Anchorage weighs a $6.7 million bleach contract for its wastewater

The Anchorage Assembly votes Sept. 1 on a three-year contract worth up to $6.7 million for the bleach the city uses to disinfect its wastewater before it flows into Cook Inlet.

Only one company bid: The Blomfield Company, the utility's current supplier. Its price would run about $2.2 million a year, and the administration has recommended the award.

The bleach goes to the John M. Asplund plant, Alaska's largest wastewater facility, which serves about 252,500 people and treats around 30 million gallons a day. The plant sends that water 800 feet offshore into Knik Arm.

Asplund only partially treats it. The plant runs under a federal Clean Water Act waiver that lets older coastal facilities skip the fuller treatment most plants use, as long as they meet pollution limits. Anchorage's waiver took effect in 2000 and expired in 2005 — yet the plant has kept operating on it, held over while the utility and the Environmental Protection Agency work toward a renewal now two decades overdue.

The delay has drawn objections. In a December 2024 paper, Alaska Tribal and health stakeholders pressed the utility to confront the environmental and wildlife effects of continuously discharging bleach into Cook Inlet. Anchorage is one of many aging coastal plants nationwide still running under these waivers, under mounting pressure to upgrade.