At the clinic. The Post Office. The washeteria. The signs are posted across the coastal village of Wales with a common warning: Elevated levels of a radioactive metal have been found in the town water supply.

Routine tests over the past year of the main water source used by the school, the clinic and villagers report uranium levels that slightly exceed federal standards.

The numbers bewildered Department of Environmental Conservation officials, who say excess uranium levels are unheard of in Alaska water supplies.

"We said, 'Wow this has never happened before,' " said Marci Irwin, compliance and monitoring program coordinator for the Drinking Water Program in Fairbanks.

Wales Mayor Frank Crisci posted the public notices around town this week and says the uranium discovery is the talk of the Bering Strait village.

The questions keep coming. "What are we going to do about it? What can we do about it? And is anybody going to help us do this?" Crisci said.

For now, state officials say it's safer to drink the public water than dipping into nearby waterways, which could pose a more immediate health risk.

Yet people don't like the idea of drinking the water, Crisci said. "Frankly I don't blame them."

Drinking uranium-rich water over many years may cause kidney damage and increase the chances of getting cancer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Not that there are many options for villagers.

The only way in and out of Wales -- on the western edge of the Seward Peninsula -- is by boat, snowmachine or plane, with air travel sometimes scuttled by blizzards and fog, according to the state.

A 20-ounce bottle of water sells for $2.95 at the Wales Native Store, the shop manager said Friday.

Some people regularly get their water from creeks, but everyone in the village of about 150 people showers and washes their clothes with water from the 500,000-gallon public tank, which has been shown to have the elevated uranium levels according to the recent lab results, Crisci said.

Notices in the village warn of the element but say the uranium doesn't pose an immediate risk. Water treatment could reduce the levels.

The EPA's maximum permissible contaminant level for uranium in drinking water is 30 micrograms per liter. The water in Wales tested at 32.5 micrograms per liter, according to results a Fairbanks lab sent in June to the city and the state Drinking Water Program.

The results are based on a series of samples taken from the water system between September and May, Irwin said.

The state Village Safe Water program, which oversees construction of plumbing projects in small towns around the state, plans to send a project manager to Wales on Monday for more testing. That research could show if there's too much uranium in the well water or if the elevated levels are an anomaly based on where the samples were taken -- such as in an area where the heavy metals have settled because the tank is only filled once a year.

Wales is one of 46 villages in rural Alaska that still lack indoor plumbing in a majority of households, according to Bill Griffith, facilities program manager for the Department of Environmental Conservation.

In fact, only the school, the clinic and teachers quarters are hooked up to the water supply, the mayor said.

Residents pay 20 cents a gallon to haul drinking water from the storage tank at the washeteria to their homes in buckets and jugs. Or they simply lug water from untreated creeks or streams.

The public supply in Wales used to come from runoff filtered and disinfected from local Gilbert Creek, but that water had to be too heavily chlorinated said Crisci, the mayor.

When that water was tested in 2007, there was almost no uranium -- about 2 percent of the levels reported this year, according to the Drinking Water Program.

But within the past two years the community switched to a shallow well or wells about a mile outside of town. Normally, groundwater allows a village to save money on treatment.

In August, the water tank was filled entirely with the well water.

Alaska does not require well sites to be tested for uranium when new ground wells are being developed, Irwin said. "It hasn't been an issue in Alaska until now."

Crisci thinks maybe the village should return to treating creek water until there's a plan to deal with the uranium.

"At least it's not radioactive," he said.

Uranium occurs naturally in Alaska.

The uranium near Wales could be coming from enriched granite on Cape Mountain, which is also the source of nearby tin placer deposits that were mined from 1902 to 1990, said David Szumigala, senior minerals geologist for the Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

The largest known deposit of uranium in the state is on the eastern Seward Peninsula, north of the village of Elim, Szumigala said. A Canadian mining partnership performed exploratory drilling for uranium there from 2005 to 2008, he said.