Water & wastewater: remote camps: systems designed for simple sanitation.

• Author: White, Rindi
• Position: ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES

The climate and geology of Alaska can make installing water and wastewater treatment systems a challenge for any community. But what happens when the community is only temporary or moves from location to location regularly?

When oil companies need a three-hundred-man camp set up on the North Slope, many contact a handful of engineering firms that specialize in providing remote and temporary water and wastewater treatment systems. A range of other temporary users need safe drinking water and waste management systems as well, including exploration, mining, and construction camps; canneries; and remote lodges.

"Regulatory oversight of those camp facilities tends to be no different than oversight to any community," says Allan Nakanishi, the lead engineer in the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation's Division of Water, Wastewater Discharge Authorization Program on mining projects.

Some users require portable treatment systems. In many cases the systems are housed in a trailer, which can be moved from one location to another as needed.

Keep It Simple

"The goal is to try to provide a system utilizing the KISS principle--as simple as possible and as reliable as possible. You try to find that sweet balance so you can try to provide something that's going to be functional in cold weather and out in the middle of nowhere," says Jeff Garness, a former water and wastewater treatment plant operator on the North Slope, who is a professional engineer and owner of Garness Engineering Group, Limited.

Garness' company has been designing water and wastewater systems for remote users since 1990. He says about half the company's winter work comes from projects in the oilfield, at mining and construction camps, lodges, canneries, and at other facilities that require mobile or temporary water and wastewater treatment systems.

Garness has designed water and wastewater treatment systems used by seismic crews working in the oil field, for example. A seismic crew travels in rolligon vehicles designed to cross the tundra lightly, without harm to the underlying ecosystem.

Garness says some of the mobile camps use toilets that bag up the waste so it can be frozen and later incinerated, or electric toilets that burn human waste. The gray water from showers, sinks, and laundry is treated and discharged onto the tundra.

Treating 'Tundra Tea': Making Do with What's Available

Finding water for the rolligon crew to use can be tricky. In some cases, the crew fills large hoppers with snow, which is melted, filtered, and disinfected before use.

"Some might be treating from surface water. On the slope, it is common to use lake water as a source for the camp's water supply. Often, the water quality is poor," Garness says. "We call it 'tundra tea.'"

Designing a water treatment system to work using either snow or water from a...