Rampart Water and Sewer

Project Detailsx

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> Planning & Design
> Geotechnical Services
> Surveying

Project Overviewx

Rampart is a small community of about 30 people. Many of the homes in Rampart have broken water and sewer systems or no service at all. This is a common challenge for rural communities in Alaska. The lack of facilities and harsh conditions make managing water and sewer systems difficult.

To help Rampart, HDL was contracted by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) to complete a preliminary engineering report. The report recommended onsite well and wastewater treatment units as the preferred design alternative (Option 1), a hauled water and wastewater treatment unit for homes with limited lot sizes (Option 2), and the ANTHC PASS (Option 3) for homeowners that could not afford the operational cost for Options 1 or 2.

After completing the PER, HDL provided designs for the 16 homes identified for the first service. Due to the challenging soil conditions in Rampart, the community did not favor a sewage collection system. Instead, HDL considered the previous success with LifeWater Engineering onsite wastewater treatment units in neighboring communities and consulted with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) to determine that wastewater treatment units were a viable option for Rampart.

ANTHC and HDL visited the homeowners during the initial stage of design and described options for onsite wells and hauled water systems along with options for septic systems, onsite wastewater treatment systems, and hauled wastewater systems. Each homeowner then selected which water and sewer option they wanted to be installed in their home.

For Option 1, which included onsite well and wastewater treatment units, our engineers designed the wells with a circulating well line and thaw recovery heat trace system to prevent freeze up. For Option 2, HDL designed a closed water transfer tank and trailer to allow homeowners to safely haul water from the community watering point to their storage tanks.