Anchorage Assembly to consider $98,010 for advice on landfill leachate evaporator

Mayor Suzanne LaFrance's administration is asking the Anchorage Assembly to pay Roger Hickel Contracting $98,010 for pre-construction advice on a leachate evaporator and biogas upgrades at the Anchorage Regional Landfill. The Assembly takes up the amendment at its regular meeting Tuesday, Nov. 17, at 5 pm at the Loussac Library.

Leachate is the liquid byproduct of solid waste. The landfill trucks about 118,000 gallons of it a day to the sewer, and in October the city dropped a plan for a deep injection well and turned to an evaporator to handle some of it ahead of a 2028 state deadline. The city's 2026 budget says evaporators powered by landfill gas would reduce the volume of leachate sent offsite for treatment and disposal.

The new work is advice only. It does not allow buying materials, mobilizing or starting construction, according to the Assembly memorandum. Solid Waste Services Director Kelli Toth recommended it, with money from the 2026 capital budget.

Under its construction-manager-at-risk contract, the company helps shape the design and has the right to build each phase at a negotiated maximum price. The memo cites the project's complexity and market conditions and estimates phased construction at about $20 million.

The contract began Dec. 10, 2021, at $30,004. Five amendments since then added work: materials for the first phase, a test well to study the injection well idea, a rebuild of two leachate lagoons with new aeration ($10.1 million, approved in December 2022) and $983,510 in July for landfill gas flare parts. The sixth amendment would raise the contract's maximum to $16,234,142.35.

The memo says the city is not obligated to give the company future work, including construction of leachate treatment, biogas processing or disposal facilities.