Constructing the future: HUD grants improve Alaska Native housing.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Alaska Native Corporation Review

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On a recent visit to Skagway, Sen. Lisa Murkowski leaned forward to emphasize the importance of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's $67.45 million in Indian Housing Block Grants for tribes in Alaska.

"It will have a considerable impact across the state," Murkowski said.

She said she thinks the funding should be beefed up or at the very least continued on a level funding.

"We have to make sure Alaska's share remains the same," she said. "If the tribes had not spent the money, the Senate Appropriations Committee wanted the money back, but the tribal authorities said they could use it all."

Of greatest importance to rural villages is safe, affordable, energy efficient housing that ensures residents can remain in their communities, she said.

Arctic Challenges

Kivalina is at the tip of an eight-mile barrier reef of 1.9 square miles between the Chukchi Sea and Kivalina River in Alaska's Arctic. It has 386 residents with their backs against the sea.

"We have nowhere to build, but have a whole lot of rehab to do to existing housing," says Native Village of Kivilina Tribal Administrator Stanley Hawley. "We're building in the evacuation site, but the State of Alaska wants to build a new school there. We don't have concrete plans to move the village, but that's been on everybody's mind the last 20 years."

In the meantime, the $261,149 in block grant money will deal with the aging housing built in the 1950s, Hawley says.

"The roofs leak, there are problems with mold, and the electrical needs to be upgraded," he says. "We just need to make them more comfortable--they're substandard."

The plan is also to retrofit the homes for running water and add basics like bathtubs.

"We don't have indoor plumbing yet and that's next on our list of challenges," he says. "Maybe we'll deal with a flush and haul system."

Village water is drawn from the Wulik River by a three-mile surface transmission line to a 700,000 gallon raw water tank and then to a 500,000 gallon tank, where it is treated when it is pumped. The water lasts the community only for a six-month period, and the washeteria, a community combination of flush toilets, showers and laundromat, closes to the public when the last tank is down to 12 feet. Then only the school uses the water so it can last through the end of the school year. In addition to the water designated for the school's use, water is limited to 30 gallons a day for the public...