Unalaskans may have noticed heavy equipment and construction materials assembled around the Steward Road Bridge. The city's Lake and River Restoration project is underway, and Steward Road, General's Hill and Overland Drive residents can expect minor detours and daytime din for the next month.
"What we're doing is diverting storm water from two culverts that currently discharge storm water under the Steward Road Bridge into a detention basin on the southside of the bridge," said Robert Lund, city engineer with the public works department. "The idea is that the detention basin will take out any large gravel and silt before it winds up in the river."
Lund gave a tour of the Steward Road Bridge construction site on Friday, providing an outline of the project.
The whole point of the project is to protect the water quality of Unalaska Creek and Unalaska Lake. In particular, the project is meant to protect the fish that make their way up the valley's watershed.
The city's many gravel roads create continuous maintenance issues for the storm water system, which drains into roadside culverts and creates sedimentation problems. That's according to a 2006 report, commissioned by the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, on the water quality of Dutch Harbor, Iliuliuk Bay and Iliuliuk Harbor.
In an effort to address the many water quality issues caused by development in Unalaska, state and federal agencies gave a grant to the city to complete the Lake and River Restoration project. The grant is from the Coastal Impact Assistance Program, managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. That agency gets the money for grants from federal offshore oil lease revenues.
Lund says the project includes phases at the Steward Road Bridge, Overland Drive and Iliuliuk Creek.
"We have a little bit of work on this project that OSI is funding - it's mitigation they're doing for a fill project they had in Captains Bay," Lund said. "We're going to do some vegetation restoration along the creek there, put in a material called core logs to try to prevent any gravel and debris from getting into the creek down there and we're going to repair a couple of erosion spots and plant some wild beach rye."
Anchorage's PND Engineers helped the city put the project out to bid in late 2015. Unalaska-based company Northern Alaska Contractors LLC was awarded the construction contract.
This first phase of the project involves installing drainage pipes and storm drains around Steward Road Bridge. The second phase will install storm drainage on Overland Drive. Both phases will prompt intermittent traffic detours. But the project won't take too long.
"We will be done by June 1st," Lund said.
Why so sure?
"There's a tight deadline because the funding for the grant is ending on June 30," Lund said. "So we need to have all our paperwork and everybody paid by then so the city can apply to the granting agency to get reimbursed for our costs on the project."
Steward Road Bridge will be sporadically closed over the next week.
