Anchorage Assembly to vote Tuesday on $6.7 million wastewater bleach contract with lone bidder

Anchorage's wastewater plant would keep buying disinfectant bleach at $9.96 a gallon from the same supplier under a contract the Anchorage Assembly is scheduled to act on Tuesday. Only one company bid.

The Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility is asking the Assembly to approve an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract, an arrangement that sets a unit price and lets the utility order as needed, with The Blomfield Company, Inc. The annual ceiling is $2,241,000. The term is one year with two one-year renewal options, which would bring the total to $6,723,000 if both are exercised.

Bids were opened July 30 at 9 a.m. Alaska time. The Purchasing Office received one bid, from Blomfield, the current vendor. The utility's invitation to bid went out July 14, a 16-day window. Mayor Suzanne LaFrance submitted the item, and the administration recommends approval. The item is not set for public hearing.

The sodium hypochlorite is delivered to the John M. Asplund Wastewater Treatment Facility and used to disinfect final effluent before it discharges into Cook Inlet, as required by Environmental Protection Agency and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits.

Asplund holds a Clean Water Act waiver from secondary treatment. It discharges 25 million to 35 million gallons a day of effluent given only primary treatment, disinfected by chlorination. If the waiver ended, the utility told the Assembly in 2021, meeting secondary standards would cost $800 million to $1.2 billion.

The Assembly approved a Blomfield contract for the same chemical in August 2023 at $7.96 a gallon. The Asplund plant is the largest wastewater facility in Alaska and has run since 1972. Its permit has been administratively extended by the EPA since the utility applied to renew it in 2005.

The National Tribal Water Council, which advises the EPA, wrote in a December 2024 white paper on that waiver that the utility "should address the broad environmental and species impacts of the continuous sodium hypochlorite discharges into the Cook Inlet." The utility told the Assembly in 2021 that its monitoring found no adverse environmental impacts and none on beluga whales.