Update: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said he is advising President Trump to include water systems in his plans to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and not limit those funds to roads and bridges. Addressing a Conference of Mayors Leadership meeting in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Pruitt said, “With the White House, and also with Congress, I am communicating a message that the Brownfield program, the Superfund program, water infrastructure, WIFIA grants, [and] State Revolving Funds are essential to protect, and it’s very important that we do that. Because water quality at its core, it something that infrastructure impacts— water quality and the health of our citizens.”
The White House wants to eliminate funding for water and sewer projects in Alaska Native villages. That’s according to a proposal revealed by The Washington Post this week that would cut more than 25 percent from the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget. If the water and sewer program disappears, the fallout would hit the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta the hardest.
“Akiq tamana akurtulaqngaput waken anguyagtemek quyanarqelartuq. Ikayutuakut amllermi,” said Kwigillingok Tribal Administrator Darrel John. The village, he says, is thankful for the money it receives from the federal government, referring to the more than $2 million Kwigillingok got from the EPA last year to expand its sewage lagoon. The project will begin this summer in a village that began installing flush and haul systems in 2000. That year is also when Kwigillingok dug its first lagoon.
Before, John says, everyone was using honey buckets, and they dumped them “wherever the homeowner chose to dig.”
Some homes in Kwigillingok still use honey buckets. In Kongiganak, all the homes do.
“Most of the villages in the YK area, we still live in a third-world country where we don’t have water and sewer projects,” said Roland Andrew, Kongiganak Tribal Administrator.
Kongiganak also got EPA funds last year, more than $1.2 million, to upgrade its laundry facilities, build another watering point, and restore its sewage lagoon.
“The south wind has been eroding the north side of the sewage lagoon,” Andrew explained. “And pretty soon, if it keeps eroding, it’s going to start leaking out to the end of the village.”
The other direction it could leak, Andrew says, is towards the river.
This week, The Washington Post reported that an unreleased White House budget proposal wants to cut more than a quarter of the funding for the Environmental Protection Agency. That cut would include eliminating the Alaska Native Villages and Rural Communities Water Grant Program, which last year got $20 million. Bill Griffith, a Facilities Program Manager with the Department of Environmental Conservation, says there's a reason why most of the program’s money goes to villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
“Well, because it’s a challenging place to develop water and sewer infrastructure. Many of the communities in that region are very difficult to find good water sources [in]. They lack the kind of soils that make construction easy. You know, it’s not easy to mine gravel, and build roads, and bury pipe in a lot of communities,” said Griffith.
The communities also don’t have the income or population base to generate the millions of dollars needed to build and maintain these systems.
Without them, the health of a village suffers. A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compared rural Alaskans living with and without running water. It found that children living in homes without running water were ten times more likely to have viral pneumonia, severe bacterial infections, or skin infections. Adults were more likely to have pneumonia, influenza, and skin infections, like boils. Also, researchers have found that rates of dental cavities are two to seven times higher in villages without fluoridated running water.
In 1995 Congress authorized the EPA to create the Alaska Native Villages and Rural Communities Water Grant Program to combat these health and water problems in Alaska Native villages.
There’s still a long way to go.
As of last year, more than 4,500 homes in rural Alaska still lacked in-home piped water and sewer service.
President Donald Trump, in a speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday, said his administration wants to work with Republicans and Democrats, “To invest in women's health, and to promote clean air and clean water, and to rebuild our military and our infrastructure.”
While Trump mentioned rebuilding the nation’s military and infrastructure multiple times, this was the only time he mentioned clean water. And whenever Trump referred to infrastructure, it was never in relation to water or sewage.
The Washington Post reports that the savings from the proposed EPA cuts would go to the military and national security. Congress, however, has the ultimate authority to approve where federal money is allocated.
Kwigillingok Tribal Administrator Darrel John says federal politicians who think the EPA is spending too much money in rural Alaska have never lived here.
“If the people that have the opinion of thinking that the money that’s being provided to these communities is too much,” he said, “they’re so wrong.”
The Trump budget is still in preparation. His Office of Management and Budget has sent targets to each department. The Interior department would be cut 10 percent, and the State department 37 percent.
