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- Sep 30, 2011
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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.”
...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.
...
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.
...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.
Native health corporation turns to crowd-funding for rural plumbing systems Alaska Dispatch News
I would like to see the final three but this has promise. Honey buckets are a horrific way to live.
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.”
...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.
...
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.
...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.
Native health corporation turns to crowd-funding for rural plumbing systems Alaska Dispatch News
I would like to see the final three but this has promise. Honey buckets are a horrific way to live.
