Half a dozen residents packed into Kotzebue’s city council chambers on June 7, many to voice concern about the quality of the city’s drinking water.
“It feels as though there's a never-ending stream of problems with the water supply here,” Deb Lawton said. “We are one of the richest countries on earth, and I am gobsmacked by the fact that we cannot get our collective act together to provide drinking water to people.”
In May, high manganese and iron levels turned the water a reddish brown, which some residents compared to the color of Coca-Cola. The manganese levels were the highest the city had ever recorded.
Besides the off-putting color, long-term exposure to high levels of manganese is dangerous to infant development and has been linked to a neurological condition similar to Parkinson's Disease.
Officials say the water is now safe to drink and will continue to improve over the next few weeks.
Kotzebue’s water plant first went online two years ago. In that short time, the city has issued more than three dozen public notices about poor water quality.
Kotzebue’s Public Works Director Russ Ferguson said the quality of the city's source water changed after designs were drawn up for the new plant. He said the plant was not designed to handle elevated levels of these contaminants.
“Three years ago, the raw water quality was quite a bit different than it is now,” Ferguson said. “The manganese levels have quadrupled.”
Ferguson said in addition to manganese, the source water’s levels of iron and TOCs, or total organic carbons, have also increased, which the new water plant is not equipped to handle.
In May, the manganese levels reached 0.46 mg/l, which is more than 50% higher than what is considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency or the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. The levels last month, Ferguson said, were the worst in the city’s history.
Kotzebue is one of the few Alaska communities experiencing high manganese. Juneau’s water sees high levels of manganese due to glacial thaw, but Kotzebue City officials said they do not know what is causing the higher levels of manganese here.
Kotzebue’s water gets pumped from two sites: almost exclusively from Devil’s Lake in the winter, and from nearby Vortac Lake after the ice thaws. In the summer, water gets pumped from Vortac Lake constantly so the water does not overflow its dam.
Ferguson said the dam itself is in dire need of repair.
“The state decreased us from a level three down to a level two, which is bad,” Ferguson said. “That's ‘imminent failure to infrastructure.’”
Kotzebue City Manager Tessa Baldwin said the city is pursuing state funding, and the Vortac Lake dam is now one of the city’s top priorities.
“There's potential that it could collapse, and that could be very threatening to our water source,” she said.
Ferguson said he expects the water quality at both lakes will improve soon due to a natural process known as turnover.
“The lake thaws out everything at the bottom of the lake, most of the top of the lake moves to the bottom,” Ferguson said. “Typically, overnight, we end up with very poor water quality to absolutely beautiful water quality.”
Ferguson said this can temporarily solve the problem of contaminants, but the water plant will still need modifications to reliably and consistently remove the high manganese. He said modifications “absolutely” had to be implemented before next February or March.
The city is consulting Tetra Tech, the water plant's designer, on a redesign for the plant. Although the city doesn't know how much some of the fixes will cost, they estimate it will be at least half a million dollars.
The Kotzebue City Council plans to discuss options to assist residents at their next meeting, like purchasing water filters for every household or eliminating monthly fees for city water when the quality is poor.
