Unalaska, AK – City Council members heard a presentation on the new water treatment addition proposals at Tuesday night's meeting. A new Environmental Protection Agency regulation requires all unfiltered water treatment plants that draw from surface waters, like the Pyramid Valley Reservoir, to use two different water treatment methods. Currently the Unalaska water department only uses chlorine. Public Utilities Director Dan Winters said the new system will add UV light treatment.

"So we'll be going to a thing called 3-log inactivation. It means that we take care of 99.9 percent of the bugs that come across the UV lights. And inactivation means that we take away their ability to breed, if you will. That's how they affect your body. They get in there and multiple and then you get really sick," he explained.

Winters stressed that the current water is very clean and does not include harmful germs, but federal law requires the change. Winters said they are putting in an even more advanced system than necessary to ensure that the city will never be required to filter the water. Running a filtration system costs about $300,000 per year and changes the taste a feel of the water. The UV system will cost about $23,000 per year to run.

The water treatment plant addition will cost about $6.2 million total, but Winters said they should be able to get most of the money through state and federal grants. That would reduce the cost for the city to about $2.2 million dollars. Winters said that the city should not need to raise water rates to pay for the addition. He said, in fact, the new system shouldn't be very noticeable at all.

"You're really not going to see that much difference. The water is still the water. There's going to be plenty of it," he said. "So I'd like to officially say go ahead and take as long of showers as you want. It's excellent water and we've got plenty of it."

The new water treatment system needs to be in place by 2014. Winters says they anticipate starting construction on the plant additions and redesign in 2012.