Filtration used on tainted well water

Five homes are being provided with in-home water treatment systems designed to remove a chemical used in refining oil in North Pole, Alaska.

The filtration system is being tested to remove sulfolane from private well water.

Jeff Cook, a spokesman for Flint Hills Resources, which operates the refinery, said after about two months the system has shown it can reduce sulfolane to nondetectable levels.

The filtration system was designed by Flint Hills and the Fairbanks water-treatment company Ecowater Systems. It includes a sediment filter, water softener, a hydrogen peroxide pump that breaks down the sulfolane, a mixing chamber that removes the sulfolane and a charcoal filter that cleans the water.

“It’s an off-the-shelf treatment system, just a way to combine them to remove the sulfolane,” Cook said.

Flint Hills is continuing to clean up contamination that was discovered last year but happened years before the company bought the refinery in 2004. Most of the tainted wells are outside North Pole.

Sulfolane reportedly seeped into groundwater and private wells from gasoline spills last decade. Some water contains levels above those recommended by federal standards but much too low to make laboratory animals sick.

Plans are to bring the system to about 150 households which have sulfolane in their well water.

—The Associated Press