously secured partial funding in the amount of $500,000 of principal forgiveness subsidy through a loan from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation through their State Revolving Fund Program. The principal forgiveness subsidy is “a portion of the loan that the City won’t have to pay back, and, for all practical purposes, functions as a grant,” Kort wrote.

However, after the final design work for the project was completed on Aug. 7, the revised estimated cost for construction came out to $708,000. Ordinance 24-36 provides the remaining necessary funding for the rehabilitation of the Beluga lift station.

The project has not yet been put out to bid, but the city is targeting construction to occur in the fall or winter when the flows are reduced, requiring less bypass pumping, Kort said on Tuesday.

“We’ll be bypassing the lift station, because you can’t rebuild without bypassing it,” he said. “So we’ll be putting pumps upstream of it and then pumping past it while we’re working on it.”

Kort said that the neighborhoods the Beluga Lift Station serves should not see any disturbance or interruption.

“The only disruption is … the walkway will have some interruption with the construction activity,” he said. “We’re going to try to keep a path so people can move past it, but there might be a little bit of construction there on the walking path.”

The ordinance was passed as part of the consent agenda — as such, no discussion was held on it during the Aug. 12 meeting.

Read Ordinance 24-36 in full at www.cityofhomer-ak.gov/citycouncil/city-council-regular-meeting-318.