Bethel: difficult conditions provide challenges.

• Author: Bohi, Heidi
• Position: Towns in Transition

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As valedictorian for the 2011 graduating class of Bethel Regional High School, 18-year-old Jalene Herron optimistically summed up how her hometown must deal with the challenges that have confronted Bethel and the surrounding region for at least her entire life. Conditions here will always be relatively difficult, she reminded the audience. It's how residents and leaders approach those challenges that's critical to working through tough times.

Her father, Alaska State Legislature Rep. Bob Herron, is one of those who is taking on the task. As a 33-year resident himself, he says it is simply part of the challenge that comes with living in remote Southwest Alaska and one that his legislative colleagues representing other rural communities echo. It is also part of what comes with being a hub community that is the major source for government, education, transportation and health services, and a supply center for food, equipment, clothing and other products that 56 villages and 30,000 people spread across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta rely on.

Although he readily lists off affordable energy, safety, education and jobs as the top priorities for Bethel and feeder communities, Herron says he's the first to admit it's a big goal for any community and when trying to approach challenges it is important to remember each of the surrounding Bush communities also has its own unique needs and problems to tackle.

MONUMENTAL CHALLENGES

At the same time, the needs are never-ending and funding for offsetting critical gaps in current infrastructure and basic services is always in short supply. Even the requested $187 million the region hopes it can count on from the State's 2011 capital budget must be stretched thin to begin to make a dent in a long list of capital projects that includes much needed schools, airports, and water and sewer projects.

Bethel and the surrounding villages comprise an area about the size of Oregon and are accessible only by air and water, just one of the factors contributing to what Herron says are "monumental challenges" presented by the energy crisis that affect everything from the price of a carton of milk to building supplies. Consumable goods are historically expensive and the increasingly high cost of gasoline and diesel fuel only compounds the problem in a region where good jobs are scarce and poverty levels are some of the highest in the nation. At the same time, energy costs make it difficult for locals, of...