Some Anchorage homes went a month without running water last winter

Some Anchorage customers waited a month for running water last winter while contractors worked through a backlog of frozen service lines buried 10 feet down.

The utility logged about 240 frozen services, more than three times a normal winter and well past the previous high of just under 100 in 2019 and 2020. Thawing that usually takes hours stretched into days and weeks. One Assembly committee member, describing her own wait, said a thawing contractor told her 75 people were ahead of her, "and I cried."

Part of the reason was competition for the same crews. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough was dealing with frozen septic systems and wells at the same time, pulling private contractors out of Anchorage. "Resources were spread throughout all of Southcentral, not just Anchorage," General Manager David Persinger told the committee.

The cold went deeper than the utility had seen. Three water mains in the public right-of-way froze within a couple of days of each other at the end of March, something operations director Brian Boss said he had heard of in 20 years at the utility but never witnessed. Frost reached 11 feet in South Anchorage. One thaw took more than three weeks. Crews worked digs of 30 hours straight, and an excavator claw snapped on frozen ground. Boss called the winter "a prolonged natural disaster response."

The cost falls on customers. Under the utility's tariff, thawing a frozen service line is the customer's responsibility, and customers still paid around $250 for the utility to locate the line and test the thaw wire. Changing that would take Assembly approval and then a sign-off from state regulators. Boss said waiving emergency dispatch fees is under consideration.

He also said his division is understaffed for emergencies like this one, and that fixing it costs money. In the meantime, he asked customers to mark where their service line connects before the snow arrives.