c/EPA
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
ANNUAL REPORT 2013
Alaska Native Villages Program
Alaska Native Villages
Grant Program
Collaborating with federal, state and
local partners to address the basic
water and sanitation needs of remote
Alaskan villages since 1996.
Public Health Benefits:
Investments made in
water and wastewater
infrastructure have
reduced waterborne
diseases in rural Alaska.
Environmental Benefits:
Water and wastewater
infrastructure investments
protect and restore the
ecosystem that supports
wildlife and fish upon
which many Alaska Native
people rely for worship,
traditions, or subsistence
food sources.
Economic Benefits:
Investments in wastewater
and water in rural Alaska
have increased labor
productivity and created
jobs. These investments
will also reduce health
care costs, most of which
is covered by the federal
government in rural
Alaska.
The Alaska Native Village (ANV) Grants
Program supports water and wastewater
construction and training and technical
assistance for about 240 Alaskan Native
Villages and 60 non-native underserved
communities. EPA works with program
partners, including the Indian Health Service
(IMS) Sanitation Facilities Construction
Program through the Alaska Native Tribal
Health Consortium (ANTHC), the State of
Alaska Department of Environmental
Conservation (ADEC) and the U.S. Department
of Agriculture-Rural Development (USDA-RD).
For each project, a designated lead agency
takes the responsibility to oversee
development, design, and construction,
reducing administrative requirements and
expediting service delivery.
This report highlights the ANV program's
accomplishments for fiscal year 2013. Over the
program's 17 years, EPA has distributed over
$479 million, funded 635 projects, and
supported an increase in the percent of rural
Alaskan serviceable1 homes with access to
safe drinking water and wastewater service
from 50% to 91%. In FY2013, 400 additional
households are scheduled to be provided with
new or improved access to services. In 2013
the ANV program distributed $9.5M for 10
different projects in rural Alaska. About 20% of
the homes served by these projects will receive
access for the first time.
The ANV program funds education, training,
and management programs and has provided
administrative and management training for
nearly 200 communities2. Villages that receive
this support have seen improved long-term
sustainability the creation of transferable job
skills in construction and utility operation and
maintenance. The Remote Maintenance
Worker grant program of the ADEC reports that
the number of properly certified operators in
Alaskan rural villages has more than doubled
since 1992, and the number of non-compliant
systems has decreased by close to 80% since
20063.
While the grant program has contributed to a
dramatic increase in access to safe water and
wastewater service, Alaskan Native Villages
and rural communities still trail the 0.6% of the
non-tribal/non-native population in the U.S. that
lack access to water and sanitation4. In rural
Alaska, close to 13% of all households5 lack
complete indoor plumbing6. Currently, over
4,340 of the rural Alaskan homes occupied
year-round lack running water and a flushing
toilet7. Over 1,000 homes have operation-
intensive haul systems that transport
wastewater to treatment works or lagoons via
all-terrain vehicles8. Many villages face
-------
Alaska Native Villages Program I Annual Report 2013
significant challenges in keeping existing systems
operational, and approximately 4,500 rural homes connected
to community-wide piped systems have surpassed or are
nearing the end of their design life8.
The lack of safe service results in extreme public health
challenges. In particular, the age adjusted infectious disease
hospitalization rate for Alaska natives is 8% higher than the
national average, with an even higher disparity for infants9'10.
Although from 1998 to 2006, the rate for American Indian
and Alaska Native people has decreased overall by 18%, this
decline was not found to be statistically significant for the
ANV region9. Infectious disease hospitalizations account for
approximately 22% of all Alaskan Native hospitalizations9,
where respiratory tract infections, skin infections, and
infections of the kidney, urinary tract, and bladder are
common.
To address these problems, EPA works to maintain and
protect water infrastructure investments made in rural Alaska
despite dramatically increasing construction and
maintenance costs. For instance, water infrastructure in
Alaska is often highly energy intensive, therefore, as energy
costs increase, so do the operational costs. Given the limited
income of many Alaskan villages, these increased costs are
http://www.epa.gov/alaskanativevillages
extremely difficult to absorb. To address the energy cost
issues, EPA recently funded a project to increase energy
efficiency at 11 existing rural Alaskan water treatment plants.
1. Serviceable homes are homes that can receive water and/or sewer
service. Unserviceable homes, as defined by the State of Alaska, are those homes that
do not want these services, the home doesn't have minimum level of infrastructure (e.g.
electricity, heat, structural soundness), there is an extremely high capital cost to make
the homes serviceable, and/or it is a seasonally occupied residence.
2. EPA (2012), Alaska Native Villages Annual Report 2012, available online at http://
water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/wastewater/upload/EPA-Alaska-Native-Villages-Annual
-Report-2012.pdf.
3. Remote Maintenance Worker Program, Annual report 2012, Page 3 and 11,
available online at http://dec.alaska.aov/water/rmw/pdfs/FY%2012%20RMW%
20Annual%20Reportftext%20onlyypdf.
4. U.S. Census 2010.
5. Including Alaska Native Villages
6. Indian Health Service, Sanitation Tracking and Reporting System, November 2012
dataset. Includes serviceable and unserviceable homes.
7. Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Village Safe Water Program .
8. Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation - Division of Water. "Frequently
Asked Questions." N.p., n.d. Web. .
9. Robert C. Holman, Anianne M Folkema, Rosalyn J. Singleton, John T. Redd, Krista
Y. Christensen, Claudia A Steiner, Lawrence B Schonberger, Thomas W. Hennessy,
James E. Cheek (2011), 'Disparities in Infectious Disease Hospitalizations for American
Indian/Alaska Native People', Public Health Reports. 2011 Jul-Aug; 126(4): 508-521,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pmc/articles/PMC3115210/.
10. Thomas W. Hennessy, Troy Ritter, Robert C. Holman, Dana L. Bruden, Krista L.
Yorita, Lisa Bulkow, James E. Cheek, Rosalyn J. Singleton, Jeff Smith (2008), The
Relationship Between In-Home Water Service and the Risk of Respiratory Tract, Skin,
and Gastrointestinal Tract Infections Among Rural Alaska Natives', American Journal of
Public Health, Vol. 98, No. 11.
PROJECT SUCCESSES IN 2013
City of Pilot Station, Alaska
When frozen water lines were reported by the City of Pilot
Station, the Alaskan Remote Maintenance Worker pro-
gram opted to intervene using pipe bursting technology to
repair the lines. Pipe bursting involves inserting a new
pipe into an existing buried broken pipe, eliminating the
need for extensive trenching and digging. While the tech-
nology had been used successfully in the contiguous U.S.
since the early 1990s, it had never been tested in arctic
conditions1. Using this technology and local labor reduced
the original replacement cost estimate by more than 50%.
In addition, grant funds purchased pipe bursting equip-
ment, to be reused for similar projects at the reduced
cost.
1. Arctic pipe is commonly known as a pipeline that transports water or wastewater within a larger pipe
and is surrounded by insulation, (see: htrp: commons vMkiniedij.org wiki File:Arctic pipe.ipg).
Alaska Native Village of Quinhagak (Kwinhagak)
Quinhagak is a long-established Alaska Native Village,
located in Southwest Alaska at
the mouth of the Kanektok
River in Togiak National Wildlife
Refuge. The almost 700 resi-
dents of Quinhagak lacked ac-
cess to safe drinking water and
sewer systems. Instead, resi-
dents used 5-gallon plastic bag
lined "honey buckets" to
manually transport wastewater to dumpsters that were
then emptied into a lagoon. As a result, the community
faced increasing chronic health problems and threats to
the fragile and pristine ecosystem on which the
community depends on for fishing, hunting and gathering.
In response to this challenge, the Quingahak Water and
Sewer project was started in 2002 using funding obtained
from EPA, the State of Alaska, USDA-RD and IMS.
Administered by ADEC,
the project will give 80% of
, the 165 occupied homes in
Quinhagak access to
running water and a
flushing toilet by the end of
2013. The Quingahak
I community has already
started enjoying the
benefits such as increased
school attendance rates for those children in homes that
are already connected to the piped systems, as reported
by the local school principal.
&EPA
Office of Wastewater Management
EPA-832-R-13-005
November 2013
------- |