Cordova budget leaves water crew a worker short as it plans a Heney line rebuild

Cordova's water and sewer department would go into next year a worker short under the draft budget, as it plans a big repair to the pipe that carries water from Heney Valley to the city's reservoir, the public works director told the City Council at a budget work session Thursday.

The draft 2027 budget funds five full-time employees instead of six, with plans to return to six in 2028, according to a meeting transcript. The department is already down an operator, who transferred to the harbor department, and its longtime superintendent retires Dec. 31.

Leaving the job empty saves less than it might seem once cost-of-living raises, step increases and rising health insurance costs are counted, the director said. The department plans to put what's left toward deferred maintenance on pumps, motors and lift stations. The department has run with that many workers before, he said, but "we are going to be pushing the crew pretty hard this year."

The Heney line had a rough winter. Water from Heney Valley flows into a catchment, and the force of that water carries it through a pipe to the reservoir. The valley sits in shadow between Mount Eccles and the Heney Range, so crews often can't get in to check the line until late May or even late June.

When they finally did this year, they found multiple breaks. They fixed the lowest one, then waited to see whether the reservoir filled and spilled over. When it didn't, they hiked back in to find the next leak. "We did that time after time after time," the director said. By the end of the season, they had found at least five breaks from over the winter. He said it isn't clear what caused them, noting a couple of earthquakes over the winter.

The line is carrying water again. But the pipe uses the trail as its bedding, and landslides and washouts along the trail have left it unstable in several places. Next year's budget asks for three temporary workers at $25 an hour for about 33 10-hour days to rebuild the trail and the pipe's bedding, repair and add gabions, the rock-filled wire baskets that hold the slope, and chain the line to trees and to anchors drilled into rock.

The utility also faces larger money questions. A consultant modeling the utility's finances found that the proposed water and sewer rate increases are at the low end of what the department needs to cover production and maintenance costs, the director said.

The grants he has found so far don't fit, he said, partly because Cordova shares a census area with Valdez, which keeps it from qualifying. He's still looking. That leaves low-interest loans like the city's 1.875% landfill loan, and even at that rate, he said, a $20 million, $30 million or $40 million project is "a lot of money."

"We can't do anything if we don't have water and we can't flush the toilet," said Council Member Kasey Kinsman, who called the issue one of his top priorities.