The Juneau International Airport was forced to shut down its lavatory dump station after the Food and Drug Administration found that it violated federal code during a surprise inspection Friday.
“It was pretty cut and dry,” Airport Manager Patty Wahto said in an interview. “We’ve closed down the site until we can get everything up to snuff.”
The dump station is a fairly straightforward facility; it’s essentially just a concrete slab and a manhole cover near the fuel depot on airport grounds. But it serves an important function. Commercial interstate aircraft — namely those belonging to Alaska Airlines and Delta Air Lines — used the station to empty their onboard lavatories.
“It was basically just a place for lavatory fluid taken off jets to be deposited into a sanitary storm sewer,” Airport Operations Superintendent Scott Rinkenberger said.
On Friday morning, an FDA inspector found five code violations at the dumpsite, including its lack of a hand-washing station.
Though Wahto said she and her staff are used to surprise inspections, this one really caught her off guard because she wasn’t aware the FDA had any reason to inspect the dump station.
“Quite frankly, this has been there for years and years and years,” Wahto said. “In the myriad of alphabet-soup agencies we work with, the FDA wasn’t even on my radar.”
Wahto and her staff weren’t the only ones surprised to hear that the FDA inspected airport lavatory dump stations. Even an FDA spokesperson was surprised to hear about the inspection when the Empire called to ask about it.
“I was not aware that we would inspect something like that,” she said.
As it turns out, the FDA can and does inspect airport dump stations. It’s a part of the administration’s Interstate Travel Program. Under this program, the FDA is required to inspect “passenger-carrying conveyances during their construction and operation as well as the support facilities for those conveyances,” according to the administration’s website.
“Support facilities” include waste-handling facilities, according to FDA press officer Lauren Sucher (not the same spokesperson as above). She wouldn’t say how often the FDA inspects lavatory dump stations because the administration doesn’t give information about dates or frequency of inspections.
“Just like a pop quiz in grade school, if you know there’s a pop quiz, it’s not as effective,” Sucher said.
During an Airport Board meeting Tuesday night, Wahto said that airport staff had already begun working to remedy several of the dump station’s violations. Some are easier to fix than others.
The airport closed the station immediately to clean a small amount of lavatory fluid residue near the station and capped the waste hose, both of which were code violations. But some of the other violations might cause the airport to close the station for good and find a new place for planes to empty their lavatories.
The FDA inspector cited the airport for a crack in the concrete foundation of the dumpsite. The inspector also found fault with the site’s lack of a wash-down hose and hand-washing station.
To fix these violations, the airport will likely have to build a new dump station, according to Wahto and Rinkenberger. Luckily, in the meantime, planes with full lavatory tanks aren’t being told to hold it until the next airport.
Aero Services, the company that empties airplane lavatories and transports their contents to the dump station, now has a new place to empty the lavatory liquid. The company is using a city-owned septic dump station near Pipeline Skate Park.
“These facilities are very similar,” Samantha Stoughtenger, the city’s wastewater utility superintendent, said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Stoughtenger explained that the dump change won’t impact the city’s sewer system because the waste from the airport dump station ended up at the Mendenhall Wastewater Treatment facility.
“It’s the same sewage that was getting to us anyway,” she said.
Nobody from Aero Services got back to the Empire by the end of the business day Wednesday to talk about how the switch has impacted business.
The city is charging Aero Services the standard bulk rate for dumping, which is $30.67 per 1,000 gallons. The airport wasn’t charging the company for access to its dump station, according to Rickenberger.
He said he doesn’t know when the airport will have its new dump station ready. It has just begun the “planning stage.” Rickenberger said he wasn’t comfortable providing an estimated completion date for the project. Such a prediction would be a crapshoot.
• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.
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