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.
Last summer the temperate rain forests communities of southern Alaska were shocked to find themselves experiencing a severe drought. It had been severe since last fall, a shocking turn of events for our beautiful affecting the forest canopy, salmon streams, water reservoirs, and hydropower plants in the form of winter rain, dwindling snow pack, spiking algal toxins, stranded birds, and salmon dying before they could spawn. Although the scale of drought was unprecedented, it was not the first time and it won’t be the last. Mike Brubaker, Editor of the Leo Network newsletter says that “there have been water shortages before in southern Alaska, and drought is becoming more common around the circumpolar north….As we reflect on our own water security, we may also consider the risks of relying too heavily upon past conventions when gauging the likelihood that events repeat in the future.”
Similarly, last October, the Leo Network featured a presentation by Celine van Breukelen, Senior Service Hydrologist with the National Weather Service which focused on how rising temperatures and low snow pack in Alaska, are reeking havoc on the delivery of water when both people and fish and wildlife need it most. The state’s air temperatures, for example, which are rising twice as fast as other places in the country resulted in record breaking average air temperature in 2016 and the month of July 2019.
Also, in the summer and fall of 2019, while, the Southern part of the state experienced very active fire weather season. The Swan Lake fire on Kenai Peninsula which burned most of the summer for example, damaged the line that connects the Bradley Lake hydroelectric plant to the Raibelt cutting off it’s power supply for months. This forced Bradly to scale back operations and will likely raise consumers monthly bills 3% to 5 or increase this winter when people use more electricity.
Similarly, while water shortages for communities and rivers and streams drying up due to drought, the Central region of the state had so much rain that the Army Corps of Engineers had to implement Flood Control measures for the Moose Creek Dam, Chena River Lakes Flood Control Project near Fairbanks and the Army Corp of Engineers is planning to make modifications to the project in order to accommodate ever rising flood waters on the river.
Also, Alaska’s glaciers are disappearing at record levels and since 2002, 60 billion tons of Alaska glacier ice has melted, pouring waters into rising ocean waters. During the second half of September 2019, for example, due to above normal air temperatures resulting in increased glacier melt and the return of rain, the average flows of a little over 100 cubic feet per second (cfs), from the Bradly River into Bradly River dam, on Kachemak Bay located in Southcentral Alaska suddenly shot off the charts to over 500 cfs by the end of the month.
Alaska’s water year typically starts in the Fall when it’s time to start recording snowpack accumulation. The state’s snowpack, however, which has been reduced by 50% in the southern regions, compared to a decade ago, currently develops about a week later in the fall and melts almost two weeks earlier in the spring.
These sudden changes are impacting fresh water ecosystems as well. In 2019 about 22 rivers and streams throughout Alaska reported record water temperatures, as compared to 2018 in which there was just 7. As a result, in June and July 2019, thousands of salmon died as they migrated to spawning grounds in Western Alaska, because the water exceeded lethal limits for the fish. One such river, the Tubulik near Elim and Koyuk had record temperatures at the Vulcan Creek gage site 30 miles from the mouth.
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.
The theme of last year’s World Water Day was “Imagine a Day Without Water,” which focused attention on how we would manage for a single day without the many benefits that water brings to our lives. It appears that many coastal communities in Alaska, do not need to “imagine” not having access to running water because they are just one step away from the breaking down of their water systems due to the often intricate relationship of such systems to other critical infrastructure.
A case in point -, to work with the tribal staff on an instream flow data collection project. While waiting for my flight to Nome at the airport in Anchorage, during a business trip to Elim a couple of weeks ago, I received a text from out Project Coordinator, stating that “someone ran into a power pole and the entire village has no electricity or running water.”
While I was staying in the Village and the water was still out, I had a conversation with one of the janitors at the Aniguiin School, who said that once the power line was knocked out, “everything went down like a dominos because without electricity, the water pump blew a fuse. The city ordered a new pump but there’s no telling how long it will take to get here.” At the same time, people couldn’t rely on nearby creeks for drinking water which were frozen due to the temperature being in the teens.
Meanwhile city and school employees were working tirelessly to find back-up water for the school and other critical facilities. Ultimately, it took 5 days for the part to arrive before running water could be restored. But several days later, some were still boiling water because of worries about sanitation.
Last week’s situation in Elim is vivid example of the vulnerability of small Alaska communities to the impacts of climate change on water infrastructure. This winter, for example, the Arctic experienced the warmest March on record, and the second consecutive winter with extremely low levels of ice in the Bering Sea. The unprecedented loss of shoreline sea ice which normally acts a kind of barrier to protect coastal communities in the Arctic, from increasing storm surges means that drinking and other water infrastructure are more vulnerable to flood damage.
Other climate related changes to water resources in Alaska include the earliest recorded breakup for many rivers including the of the Tanana and Kuskokwim. Shorter ice seasons on rivers have profound impacts for the villages which use rivers for their main transportation routes. As of the end of April this year, for example, around a dozen people died or had to be rescued after their snow machines or 4-wheelers fell through ice that was too thin. When rivers become too dangerous or otherwise, unavailable to use villagers are forced to either not travel at all or to rely on planes or other more expensive alternatives.
In light of the substantial impacts to Arctic coastal communities in the most rapidly warminig state in the country, it’s unfortunate that when asked about his strategy for addressing climate change during the campaign for Governor of Alaska, Mike Dunleavy’s response was “We are not a smokestack state, so we don’t contribute that much to climate change.” Ignoring the fact, therefore, that Alaska is one of the largest oil producing states in U.S., immediately after taking office, Dunleavy eliminated the Climate Action for Alaska Leadership Team established by Gov. Bill Walker, and removed the group’s strategy and action recommendations for helping Alaska Native and other communities adapt to climate change.
According to Dermot Cole, who is a columnist for Arctic Today, scrapping of the Team is a major loss for villages threatened by climate change because many of them “are one major storm away from being wiped out. If and when such a storm strikes, the state will respond — it just won’t be as organized as it could be with a mitigation plan.”
So, with the official response from the Dunleavy administration to impacts of climate change on the Alaska Native and other communities and for planning for the rapid changes coming to the state, being a resounding “We don’t care”, it’s a good thing that communities like Elim are already setting the example for resiliency when the grid actually does go down. Maybe the rest of us should take a page from their book.
The U.S. Supreme Court, recently, ruled in favor of John Sturgeon who sued the National Park Service in 2007, after rangers on the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve told him he could not use a hovercraft for hunting moose on the Nation River near the Canadian border. While the Park claimed it had jurisdiction to manage navigable waters inside park boundaries, the state which which allows hovercrafts, joined in the law suit and maintained that it had the right to manage waters within the state including those of such rivers.
When in the Spring of 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court made it’s decision it concluded that, for the purposes of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Nation River does not qualify as “public land” and, therefore, that the park service does not have authority to regulate Sturgeon’s activities on that part of the river found within the preserve. According to the Court “[t]hat means Sturgeon can again rev up his hovercraft in search of moose.”
Despite worries from tribal interests, that the Sturgeon litigation would reverse decades of legal precedents for federal subsistence fishing rights in Alaska, the Katie John case was kept intact by a single footnote buried in the middle of the 46-page ruling which stated that the Katie John is “not at issue in this case, and we therefore do not disturb the Ninth Circuit’s holdings that the Park Service may regulate subsistence fishing on navigable waters.” As a result, immediately after the ruling was issued, the Alaska Federation of Native’s largely supported the decision stating “[o]ur Board previously approved two principles related to the case: private landowner’s access to – and use of – inholdings within conservation system units; and no net loss to subsistence rights. This ruling accomplishes both.”
In apparent agreement with AFN, Alaska’s congressional delegation said that the Court upheld “promises made to Alaskans in ANILCA” limiting the NPS rights over state and native lands and praised the decision for not over turning Katie John.
The decision could also impact other rivers in the state which could be interpreted as navigable waters and therefore, under the state, rather than the federal jurisdiction. Concurring opinions from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out that the majority decision raises uncertainty about what remains of the park service’s authority over navigable waters in Alaska’s parks.
