Anchorage Daily News

Napaskiak -- The flies and mosquitoes were thick and the air was heavy on a sunny summer day, but Moses Anvil III wore knee-high rubber boots, heavy rain gear and a hooded sweat shirt. The reason became clear when he backed his four-wheeler and trailer to the village sewage lagoon, opened the tank, and watched as 100 gallons of human waste spattered and flowed away.

Pumping his neighbors' sewage is half of Anvil's work. Using a separate trailer, he also hauls fresh water to the houses in this village a few miles west of Bethel on the Kuskokwim River. Fill, haul, fill, haul -- fill one tank, haul away the contents of another. It's a rural Alaska version of a modern water and sewer system, and one of several ways that Third World water and sewer systems in the Bush are being improved.

Twenty miles up the Kuskokwim, the village of Kwethluk has taken a different approach. Water and sewer lines wrapped in bright, galvanized culverts will soon crisscross the village, bringing tap water and a toilet to every house. Pipes will eliminate the need for someone like Anvil to fill and haul on a weekly basis, but it will be roughly three times more expensive. That means a longer wait for funding and longer before the honey buckets are gone.

Over the past three decades, state and federal agencies have poured more than $1 billion into improving village water and sewer systems, and construction projects like those in Napaskiak and Kwethluk continue at a record pace. This year alone, nearly $110 million is being spent in villages across the state. But running water is still a dream for thousands of Alaskans living off the road system. The hurdles are both financial and technological.

And even when residents of the last Alaska village quit hauling their water in one five-gallon bucket and their sewage in another, the flow of government money will have to continue, according to state and tribal engineers. Most villages are financially incapable of paying for the necessary upkeep, and many can't pay the daily costs of operation, they say.

In the meantime, however, villages such as Napaskiak, Kwethluk and dozens more are getting running water for the first time ever, abandoning the tried-and-true plastic pails with the toilet seats on top.

'A THIRD-WORLD COUNTRY'

It takes less than 10 minutes to reach Napaskiak by air from Bethel, but in some ways the Yup'ik Eskimo village feels 50 years away. Wooden boardwalks wind between some 90 plywood houses perched on pilings along Napaskiak Slough. Most houses are weather-beaten and paint-starved, making the freshly painted little structures outside the homes seem out of place.

The tidy yellow outbuildings look like doghouses, but they're insulated and heated to prevent each home's sewage holding tank from freezing. When the tank is full, Anvil pulls up with his trailer and empties it.

Inside each home is another tank for fresh water, plus just enough plumbing to bring these Alaskans their first running water -- a toilet, shower or tub and bathroom sink and, for some, a working tap in the kitchen.

Every village in Alaska is different, but Napaskiak's experience is happening all over the state, said Dan Easton, who oversees the Village Safe Water program within the state Department of Environmental Conservation. In 1970, nearly 90 percent of Alaska's rural communities had neither water nor sewer systems. By the end of next year the agency predicts that nearly 85 percent of homes in rural villages will have flush toilets and running water.

The final 15 percent will be tough to accomplish, however, Easton said. "We did the easy ones first."

Easy means villages where winter temperatures rarely dip into negative double digits and water pipes can be buried without fear that they will freeze. Or where porous soils allow inexpensive septic systems to work. Or where the economy is relatively strong and residents can afford to maintain their water and sewer systems.

At the other extreme is the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The tundra is dotted with lakes, rivers, sloughs and swamps, much of it underlain by permafrost. The winters are long and cold, the summer construction season short and wet, and most villages are poor. On the list of villages yet to receive running water, half are on the Delta.

Wally Wallace, an environmental technician for Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp., makes no bones about his region. "We live in a third-world country," he said. "People don't realize it. They talk about saving the children in Africa -- they ought to come up here."

EXPENSIVE WATER

When its time for running water finally arrived, Napaskiak chose a system designed specifically for small arctic communities. Mark Baron, president of Cowater Alaska Inc., said his system is now used in nearly 500 homes in a dozen villages from the Bering Sea coast to the upper Yukon River.

"We designed it from scratch, so there were lots of bugs," he said during a tour of Napaskiak. "We're still making improvements."

Some parts, such as the toilets, are purchased. Others are fabricated in Anchorage, then flown to the village for construction. The building crews are local but work under an imported supervisor.

In Napaskiak, houses get a 120-gallon freshwater tank that can be filled by Anvil's water-delivery trailer or manually, bucket by bucket. The tank size was based on how much water a four-wheeler or snowmachine can haul, Baron said.

With just 120 gallons per fill-up, water conservation is crucial, he said, and the toilets are key components. They use one pint per flush, although it takes three or four flushes to build up enough water to remove solid wastes.

Not surprisingly, Baron said, one of the main complaints about the Cowater system is the toilets. They must be cleaned regularly to operate properly, yet some homeowners seem incapable or disinterested in doing the maintenance. Others do fine, he said. "We've had toilets last 10 years with no problem; others are broken in a year."

The new bathrooms are shoehorned into Napaskiak's tiny homes, stealing space from the living room or eliminating a bedroom. All the plumbing remains exposed, with the plastic pipes running along the walls. If the house freezes or a pump fails, Baron said, the parts can be replaced easily.

The sewage system is also simply designed, Baron said. Some houses are high enough off the ground that gravity moves the waste into the holding tank outside. The others have an air pump that transfers the sewage quickly and cleanly. When the holding tank is full, a red light inside the house signals that it's time for a pickup.

But residents are stingy in how much water they use because it's expensive. Each time Anvil picks up a load of sewage, it costs the homeowner $25. Every time he brings a tank of water, it costs another $25.

Napaskiak residents are happy to have flush toilets and bathtubs, said village administrator Phillip Nicholai Jr. But the system isn't perfect. "The main concern is the low water usage," he said. It takes a lot of water to keep toilets flushed, hands washed and dishes clean.

The average American household uses about 100 gallons a day. In Anchorage, that costs $47 a month, according to the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility.

In villages with flush-haul systems like Napaskiak, households use only as much water as they can afford to buy. Filling the water tank and dumping the sewage once a week would give a Napaskiak household a miserly 17 gallons a day and cost $200 a month.

Christine Egoak had just two weeks' experience with her new toilet, bathtub and kitchen sink when Baron and state Village Safe Water engineer Jim Patterson inspected her home in July. She had some questions about the pumps and red lights but was most concerned about the expense.

At $25 per fill-up or haul, "it's a little too much" to pay for water and sewer service, Egoak said. "Since my grandkids started using the tub, I think the water started going a little faster."

Her Yup'ik heritage gives her a backup plan, however. She said she isn't planning to give up using her traditional steam bath -- a fixture outside many homes in Delta villages. "It's better than a tub," she said.

FLUSH-HAUL OR PIPES?

In the early 1960s the U.S. Public Health Service encouraged the use of outhouses. Those privies work fine in dry soils, said Patterson. They're common in parts of the Interior, but he said they don't work on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. "You dig down a couple feet and hit water or permafrost," he said. "You can fill 'em up in two or three years."

Residents were encouraged to use five-gallon plastic honey buckets, and agencies built large buried plywood bunkers in the villages in which each family could dump its waste. Eventually, Patterson said, the big sewage containers were abandoned in favor of small, portable hoppers, which could be hauled to the edge of town and emptied in a sewage lagoon.

Napaskiak, Kwethluk and many other villages on the Delta still have honey bucket hoppers. They are an unsightly scene, and potentially a public-health hazard, but a daily sight in much of village Alaska. Human waste collects around the mouth of the hopper and drips down the front; birds and insects land on them, then fly off and light elsewhere; shoes and pets track the waste down the boardwalk and into homes.

Flush-haul systems such as Napaskiak's are an improvement, Patterson said, simply because they eliminate most waste handling by residents.

The drawbacks of flush-haul systems -- limited water usage, high operating costs, waste spills -- disappear when water and sewage are run through pipes. Piped systems are more expensive to install and repair, but they are more sanitary.

Bethel is going that route. The hub city on the lower Kuskokwim has embarked on a $105 million, 20-year program to convert its flush-haul system to pipes, said City Manager Bob Herron.

"Sure, finances are a challenge," he said. "But the citizens want you to provide the best price for the best quality," and that means converting everyone in town to the system that a few now enjoy.

About 20 percent of Bethel's 6,000 residents currently have piped water and sewer. The rest use a flush-haul system much like Napaskiak's but on a larger scale. Home tanks are 500 to 1,500 gallons, and the water and sewage are hauled in large trucks. It's a busy operation, said Public Works Director Clair Grifka. In a town with just 16 miles of gravel roads, the fleet of city trucks puts on 170,000 miles a year.

As in Napaskiak, the monthly costs depend on how much water is used, but bills run from $240 to $350, Grifka said.

Bethel's water and sewer lines will run above ground, packed inside 16-inch-diameter, insulated galvanized-steel culverts. Some people begrudge the shiny pipes crossing the tundra, which can hinder snowmachines and dog sleds, but Grifka said most Bethel residents would rather have running water than an unobstructed view.

"We were a small village not that long ago," where upwards of 80 percent of the people still used honey buckets, Grifka said. "People don't take (running water) for granted like they do in other places."

A few miles upriver from Bethel, the village of Kwethluk also chose pipes on the advice of Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp.

"We're recommending the villages go straight to pipes rather than hauled water. We don't think hauled water systems work that well," said corporation environmental engineer Troy Ritter. "If you hold out for pipes, it might take a little longer, but it's better in the long run."

Villages in line for sanitation projects can choose between pipes and flush-haul. Their final choice usually depends on whether their advice comes from engineers with the state Village Safe Water program or the Native health-care system.

The state likes flush-haul systems, said DEC's Easton. The cost is about one-third that of piped systems, and when they fail, "they fail one house at a time." A village or regional hub can stock the small pumps, hoses and other parts needed to keep an individual house operating.

Pipes only make long-term economic sense "if you ignore what it costs to replace them at end of their usable life," said Easton. "If you look at all costs, flush-haul almost always is more affordable."

Ritter and other engineers in the tribal health-care system disagree. "Hauled water is better than nothing, if that's all you're going to have," he said. "But I don't think it's what the people here deserve."

He points to the problems inherent in flush-haul systems, such as waste spills, the finicky nature of the toilets, the small size of the water tanks and the need to be conservative with the water, as strong reasons to push for pipes.

"It's tough to tell people with a honey bucket to have patience and wait a few more years" to get the additional money needed for pipes rather than flush-haul systems, but the wait is worth it, he said.

'EVERYONE'S EXCITED'

Since 1970 the state and federal governments have spent some $1.3 billion on sanitation projects in rural Alaska. What started as a trickle of cash -- roughly $1 million a year throughout the 1960s -- has grown into a flood. This year the combined state-federal funding is a record $109 million.

"It sounds like a tremendous amount of money," said Easton. "But the governor's (rural sanitation) council in 1996 said it would take $110 million a year for 10 years" to reach the goal, repeated by a string of Alaska politicians, of putting the honey bucket in the museum by 2005. "We're just now reaching the point where we need to be to finish this off."

While the funding agencies have more money than ever before, the task of deciding which projects to build has not gotten easier, said Steve Weaver, director of environmental health and engineering for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. Some villages have only minimal facilities, while others' systems are so old they already need replacing.

And a sanitation project may include more than toilets or pipes. In order for Anvil's four-wheeler to haul water and sewage, it needs a good boardwalk; Patterson found grant money for it. A new sewage lagoon is also needed, and the village recently installed a second water well. Judging by the grinding and clunking sounds from Anvil's four-wheeler going into reverse, another will be needed soon.

Even if funding remains steady at $110 million a year, it will take about six years to bring running water into the homes of all rural Alaskans, Weaver said. But as any homeowner knows, the toilets, water heaters, pumps and pipes soon need repair. Sustaining the systems is nearly as big a challenge as building them, he said.

For example, when the Bering Sea coastal village of Emmonak got piped water and sewer 10 years ago, it was a model for the rest of Alaska, Weaver said. The system worked well and was maintained by a strong fishing economy and sales tax.

"Now the economy is crumbling because of multiple years of fishing disasters. In a limited cash economy in the first place, it turns a less than ideal situation into a struggle," Weaver said. "I see sustainability as the new front line in sanitation facilities development."

Dozens of water and sewer projects started or continued in rural Alaska this summer, from Angoon to Quinhagak. As workers took their lunch break on a sunny July day in Kwethluk, resident Nick Fisher said his neighbors look forward to the time when pipes run through their village carrying clean water one direction and sewage the other.

"Everyone's excited about it," said Fisher. "They're getting tired of the smells, especially on a hot day like this."

Reporter Joel Gay can be reached at 907-257-4310 or jgay@adn.com.