The Lower Kuskokwim School District has contracted with Bethel-based company Faulkner-Walsh Constructors to remove the oil from the Napakiak school fuel tanks threatened by the Kuskokwim River.
Owner Harry Faulkner received the call on Wednesday. By Thursday morning he was operating on a verbal agreement with LKSD and his company had already begun inspecting the available tanks.
Faulkner-Walsh has until Aug. 30 to complete the job. If the project isn’t done by then, the U.S. Coast Guard will intervene. That gives the company a little over one week to build a temporary tank farm and transfer the 36,000 gallons of diesel fuel sitting less than 100 feet from the eroding Kuskokwim riverbank.
The request for proposal outlines the project: Faulkner-Walsh will build a temporary fuel tank site in the Napakiak school parking lot. The contractor will line the site with a single piece of geo-membrane and will surround it with berms constructed from sandbags and capped with gravel. Then they will place the temporary tanks inside the berms. The school district has seven tanks of various sizes on hand. Three have been purchased for the project and are waiting at the Bethel Port, two are from the old Kilbuck School site in Bethel, and two were bought from the City of Bethel.
Once the fuel has been transferred, the company will bring the school’s 10 old fuel tanks to Bethel where they will be stored on LKSD property until they are disposed of.
LKSD Superintendent Dan Walker says that the project will cost about $279,000.
