Public Media for Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

'Everything is getting old.' Most of Newtok’s critical infrastructure is nearing failure

A catastrophic generator fire at the Newtok Ayaprun school in January 2023 took the community’s backup drinking water source offline. At the time, Newtok was drawing all of its drinking water from the school because the main water plant was inoperable. Those problems at the water plant have now been fixed, but Alexie Kilongak, Newtok’s water plant operator, said that the water plant has other issues, especially involving its storage tank.

“I dunno, there’s like 50 patches in there,” Kilongak said.

Alexie Kilongak, Newtok’s water plant manager says the community’s main drinking water storage tank has been patched 55 times since it was installed in the early 1980’s. The platform it sits on in the center of town is sinking into the tundra and the support beams are rotting.
Emily Schwing
Alexie Kilongak, Newtok’s water plant manager, said that the community’s main drinking water storage tank has been patched 55 times since it was installed in the early 1980s. The platform it sits on in the center of town is sinking into the tundra and the support beams are rotting.

The giant 40-year-old tank holds up to 211,000 gallons of water. It sits on a huge wooden platform in the center of the village. When it’s full it weighs nearly 1.7 million pounds, the equivalent of more than 800 one-ton pickup trucks. Right now, the tank is running low, and it’s not clear if it will be safe to fill later this summer. The platform that supports the tank is sinking into the ground. Its support beams are twisted.

”It’s all rotten,” said Kilongak. He said that he hoped the structure still had five years of life left. “Well, maybe we'll be gone before five years is up,” he said.

For three decades, the residents of Newtok have been trying to relocate 9 miles across the river to a new community called Mertarvik. The single greatest hurdle is available housing. Until everyone has a place to live people will stay in Newtok, where melting permafrost continues to degrade critical infrastructure.

At the back end of town, a half dozen diesel tanks stand at precarious angles. They were already listing before the remnants from Typhoon Merbok slammed into Alaska’s west coast last fall. That storm has changed the minds of many residents who were otherwise unsure about moving.

Bosco John works at Newtok’s small power plant. He said that he doesn’t think people are safe living in the community any longer. “I don’t think so, because of the flood,” he said. High water brought on during storms like Merbok just keeps getting higher. He pointed to a white house in the distance. “[The water] reached it and kind of lifted it up and almost dragged it away, but luckily the ground wire was holding on to it,” he said.

John keeps a diesel-powered generator running so that the lights stay on throughout the village. He said that a hydraulic pump at the plant had failed. “Everything is getting old,” he said. “It’s kind of hard because we’re waiting on new parts so we can get it running and make things easier.” If the current power plant went offline, there would be no electricity in Newtok.

Since January, the school hasn’t had power or running water; the building serves as the community’s emergency evacuation center. Many people stayed there for days after Merbok last fall. If another storm like it were to strike now, people here would have nowhere to go.

“This village has been through so much that i think you get a resilience to everything,” said Dawn Lloyd, Newtok’s school principal. She said that she’s confident a new generator will be up and running at the school by the end of the summer.

In an email, Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman with the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said that “it is the communities [sic] responsibility to organize and manage their emergency shelter.” He added that “the school district owns the building and is responsible for making the repairs.”

Zidek said that if the community doesn’t have a functioning emergency shelter, the state would check in with the local government to see what needs to happen and could help in an evacuation.

Newtok School Principal Dawn Lloyd was confident the school would be back online with power and water by the start of the 2023-2024 school year, but that did not happen. The school hasn't had water since January of 2023 and after many attempts, generator that supplies electricty cannot by fixed.
Emily Schwing
Newtok School Principal Dawn Lloyd is confident that the school will be back online with power and water by the start of the 2023-2024 school year.

Lloyd said that she’s not sure people outside Newtok really understand what residents are dealing with every day. “But I think if they did realize how scary it was, Mertarvik would have gotten finished sooner, would be what I’d like to think,” she said.

Emily Schwing is a long-time Alaska-based reporter.