Life in Nunam Iqua - Water

[Blue_In_AK]

Some of you will remember western Alaska resident Ann Strongheart's account of shopping day in Nunam Iqua. The Mudflats has now posted her explanation of household water in a typical Western Alaska village.

http://www.themudflats.net/2009/02/05/life-in-nunam-iqua-water/

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Life without running water in Nunam Iqua, Alaska

Wow there was so much interest in the “Shopping Day in Nunam Iqua” story and then there were so many questions that I was urged to write up another. So here it is!

As I mentioned in my “Shopping Day” story we do not have running water here in Nunam Iqua. I made reference to the fact that just to make coffee we used water that we had hauled from the watering point from across the village.

“Where does that water come from?” you ask. The Yukon River, of course. We have a water plant that, via a pipe in the Yukon, pumps water in, filters it, chlorinates it, and fills up the large water storage tank. From there it is piped to the watering point, which is basically a hose sticking out of a box attached to a metering machine that dispenses 10 gallons of water for every $1 token you put in. Additionally, the water is also piped to the Village Clinic, Community Hall, school, teacher housing and laundromat.

Now, keep in mind that there are times when we don’t have water. In the spring and fall when it floods, there is a lot of salt water coming in, and they can’t filter the salt out so we are without water until the flood subsides or the tides go out. But most of the time they are able to keep the holding tank full.

So we pack that water from the watering point via snow machine to our house. We keep it in a 30-gallon Rubbermaid plastic trash can that we use only for water storage. We use a gallon pitcher to get it out. We drink it, and use it for normal everyday things.

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Dishes.

OK, so it’s time to do dishes. Can’t just turn on a faucet and have hot water, now can we? Nope, time to get out pots and start heating the water. My house is very small and we don’t have a cooking stove/oven, so I put a couple of pans on my hotplate, fill them up totaling nearly two gallons of water, and wait for them to heat up. While they are heating up I get out my dish pans, two 18-quart plastic dish pans, and sort my dishes and get them ready for washing. I do keep at least one pan on the wood stove but it doesn’t get up to boiling so I don’t generally use it for dishes.

So, 20-30 minutes later my water is boiling and I pour it into my dish pans, and start doing dishes. But I make certain to refill the pots and heat more water so that I can change out the water as it becomes dirty and refill it with fresh soapy water. Most people put a little bit of bleach in their dish water to help fight germs and sanitize their dishes.

Sometimes, when I am done washing the dishes I will recycle my rinse water by adding more boiling water to it and then using it to mop the floor. Now, what happens to the dishwater? I can’t just pour it down the drain. No, I have a five gallon bucket under the counter that I pour it into along with other liquids such as water leftover from cooking, or liquid from canned foods etc. Once that “slop bucket” gets kind of full we take it outside and dump it.

So all the water we use around the house for cooking and cleaning comes from our water bucket.

OK, what about other uses for water? Oh yeah, no running water means NO FLUSH Toilets! We have a “honey bucket” in our bathroom. So what’s a honey bucket? A honey bucket is a five gallon bucket lined with a 13-gallon trash bag with a toilet seat on top. Yeah, I know what you are thinking…doesn’t it smell? Yes it does. We personally use “Campa Chem” a biodegradable deodorizer. We put a capful into the fresh honey bucket along with the water from the wash basin in the bathroom. Others use “Pinesol” to help keep the smell at bay. So we use our honey bucket, for yes #1 and #2. We have another 18-quart dishpan in the bathroom that serves as our bathroom sink where we wash our hands. We fill it part way with water and then wash our hands in there, changing the water once a day or when it becomes dirty.

Once the honey bucket is full, we tie it off and take it by snow machine to the nearest bin. Once these bins start to fill up, the City of Nunam Iqua waste haul workers, haul it off to the man-made waste lagoon, dump and bring it back. There are maybe 20 or more bins placed on pallets throughout the village.

After we empty the honey bucket we leave it outside to air out, and use the one from before that has been airing out. We alternate them, which also helps cut down on the smell.

But Sarah says "thanks but no thanks" to stimulus money. We don't need no frickin' infrastructure.