Waste Management in Rural Alaska: Building waste management systems for healthier communities.

• Author: Simonelli, Isaac Stone
• Position: ENVIRONMENTAL

The rapidly warming climate is having negative impacts on rural communities in Alaska, where there are already significant barriers to creating the necessary infrastructure for solid waste and sewage management.

"Negative 'norms' have been occurring over decades in communities that still struggle with lack of basic sanitation services [in more than thirty villages in Alaska)," explains Jackie Qatalifia Schaeffer, the senior project manager of Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium's (ANTHC) Division of Environmental Health and Engineering.

"The impacts of climate change only compound the inadequate housing, aging infrastructure, and lack of basic services, which in turn affects all aspects of human health in indigenous communities."

According to ANTHC Director of Community Environmental Health Michael Brubaker, In many communities, changes in the land caused by thawing or flooding has resulted in impacts to critical infrastructure, such as foundations, containment walls, fences, pipelines, and roads. This results in damage and disruptions of service and in some cases breaches and spills.

"Extreme rain events can cause ponds and other containments to flood. There are also upstream impacts such as a longer season when the liquid waste is not frozen, and thus more likely to spill, or mid-winter warm spells which can cause stored waste to thaw, teak, or spilt. In some cases, communities are having to abandon or relocate waste disposal facilities."

Newtok

Changing shorelines in places such as Newtok only accentuate the problems surrounding harsh weather conditions and rugged terrain that are already obstacles to developing waste systems.

"Because the riverbanks are eroding and sloughing off into the water, its making it difficult to land a barge there," Ahtna Global Director of Construction Ronald DesGranges says. "Getting equipment in there and containers to package the waste is difficult."

In October, DesGranges' team finished staging a Newtok project to remove solid waste from the site as the village continues preparations to relocate to Mertarvik.

Since 1994, residents of Newtok have been working toward leaving the slow-moving disaster zone--dozens of feet of the community's shoreline are being lost every year to erosion. DesGranges says his team has already demolished several structures in the community that were hanging over the bank into the Ningliq River.

Though they were able to identify places to land barges to get equipment onshore, wet conditions forced the team to...