Water issues

Four Kotzebue residents filed suit in Kotzebue Superior Court on Jan. 21. They allege the city failed to provide “safe, effective and sanitary” water and sewer to its residents, which the lawsuit describes as a breach of contract.

Community members say the water has been restored. But with winter rapidly approaching, some of the 800 residents in the Northwest Arctic community still worry about the town's water situation.

On Friday, the City of Kotzebue issued a health advisory for manganese levels in the community’s drinking water.

According to the city officials, Kotzebue’s water treatment plant is not “reliably and consistently” removing manganese below the maximum contamination levels.

The city manager said as of last Wednesday, more than three dozen homes still don’t have running water. Another 20 homes are without plumbing from damaged service lines – the pipes that connect a household to the main water line.

City officials said the pipe froze up, compromising water quality and supply to nearly 200 homes. The City of Kotzebue and the Northwest Arctic Borough declared a disaster four days later.

Several weeks after an outage knocked out power in the Northwest Arctic village of Selawik, officials say it has been restored. However, the outage has exacerbated chronic problems at the local water treatment plant.

The state emergency management department says the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative is working with regional entities on clearing frozen well transmission lines as well as restoring power to parts of the community.

Noatak Tribal Administrator Herbert Walton says that the village believes that they already do a good job maintaining their water utility, and they don’t need help from the borough.