BETHEL -- If a water recycling experiment planned for Western Alaska works out, residents of rural villages who now ration themselves to a couple of gallons a day finally may have enough for regular showers, flush toilets and even washing machines.
The idea -- with implications beyond Alaska -- is to build systems within individual homes that treat and then reuse water from sinks, showers and washing machines, the normally wasted "gray water."
Water from toilets -- the "black water" -- would flush into holding tanks and be hauled away. Treated water for drinking and cooking still would be hauled in and stored in separate tanks piped to sinks.
The Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. on Tuesday launched an online crowdfunding effort for its "Dump the Bucket" drive. The Indiegogo campaign, with a modest goal of $15,000, might be a first. The regional Alaska Native health corporation, after rounds of budget-cutting over the past year, is trying to raise a portion of the $50,000 needed for the testing phase.
While online crowdfunding already is being used to get running water to remote areas in Africa -- and for a litany of other things from films to organ transplants -- organizers of the new campaign haven't found any instances of a crowdfunded public works water project in the U.S.
"We know what we want it to look like. It will take funding to verify it is working the way we hope it would and make some changes based on that," said Brian Lefferts, director of YKHC's office of environmental health and engineering. In its first four days, the campaign raised more than $2,000.
'Suffering is real'
It's just one experiment underway in Alaska as governmental and tribal engineers examine how to serve the last 30 or so villages still on honey buckets, where residents must travel to central watering stations to collect a few gallons at a time. They are also trying to improve conditions in another dozen villages that rely on troublesome and expensive "small haul" systems in which workers on all-terrain vehicles cart tanks of water to homes and tanks of sewage to lagoons.
Across Alaska, people in about 3,300 homes in rural villages still rely on honey buckets. Many are in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Studies have linked the lack of running water in the delta to rates of serious skin and respiratory infections that are among the highest in the nation.
People simply don't have enough water to get clean, Lefferts said.
"The suffering is real and, despite efforts, seems to be worsening," YKHC says on the Indiegogo project site.
The villages at issue are remote, with harsh climates and environmental challenges: Oscarville and Kongiganak, Diomede and Teller, Allakaket and Ruby. Building conventional piped systems is too expensive or otherwise unrealistic because of thawing permafrost, rising sea levels, flooding, brackish groundwater and small, spread-out populations that don't lend themselves to economies of scale.
The state, with $1 million in hand in 2013, began investigating innovative water and sewer technologies for rural Alaska. Six projects in the Alaska Water and Sewer Challenge now are being studied further. As many as three of them will be picked for testing that will take more than a year, said Bill Griffith, a program manager in the state Division of Water, part of the Department of Environmental Conservation.
"We want to simulate certain events, like freezing and leaving it alone for a while, what happens if the power fails," Griffith said. "Various village-type events."
In addition, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium is working on a 10-home pilot project in Kivalina, a storm-battered village on a barrier reef northwest of Kotzebue on the Chukchi Sea. The village is trying to relocate, so the health consortium is working on an in-home system to install in the interim that can move when the village moves.
Systems will be tailored for communities, Griffith said.
In Kivalina, homes will get both urinals and special toilets that separate solids and liquids, under the plan. The urine and gray water will be piped into gravel beds that contain seawater. The solids will be collected in a waste box and thrown away with the trash. That system wouldn't work in places like Southeast Alaska because the gray -- and yellow -- water could contaminate groundwater, Griffith said.
Rationing water
The Yukon-Kuskokwim project originally was part of the state Water and Sewer Challenge. Then the vendor providing its treatment system went out of business, Lefferts said. The project couldn't participate with its new vendor under the terms of state procurement code, he said, so it had to go its own way.
"Regardless of that, we would love to see their efforts go forward," Griffith said.
The amount of water needed to stay healthy is 17 gallons a day per person, YKHC says. Across the U.S., the average use is 80 to 100 gallons a day per person, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
But in villages without running water, people get by with less than 2 gallons a day. They pour water into a basin that is used over and over for hand washing. They go to community washeterias for weekly showers. They chip out pond ice or collect rainwater for drinking.
YKHC wants to set up a system for lab testing in a Bethel warehouse. One under consideration is an Australian-designed, Taiwanese-built system called Aqua2Use.
Water from sinks, showers and washing machines would go through a series of filters, including a critical biofiltration element.
Good bacteria would grow on mats and break down contaminants in the water, turning it into sludge that is periodically bled off and pumped in with the wastewater from the toilet, said Bob White, a YKHC remote maintenance worker.
"The biofiltration has good bugs that eat bad bugs," Lefferts said.
To kill any remaining bacteria, the design includes a disinfecting feature -- either ultraviolet light or ozone gas that would be mixed into the liquid stream.
The lab testing will simulate a home environment with laundry, dishes and showers done over and over again. YKHC will check water flow and pressure remotely with a monitoring system that would be installed in individual homes. It will track power costs and filter status.
Residents likely would pay a monthly fee to an operator responsible for maintenance. Some existing small-haul systems, like the one in the village of Napaskiak, are failing in part because residents must deal with repairs or replacement of expensive fixtures like specialized toilets, according to Lefferts.
Dawn debate
Shampoos, dish soaps and cleaning products will all be tested. If systems are installed, residents will need to be trained on what products can be used and which ones to avoid or limit. For instance, chlorine-based products "could disrupt the system," White said. The operator may need to provide biodegradable products, lower-phosphate soaps and the like, he said.
"Can I use Dawn?" White said. "What are the ones that really are the deal breakers?"
So far in the U.S., there are limited approved applications for reuse of gray water, such as in irrigation and landscaping, and to flush toilets, Griffith said.
Installation of in-home systems in Alaska might require a change to the plumbing code, he said. That would happen down the road, once lab and field testing is done and a system is fully designed, Lefferts said.
Even homes in Bethel may be retrofitted to cut down on water bills or allow more water use. As it stands, a family with weekly water deliveries to a 1,000-gallon tank spends about $350 a month for water and sewer service combined. In villages, the going rate is $40 to fill a 110-gallon water tank, and the same to clear out the sewage.
The goal for YKHC is a system that provides a home with 60 gallons of water a day and costs no more than $135 a month to operate, Lefferts said.
YKHC says its experiment might have application in other parts of Alaska, drought-stricken California or anywhere where water supply is an issue.
"If we can do it here, it can be applied basically anywhere in the world," White said.
"If it survives here," Lefferts said, "it is robust."