BETHEL – In the tiny village of Eek 12 miles from the mouth of the Kuskokwim River, running water is coming at long last. And farther west, in Toksook Bay on Nelson Island, the final few homes that have gone without, are finally getting hookups for sinks, tubs and flush toilets.
The two Southwestern Alaska villages are among the beneficiaries of the latest round of federal grants and loans intended to bring running water to rural Alaska communities and train locals to operate their own systems.
Lisa Mensah, undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Rural Development, told a group in Bethel on Tuesday her agency was committing another $27 million to rural Alaska projects mainly to improve, build or study water and sewer systems.
Since 2009, USDA's rural development arm has invested $256 million in rural Alaska to improve sanitation, she said. Overall, dating back to the 1960s, about $2 billion has been spent by USDA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Indian Health Service and state of Alaska.
"This is a big record of progress," Mensah said.
Most of the new round of funding is through the rural Alaska village grant program created by the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens in 1994 and continued by Congress since.
Back in 1994, just 37 percent of rural Alaska homes had running water. Today the portion served is 85 percent and hits 90 percent if hubs such as Bethel and Kotzebue are included, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Still, 3,300 households have never gotten hooked up, DEC Commissioner Larry Hartig said. The state will put in a 25 percent match for $21 million of the funding in the village grant program, he said.
As it is, those residents use honey buckets lined with plastic bags for toilets. They fill up jugs from central wells, or pack river-water or ice chipped from tundra ponds. A family may share a single basin for hand-washing all day. They reuse gray water from their washing machines, once, twice, as often as they need to get clothes clean enough.
Skin infections are common. Their babies are hospitalized for respiratory illness far more than other children.
Officials estimate the newest infusion of USDA dollars will bring running water to dozens of homes and redo parts of aging systems that are failing.
In Unalakleet, for instance, seaside erosion has damaged the village's main water pipeline, said Tasha Deardorff, USDA's director of water and environmental programs for Alaska. This summer, electrical issues at the pump house slowed the water supply to the city tank. Residents were asked to conserve.
The community is getting $6.6 million to develop a new water source and build a new transmission line – the biggest single grant on the new USDA list.
In Eek, a village of about 300 people, the nearly $6 million grant will combine with other funding for "first-time service for the entire community," said David Beveridge, director of project management for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
In Golovin, Kiana and Toksook Bay, the money is extending existing systems to parts of the villages that have gone without until now, paying for new lines and indoor plumbing, he said.
A while back, an elder who had just gotten indoor water told Beveridge: "I don't have to run for my water anymore. My water runs to me."
Dan Winkelman, chief executive of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp., shared a story about his normally reserved mother-in-law, who lives in Kwethluk just upriver from Bethel. When her home was finally hooked up with water, she called him.
"Just guess what I am doing," she asked.
He didn't know.
"Washing the dishes!" she said.
Tuesday's meeting followed a briefing for the USDA on a planned remodel and major expansion of the YKHC hospital and outpatient clinic in Bethel. A USDA loan is the foundation that brought in other funding for the hospital, Winkelman said.
Bethel City Manager Ann Capela told the group the new hospital is a big deal, but she immediately wondered how many more toilets would be needed, and whether the city's crumbling sewer lagoon could handle it.
Now, Bethel is on the USDA project list too. It is getting a $913,000 USDA loan plus a $1.7 million grant to improve the dump site for sewage trucks and purchase another three trucks. Much of Bethel relies on city trucks to deliver household water and pump out sewer waste.
Some communities are getting grants to study and plan for improvements. Most communities that still lack running water are in wet areas or have other environmental challenges. Some are too small to justify a central piped system. Some may end up with in-home treatment, which now is being studied.
Grants also are going for training, oversight and energy improvements to help utilities run more efficiently. Beveridge said each community could save an average of $10,000 a year from more efficient operations. St. Mary's is getting a $200,000 loan and a grant of nearly the same to expand how much heat it can recover.
Tribal elder Sebastian Cowboy, who ran the post office in St. Mary's for 20 years and now is on City Council there, said big words don't mean much to people.
"You and I, we work for public. Public doesn't care about big stuff," Cowboy said. "They only recognize the least, the smallest action that we take."
A place to live. A sink that flows.
A toilet that flushes.