Ketchikan weighs $63,750 more to design a tank for Ravenwood's low water pressure

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly votes Monday on adding $63,750.10 to the design contract for a water tank and booster station meant to address low water pressure at the top of the Ravenwood neighborhood.

Upper Ravenwood sits high enough that the borough's Fawn Mountain tank can't keep usable pressure there when demand spikes, the state Department of Environmental Conservation said in a 2021 notice. During those periods, it said, there's a risk of back siphonage, and firefighting is hampered.

The borough plans a booster station and a storage tank, 100,000 gallons in earlier plans, which would also improve fire flows to the Herring Cove area. The borough first identified the project around 2006, while designing earlier phases of the South Tongass water system, according to the agenda statement.

Most of Monday's amendment would pay for two things: a control panel for the booster station, at $37,678.60, and $24,311.50 for what staff call electrical integration services, to tie the station into the SCADA system that monitors and controls the borough's water treatment plant. R&M Engineering-Ketchikan's subconsultant, RMC Engineering Services, would do the work.

Staff called the integration work highly specialized. The control panel is a long lead-time item, they wrote, with components for secure communication with the existing system.

The amendment would bring the contract to $152,515.60. That's 71.8% more than the design spending approved so far, well past the 15% the administration can add without the assembly.

The assembly awarded R&M the job without competitive bidding in March 2021, for $65,782.50, because the firm had designed the earlier South Tongass phases.

Design was then put off for several years while the borough dealt with long-leaking pipes on lower Roosevelt and Romine drives, staff wrote. It picked back up in early 2026.

A first amendment in July added $22,983 for electrical and controls design. That design is also meant to better protect equipment from power surges, which staff said have caused significant damage to borough water facilities in recent years.

The money comes from a $1.6 million Alaska Drinking Water Fund loan the assembly has already appropriated, so no new appropriation is needed. A 2021 ordinance said the loan came with $500,000 in principal forgiveness.

The borough's fiscal 2019 capital plan put the whole project at about $2.3 million.