According to the USWA, “[w]ith on the ground research and data analysis, we discovered that over two million Americans live without access to running water, indoor plumbing, and safe sanitation.” The report focuses on interviews with local residents addressing on challenges related to failing infrastructure, contamination, and high financial costs for limited amounts of water just to live in certain rural and tribal communities.
The USWA also says that the Federal government’s collection of water infrastructure data which has been cut back in recent years, has never accurately measured the lack of such infrastructure for many communities. The report states that “communities of color are more likely to lack water access than white communities, and that the disparity is particularly extreme for Native Americans” which is more likely to have trouble accessing water than any other group.
According to the report, the number of Native American households that don’t have plumbing is almost 20 times that of white households. Claiming to have conducted the most extensive research on water infrastructure in the United States, including the commissioning of experts from around the country, the authors of the report found was that race was the major factor in water and sanitation access.
Early in the 20th century, when water-borne illnesses was a leading cause of death in the U.S., the federal government modernized water and sanitation infrastructure which almost eradicated those diseases. Even in the days of ambitious government programs to improve water related sanitation, however, some tribal communities located in remote areas were passed over because it was too expensive to provide access to potable and other water. Now, with federal funding for water infrastructure fraction of what it once was, federal health agencies estimate that it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to provide basic water and sanitation access to places like on the Navajo Nation in Southern New Mexico.
Two front runners in the field of Democratic nominees for the U.S. presidential election appear to be unified on the controversial issue of the privatization of water systems including Elizabeth Warren who released an environmental plan that, among other things, calls for the nation’s water systems to be remain a public resource that should “be owned by and for the public.”
According to the plan “A Warren Administration will end decades of is investment and privatization of our nation’s water system — our government at every level should invest in safe, affordable drinking water for all of us.” The Warren plan includes the need for tighter federal classification of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the reinstatement of the Waters of the United States rule which was eliminated by the Trump administration in order relieve industry from water protection restrictions, and investment into public water system infrastructure.
Warren’s focus on water ethics puts her in line with democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who advocates for similar protections for water resources in legislation he is sponsoring including the WATER Act which would help municipalities or state agencies bring treatment works back into public ownership and the Green New Deal, which would over haul the country’s approach to environmental issues. “According to Common Dreams. “Months earlier, in November 2018, Sanders gave a forceful rejection of privately controlled water after voters in Baltimore easily passed Question E, which bans the privatization of the municipal water and sewer systems.”
Research on private water systems, suggest that they “put public health at risk, a 66-page paper by University of Louisville law professor Craig Anthony Arnold argues, because the profit motive incentivizes companies to provide better services to customers who pay more and to maintain infrastructure with an eye to the length of the firm’s contract.” The Huffington Post.
While the Warren plan, does indicates that if Warren were to become the next president of the United States, privately-run water systems would become far less common, it does not provide whether or not, as president, she would take action to prevent their formation.
Stating that by withdrawing safeguards for Bristol Bay in order to pave the way for development of the Pebble Mine, “the [Environmental Protection Agency] has handicapped its own scientists’ ability to protect a place” that the agency itself, has described, as having “unparalleled ecological value, boasting salmon diversity and productivity unrivaled anywhere in North America,” several groups representing Bristol Bay tribes and fishermen filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Anchorage in an effort to force the agency to restore the protections.
The Plaintiffs, including the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, Bristol Bay Native Association – a consortium of 31 tribes, the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association and Bristol Bay Reserve Association, two groups representing fishermen, and the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit promoting economic growth, have asked the federal district court in Anchorage to decide that the revocation of the 2014 determination made under the Clean Water Act, was arbitrary and capricious. The 40-page complaint states that, in withdrawing the 2014 proposed determination, EPA “failed to consider the substantive findings it made in support” of the determination that the Mine could cause significant harm to the environment.
According to Ralph Andersen who is the chief executive of BBNA, regarding the lawsuit, the Trump “administration not only broke the law, it made clear that local people have no voice in the management of our rivers, our streams and wetlands,… But the people of Bristol Bay are not pushovers.”
Every year, the national “Imagine a Day without Water” campaign raises awareness and educates Americans about the value of water in everyday life.
In October 2019, the campaign’s theme emphasized imagining “No water to drink, or even to make coffee with. No water to shower, flush the toilet, or do laundry…Some communities in America already know how impossible it is to try to go a day without our most precious resource: Water.” There are five villages in the Bering Sea region including Stebbins, Teller, Wales, Diomede and Shishmaref, that fit this description perfectly because most homes in these villages have never had running water.
Each of them have various strategies for compensating for the lack of running water. Shishmaref, for example, collects snow over the winter into a catchment and drains the melted water into a lined pond. The water is filtered and then pumped into a 1.3 million gallon tank. The water catchment needs a new liner and a transfer line but the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium — an Anchorage based entity that provides funding for municipal water and sewer, doesn’t have the money to upgrade it. Diomede needs $50,000 to make improvements to its water system and in the meantime, in order to obtain access to fresh water for drinking, the majority of people, use rainwater or ice water.
At a rate of a quarter per gallon, the Wale’s school and teachers’ housing which are supported by Bering Straits School District and the health clinic are the only facilities that can afford treated running water but the rest of the community goes without. For sewage disposal, the village stages bins in various locations throughout the community where people dump their honey buckets. The bins are collected and hauled out to a lagoon where they are dumped.
Due to a lack of infrastructure, Shishmaref, Diomede, and Wales are on the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of drinking water systems that are over the limits for what EPA has deemed to be safe for humans for arsenic, nitrates, uranium, and other contaminants. Even those Alaska villages with adequate water infrastructure still have occasional issues with access to running water. After someone ran into a power pole with a backhoe in Elim (located in the Norton Sound region) last spring, the municipal water pump blew a fuse due to the lack of electricity, and the entire village had no electricity or running water for almost a week while the city waited for a new pump.
So far, Bering Sea communities haven’t been able to get much assistance in establishing water infrastructure from the federal or state government.
While the Trump administration recently adopted a $1.5 trillion plan to rebuild the countries crumbling water infrastructure including in small communities, for example, the plan includes a mere $200 billion in federal funds while the remaining $1.3 trillion would come from sources that those communities would need to come up with. Because many small communities generally don’t have access to those kinds of funds they would need to turn to private investors to develop or rehabilitate water infrastructure giving those investors too much control over what has traditionally been a public resource.
Similarly, in order to cut spending or pave the way for oil and gas development in Alaska, so far, Governor Mike Dunleavy’s focus on Arctic communities is to veto legislation or cut existing programs designed to protect human health and welfare or that would have helped build resiliency to the ravages of climate change.
One of the only politicians who has paid any attention to the appalling lack of water infrastructure for Arctic communities, is Senator Lisa Murkowski who after a visit last summer to Teller, Brevig Mission and Wales stated “we know the costs here are so high it can literally take every dollar for water and wastewater projects.”
However, Senator Murkowski may also be missing an opportunity to incorporate adequate water infrastructure for Arctic village communities in her recently revealed plans to reintroduce the Shipping and Environmental Arctic Leadership Act (SEAL Act). The act is intended to shore up infrastructure that could take advantage of increased shipping and exploitation of resources in the Bering Sea area, but it does not include developing adequate water infrastructure for Arctic communities.
It seems that whenever, federal or state policy makers talk about the Arctic, these days, the emphasis is on taking advantage of a warming temperatures and melting sea ice to exploit rather than protect local communities or the environment.
n so doing, we are continuing to leave many such communities way behind.
Hal Shepherd is a consultant and writer on water policy issues living in Homer, Alaska.
The community water supply of the Village of Nanwalek, located within the Kachemak Bay watershed, was impacted by drought in Southcentral Alaska over the past month requiring the village to have water flown in to off-set the water shortage. Late last month, the village’s reservoir was drying out so rapidly, that the city had to shut the water off at 9 pm every night and leave it off until 9am every morning.
As the water situation continued to deteriorate, a member of the Nanwalek city council searched for an alternate potable water source on Google Earth and located one on nearby St. John Mountain. Then the city dug a trench from the new water sources to the city’s reservoir so the new source could replenish the reservoir. After a month with out rain, on August 20 it finally came to Nanwalek and the village is waiting to see if rain and new water supply will address the water shortage for now.
According to the Leo Network Newsletter for August, as of the end of August, the Kachemak Bay Mountain Range that surrounds Nanwalek was devoid of snow pack and the “total precipitation June 1 to August 20, is only 1.01 inches, far below the average of over six inches for June – August.”
Similarly, dry weather and low snowpack have reduced the amount of water in Lily Lake which is the main source of water for the town of Haines, to historically low levels this summer. The municipal water department is working around the clock to keep water flowing down the line. But the amount of water in the lake is not keeping up with demand.
What was I doing in the plush Nugget Casino in the 90 degree heat of Sparks, Nevada last month talking about improving Water Infrastructure through Resilient Adaptation of Alaska Native Village Communities in the North Bering Sea region? Because while the room full of water Geeks attending the summer specialty conference of the American Water Resources Association, were familiar with all the news coverage about super hurricanes and flooding on the east coast, they probably were not that familiar with the plight of communities in the North Bering Sea region (NBSR) of Alaska who are dealing with similar threats to their water infrastructure.
Arctic communities are have been experiencing increased permafrost melt, loss of sea ice, extreme weather events, flooding and erosion that may make current residences and settlements uninhabitable in the near future. Such communities have another thing in common with coastal cities on the east coast-they are in direct competition for limited federal disaster and hazard mitigation funding to defend against the inevitable march or climate change. In many cases, for example, agencies require cost-benefit analysis, plans, environmental analysis, or other measures above and beyond analysis or strategies contained in Hazard Mitigation Plans (HMPs) or other plans before such communities qualify to apply for funds. Similarly, because standard arctic community HMPs do not contain a detailed cost-benefit analysis of natural hazards affecting water resources, such communities cannot obtain high rankings that larger cities can to qualify for competitive funding or other federal or state assistance needed to address such impacts. Finally, the villages cannot afford to hire consultants or even staff to conduct climate adaption planning on behalf of such communities to include more meaningful consideration of economic impacts and risks associated with coastal water resource management resiliency strategies, in order to move beyond the planning phase and into on the ground project implementation.
During my talk at the conference, therefore, I emphasized the need to conduct economic risk-benefit and environmental analysis and otherwise close the gap between Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other governmental funding and technical assistance programs such so that North Bering Sea communities can implement on-the-ground projects that will address the Villages’ climate-related coastal water resources management challenges. Hopefully, word will travel to the ears of these agencies so that tribes in the Arctic can move behind the planning phase and into project implementation…something the needs to happen…yesterday.
According to “The State of the Arctic Freshwater Biodiversity Report,” released by the Arctic Council’s Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna program at the May 7 at the Arctic Council ministerial in Rovaniemi, Finland, the range of species across the area is heading toward a period of dramatic changes including replacement of many fresh water fish by other species venturing in from southern waters. The report urges decision makers related to management of the Arctic fishery habitat to prepare effectively for an uncertain future.
According to the report, some of these changes may induce “sudden biological shifts with strong repercussions.” Non-climate stressors such as long-range transboundary air pollutants and those originating from industrial development and urbanization, fisheries over-harvesting, dams and other forms of development can exacerbate climate related temperature by leading to “substantial habitat fragmentation and destruction.”
The report, among other actions, recommends engaging local communities in monitoring efforts through “citizen science” efforts. The Arctic Council report was released on the heals of ominous warnings by the United Nations human actions threaten more species globally.
