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Alyeska’s Water Quality Program consists of three basic areas: drinking
water, wastewater, and water use.
Drinking Water
Alyeska’s drinking water sources are as varied as the terrain the pipeline
traverses: wells (groundwater), lakes and creeks (surface water), and
municipal works (Valdez, Anchorage, Fairbanks, and the North Slope
Borough). Generally, pump stations withdraw their water from wells, Pump
Station 1 hauls potable water from the North Slope Borough’s Deadhorse
facility to the pump station, the Valdez Marine Terminal withdraws its
water from a creek, and offices located in cities receive their water from
the local municipality’s distribution system. Alyeska routinely samples
and monitors its drinking water quality to ensure its compliance with
state drinking water regulations and standards.
Wastewater
Alyeska uses numerous techniques to treat its wastewater. Wastewater,
which by definition is water that is used, comes from domestic sources
(e.g. toilets, showers, kitchen sinks, etc.) and industrial sources (e.g.
ballast water from tanker ships, vehicle repair shops with floor drains,
storm water run-off, water pumped out of excavations, and hydrotest
water). Alyeska has permits to treat and/or manage its domestic and
industrial wastewater streams.
Depending upon location, Alyeska facilities manage their domestic
wastewater by means of stack injection, septic tanks and leach fields,
sewage treatment lagoons, facility-operated wastewater treatment plants
and municipal-operated wastewater treatment plants. However, because
domestic treatment systems are designed to treat biological wastes,
Alyeska also has treatment systems (e.g. oil/water separators) and
administrative processes (e.g. removing oil drips from floors prior to
rinsing) to ensure that industrial waste streams do not enter the
biological treatment systems.
Lastly, some industrial discharges never enter an Alyeska treatment system
because the wastewater is either generated too far away from a pump
station or because the volume of wastewater would overload the treatment
system. In the cases of …
-
hydrostatic testing (millions of gallons of clean water can be generated
after a tank’s or pipe’s structural integrity is tested)
-
excavation dewatering (millions of gallons of water can be generated
every day work is done below the ground’s surface)
-
storm water run-off (water generated from precipitation events or spring
melt runoff from gravel pads and gravel material sites)
-
ballast water treatment (ballast is water contained in a tanker’s oil
compartments to hold the tanker down in the water while it’s traveling
to Valdez to pick up a load of crude oil; the ballast water is offloaded
and treated at the Valdez Marine Terminal’s ballast water treatment
system) …
Alyeska has specific permits to treat, monitor and sample these
wastewaters to ensure protection of our nation’s water. The wastewaters
from these particular industrial sources are discharged to the
environment.
Water Use
Alyeska uses water in a variety of ways: drinking, food preparation,
sanitation, cleaning, hydrotesting, dust control, fire water, ice road
construction, gravel pad maintenance, etc. Alyeska cannot use any water
without acquiring permits from the State of Alaska Department of Natural
Resources.
Most
of the water wells have permanent water rights; however, when more water
is needed than permitted by the water right and/or the water is needed at
a location far from the pump station, Alyeska secures “temporary water use
permits” to withdraw water from specifically-named lakes, rivers, and
streams. These permits are granted for specific activities, have on-going
record-keeping requirements, and include provisions that protect fisheries
and water quality.
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