Construction is currently underway in Port Lions, approximately 20 air miles west of Kodiak, to replace the community’s decades-old water system. The project is expected to take several years but once completed all 85 households in the village will be hooked up to running water on a reliable system for the long-term.
Click the audio link below to hear an interview between Port Lions Mayor, Dorinda Kewan, and local resident Jess Eggemeyer who contributed to this report about the water system replacement project for KMXT.
The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) is working with the City and Native Village of Port Lions to replace the water distribution system, parts of which date back to 1964 when the community was first established in its current location. Port Lions was created after the 1964 earthquake and tsunami displaced residents from nearby Afognak Island.
“Some is still in the ground from the 60s. It was supposed to have been replaced in the 1994 project, but not all of it was successfully replaced," Dorinda Kewan explained. "I’m thinking mostly service lines. Then there may be some water mains that were skipped or diverted."
Kewan, the mayor of the City of Port Lions, said the community frequently has to contend with water leaks, blockages in the water lines and some parts of the system that don’t even function.
“We have many, many, many issues under the ground, from not knowing exactly where things are located, to having different types of materials that the infrastructure is made out of, to having a significant number of leaks in the system," Kewan said.
Replacing all of the community’s water lines requires locating them first. That work and the rest of the replacement project could take five to six years, according to Kewan. So far the health consortium has secured $8.6 million in federal funding from the Indian Health Service to complete phase one of construction, which will replace water mains and service lines for about half of the approximately 170 residents.
ANTHC is coordinating the work for this project and not contracting it out according to Kewan, which means that many of the workers are local hires in this case. She estimates the entire water system replacement project could cost up to $30 million. And securing that funding is the biggest hurdle the city faces right now.
“There are plenty of other things that we need to do in our community, or we want to do," Kewan said. "This is at the top of the list in terms of essential services. You know, what do they say? Water is life, right? You got to have water.”
The City of Port Lions is appealing to the state of Alaska for community development block grant money to help fund the remainder of the project. Port Lions also recently requested to be included in the Kodiak Island Borough’s list of capital improvement projects’ request to the Alaska Legislature.
While work continues on phase one of the water system project, residents may experience intermittent water outages. If that happens, the Native Village of Port Lions has cases of drinking water on hand for locals to pick up as needed.
Port Lions residents can contact the city office for the latest information on the project and water outages.
