The wastewater treatment plant this past September. (Annie Ropeik/KUCB)

Right now, Unalaska is in the thick of more than $70 million worth of capital projects -- and some are more on track than others.

On Tuesday, public works director Tom Cohenour brought city council up to speed all that construction. He said the city’s priciest project, the $20-million wastewater treatment plant, is more than two-thirds finished.

Earlier this month, the city missed an Environmental Protection Agency deadline to get the plant’s chlorination system online. That could mean a fine. But Cohenour hopes they’ll be forgiven if they can finish the plant by the end of next year as planned. 

But he said the city might face a bump in price anyway:

"At present, we have 11 change orders that have been approved, for a 1.9 percent change order cost, which on the face of it sounds really good," Cohenour said, adding that the city aims to keep change orders under 10 percent of a project's cost. "But the sidestory is that there’s about $3 [million], possibly $4 million in change proposal requests that the design team is working through. If those are all included, we’re probably looking at close to a 20 percent change order cost."

The extra changes would stem from issues with blasting work and over-excavation last year. Still, Cohenour says construction at the plant will go on hold for the holidays. It should resume early next year.

Other city projects are still in their early stages -- like the C float overhaul at the Bobby Storrs Small Boat Harbor. Last night, council awarded a $4.4 million contract for that project to Turnagain Marine Construction.

It was higher than the engineer’s estimate; council had to pass a budget amendment on Tuesday to make up the difference. Councilor Roger Rowland said he hoped that wouldn’t impede more improvements to the harbor down the road.

"Even though it came in over budget and we don’t like that, I don’t want to give up on A and B float," he said. "We were supposed to do it all, and we phased it out, and I don’t want to us to lose sight that we were supposed to do it all."

Ports director Peggy McLaughlin said they’d tackle that phase once the C float was done.

Council also voted last night to go ahead with an economic analysis on dredging at the entrance to Iliuliuk Bay. The study will have to prove that deepening the channel has a national economic benefit, since it needs approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Former city councilor Dennis Robinson was in the audience last night and spoke up on a number of topics. He was in support of the dredging, since right now, ships have to dump their ballast water to get over the channel bar.

"That increases the possibility of getting an invasive species into our waters here greatly, with three ship calls a week," he said. "And I think this’ll alleviate some of that. ... The ecological impacts of an invasive species were very real."

Councilor Dave Gregory agreed with him. But he was looking forward to the study that came after -- on how dredging might affect tides in the bay.

"It’s a good first step -- and living on the Front Beach, it’s kind of close to home," he said, laughing. "Don’t want my house to wash away."

The city has made further study of the dredging a priority for the next fiscal year.

Staff will be back in council chambers the next two Tuesdays -- their special meeting on the city’s housing shortage is next week, Dec. 2. And council will meet again the week after that for a public hearing on a paying to ship scrap metal off the island.