Water issues

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.

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.