Rural Alaska

Overweight Bethel water trucks causing problems for city and DOT

BETHEL — All day long and into the evening, big water and sewer trucks rumble on Bethel's roads, hauling freshwater to fill tanks and hauling away the sewage.

Now the state of Alaska has determined the trucks are too heavy for state roads and has warned city drivers they could be ticketed.

The small municipality was caught by surprise, said City Manager Peter Williams. Officials are scrambling to figure out a long-term fix. It's a big problem for Bethel, where most residents depend on what they call hauled water.

The state Department of Transportation sent two inspectors to Bethel in mid-July for what was supposed to be outreach and education, said Jill Reese, a DOT spokeswoman. They met with drivers at five private businesses and the city of Bethel, she said, to review vehicle safety checks and other requirements. They brought scales.

The inspectors found a systemic problem with overweight city trucks on state roads, she said.

"They sat down with our drivers and said they would be responsible if they were driving the trucks overweight and on the road," Williams said.

An overweight vehicle could cost the driver $850 for a ticket and also affect the person's commercial driver's license, according to DOT.

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The main road through town is the state Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway, which has become a roller coaster of a ride at least in part from frost heaves. The state is soliciting proposals on repairs to the worst stretch.

The state suspects heavy trucks are worsening a road that, as Williams puts it, "has gone to heck out here."

The city doubts that its trucks are worsening the dips and hills.

"If no one drove, we'd still have the same frost heaves," Williams said. The trucks grow potholes along the city's dirt and gravel roads, he said, but they can be graded.

In the short term, trucks are running two-thirds to three-fourths full, according to the city. With lighter tanks, trucks must make more frequent trips to fill with water at city pump houses or dump raw sewage into the lagoon at the edge of town.

That reduces efficiency in a system that is inefficient and complicated to start with, Williams said. Residents can pick from a variety of delivery schedules, so next-door neighbors often don't get water the same day from the same truck. Some get water once a month and some several times a week. Others are in between. It all depends on a household's water usage, the size of the tank and how much water they can afford.

With the crackdown, trucks are doing even more back-and-forths.

The city's bigger trucks hold 4,000 gallons of water — more than 16 tons — and are being scaled back to 3,000 gallons. The 3,000-gallon trucks have gone to 2,000 gallons, Williams said.

A truck might deliver to two or three homes, or five or six.

Drivers are working overtime to keep up. About 15 water and sewer trucks are running six days a week, Williams said.

The city asked DOT to waive the weight restriction but was told that it is done only in limited circumstances, such as when heavy equipment or a house is being moved. Those special permissions are not for everyday overweight trucks, Reese said.

The city is seeking help from U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski to get time to resolve the matter, Williams said.

DOT says it doesn't have the ability to overlook the overweight trucks but is working with the city to find a long-term solution.

Two new water and sewer trucks are being barged to Bethel this summer, and that will help, Williams said. The city could seek funding to buy longer trucks configured to carry more weight legally, he said. Water trucks are expensive — $300,000 or so apiece — and longer ones won't fit in the public works building.

The DOT had been planning the trip to Bethel, an hour's flight from Anchorage, since 2015, Reese said. It took so long to get to Bethel because the state didn't have funding for outreach and DOT had to secure a federal grant, she said. The intent was education and outreach — not to target the city drivers, she said.

No DOT inspectors are based in Bethel, though troopers and city police also can write tickets for overweight rigs. The agency doesn't plan to actively enforce the weight limits at this point but expects the city to follow the rules, Reese said.

Lisa Demer

Lisa Demer was a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News. Among her many assignments, she spent three years based in Bethel as the newspaper's western Alaska correspondent. She left the ADN in 2018.

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