A Larsen Bay spillway is 'nearing failure' and unfunded in Kodiak's list

A reservoir spillway supplying drinking water and hydroelectric power to Larsen Bay "is eroding and is nearing failure," according to the Kodiak Island Borough's draft capital priority list.

The fix would cost $1.2 million, none of it yet funded. And the project ranks sixth, low enough that it sits in the out-year section rather than among the borough's near-term priorities.

That list ranks the borough's funding requests to state and federal lawmakers, and the Planning and Zoning Commission takes it up this week. The top near-term items are a fire station renovation, road work, repaving and a playground replacement, along with a $700,000 backup generator for the landfill and its leachate plant, where an outage risks overflowing the leachate lagoon.

Below those sit the village requests, most in the FY2028-2031 section, a running list of aging rural systems communities can't fund on their own.

Port Lions is asking for $8 million to replace a water and sewer system built after the 1964 earthquake and tsunami forced displaced Afognak residents to relocate. The resolution says the original contractor "did not complete the job correctly," leaving many homes unconnected or wrongly connected.

Karluk's water storage tank has finished engineering but stalled, short of the money to buy and install it. And the City of Kodiak is seeking $160.25 million to replace St. Herman Harbor, which is losing about a dock a year.