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October 23, 2014 Media Contact: Jesse Broder Van Dyke 489-0341       Crews continue to repair Sand Island Wastewater Treatment Plant   Sand Island – Crews were hard at work again today restoring power to vital parts of the Sand Island Wastewater Treatment Plant after heavy rains caused by Hurricane Ana led to flooding within the plant, short circuiting some of the plant's electrical systems on Sunday.    Today, the egg-shaped digester operated by Synagro Technologies was restored to full service and resumed converting the plant's sludge into soil amendment pellets.  Crews were able to reconnect the In-Vessel Bioconversion Facility to the power grid at about 6 p.m. Tuesday night.    "We're pleased Synagro was able to restore power so that we can process sludge and avoid taking it to the landfill," said Mayor Kirk Caldwell. "If the system had been offline too long, the microbiotic organisms in the digester could have stopped functioning, leading to additional problems. Thankfully that did not happen, thanks to the quick work of Synagro."   Crews also fixed the plant's two largest primary clarifiers, numbers 7 and 8.  Rotating arms on those clarifiers are now functioning and solids can now be moved out of those tanks to the gravity thickeners for processing.    Crews continue to work on restoring clarifiers 4 and 6.  The plant needs at least three clarifiers online at any given time to process all of the incoming wastewater, so crews still need to restore one of these two remaining clarifiers to fully restore the plant.    "We expect to get a third clarifier back online by Friday, and the backup clarifier by next week," said Director of Environmental Services Lori Kahikina.    The remaining clarifiers at the plant are currently offline for a routine maintenance project.  Today, contractor Parsons plugged up several holes in an offline spillway to prevent a reoccurrence of wastewater overflowing into the basement area that contains electrical paneling.    On Sunday, a spike in runoff water into the sewer system during a heavy rains caused by Hurricane Ana caused an overflow within the Sand Island Wastewater Treatment Plant.   5,000 gallons of partially treated waste water overflowed into Honolulu Harbor.  At the same time, some 20 million gallons were thankfully contained in the basement area, damaging the electrical wiring but preventing a larger overflow into the harbor.    -END-