Kodiak Borough asks lawmakers whether to keep village projects on its state funding list

The Kodiak Island Borough Assembly will ask Sen. Gary Stevens and Rep. Louise Stutes on Thursday whether village projects should stay on the list of capital requests the borough sends to the Legislature. Ten of the 17 projects on the current list are for villages, several of them for water systems.

Borough Manager Aimee Williams wants the lawmakers' guidance on whether the list should include projects from villages, the City of Kodiak and the borough school district, or focus mainly on borough projects, since those groups may submit their own requests, according to her staff report.

The current list, adopted in January, runs from the city's St. Herman Harbor and the hospital's boilers to borough road paving. The village requests come from Larsen Bay, Port Lions, Karluk and Old Harbor.

In Larsen Bay, the reservoir that supplies drinking water and hydroelectric power has a spillway that "is eroding and is nearing failure," the list says. The $1.2 million fix has no funding. A separate $7 million request would replace Larsen Bay's water lines, which lose 40,000 gallons a day even though the city has fixed all the leaks it could find.

Port Lions is asking for $8 million to replace a water and sewer system first built after the 1964 earthquake and tsunami forced residents of Afognak to move there. Crews constantly repair leaks and blockages, and "in some places the system is beyond repair," the city wrote.

Karluk has violated the Surface Water Treatment Rule's drinking water standards since they were updated in 2005, the list says. Engineering is done on a new water tank, but construction preparation has stalled for lack of money. Borough planners advanced a permit for Karluk's water treatment system in June.

The Assembly will also discuss Community Assistance payments to rural communities, whether to put more money into that fund, and high energy costs heading into winter. The agenda also leaves time for Stevens to share advice as he prepares to leave the Legislature.

The work session starts at 6:30 pm. The Assembly doesn't take formal action at work sessions.