Ketchikan council to vote on seventh hike in water consulting deal

Ketchikan will not have to build a water filtration plant, an estimated $70 million project that would also cost about $2 million a year to operate. EPA Region 10 Deputy Regional Administrator Calvin Terada issued a concurrence Aug. 23, clearing a Limited Alternative to Filtration under the Safe Drinking Water Act that the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation had already approved.

The Ketchikan City Council will vote Sept. 17 on a seventh and final amendment to Contract 19-44 with Jacobs Engineering Group. The $25,000 amendment would bring the contract's total to $891,885, nearly nine times its original $100,000 value. The money comes from the Water Division's Water Filtration Facility Preliminary Preparation Tasks account, which funded six earlier amendments.

Ketchikan Public Utilities draws raw, undisinfected water from Ketchikan Lakes. Water Division Manager John C. Kleinegger's Aug. 30 memorandum calls the system a "filtration avoidance system."

The state ordered the utility on Nov. 20, 2019, after a Surface Water Treatment Rules violation, to enter a Compliance Order by Consent or build a plant within 18 months. The council entered the order May 20, 2021, setting five demonstration items. Amendments to the Jacobs contract had already begun, adding $100,000 in May 2020 to bring the total to $200,000, and rising through five more amendments to $866,885 by February 2024. That largest amendment, the $200,000 approved in February 2024, appears in the minutes among items the vice-mayor suggested moving to the consent agenda, with no objections heard and seven council members recorded voting yes.

The state approved the plan in April 2025 and sent its approval letter to Region 10 on June 26, 2025. Kleinegger wrote that Region 10's response "has always been the same, that they are proceeding with their management review." The concurrence came more than a year later, after Mayor Sivertsen raised the delay with Alaska's congressional delegation.

Jacobs split the $25,000 in an email: $5,000 for meetings, $15,000 for project management and $5,000 for "Congressional Delegation Coord," raising that line item from $9,415 to $14,415. Vice President Floyd J. Damron proposed the split as a fallback to placing the full $25,000 into project management. The city's memorandum instead assigns the money to agency comments and project management. The packet misdates EPA's planned response as March 2025 and misdates Damron's June 2, 2026, email as 2028.

The city's separate EPA-mandated wastewater disinfection upgrades top its fiscal year 2027 state capital list at $10 million.