Bethel's water plant has been sending filter backwash onto open ground

Water flushed back through the filters at Bethel's water treatment plant has been reaching open tundra instead of the city's sewer lagoon. The City of Bethel says the shelter housing the plant's backwash tank deteriorated and shifted, and the movement broke the pipes.

The city described the failure in a summary of its 2026 water and sewer projects. The fix is to study, design and build a new heated shelter, install a new tank, and replace the piping and pumps that carry backwash to the lagoon, along with security and freeze-protection improvements.

Improper disposal can release chemicals, bacteria and other contaminants onto the ground near the plant, the city says. Its summary does not say how long the discharge has been happening.

The system has a record. EPA's compliance database shows 40 informal enforcement actions by the state against Bethel Heights, the kind short of a formal order, the most recent on Jan. 23. The last formal action was in 2013. The most recent full sanitary survey, in April 2025, found significant deficiencies in treatment, source, distribution and operator compliance. The system has been in violation in 10 of the past 13 quarters and carries an unaddressed monitoring violation under the federal lead and copper rule dating to January. Nothing in those records mentions the backwash tank.

Funding comes largely through the State Revolving Loan Fund, which can forgive loan principal when a project scores high enough. A June report to the Bethel Finance Committee listed $1 million in forgiveness for the backwash tank replacement, alongside $112,902 for water treatment plant security and $1,904,574 for water distribution center design.