After Tuluksak lost its water plant to a fire, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation installed a temporary water treatment plant in the school. The plant pipes up water from the Tuluksak River, but that system is too fragile to withstand the ice floes released during breakup. YKHC workers will remove the temporary plant from the river for the time being, and reinstall it when the river ice is gone. In the meantime, the community has several large water tanks that they can fill up to store water.
Tuluksak resident Jera Peter stands with the temporary water treatment system he helped install. It will not be functional during breakup.
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The Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation installed a specialty water filtration system in the Tuluksak school on March 2, 2021. YKHC said that the system could provide enough drinking water for the entire Tuluksak Native Community, but soon the system was only being used by the school.
The team got a water system with basic filtration up and running by mid-February. It was intended to provide water for things like cleaning and laundry. A couple weeks after that, the workers set up a reverse osmosis system, with extra filtration, to provide cleaner water intended for drinking. But up until mid-April, most people in Tuluksak didn’t get to drink the water from this second system.
Alaska signals move to return to normalcy
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy visited the three communities in one day, taking advantage of a streak of sunny weather in a region notorious for its rains for a journey that included float plane travel
Author:
May 3, 2021
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, center, listens as residents discuss a levee they have concerns with on Thursday, April 22, 2021, in Hyder, Alaska. Hyder was among the southeast Alaska communities that Dunleavy visited as part of a one-day trip. (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer)
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy visited the three communities in one day, taking advantage of a streak of sunny weather in a region notorious for its rains for a journey that included float plane travel
Credit Katie Basile / KYUK
Some families in Bethel are considering moving if the next school year looks similar to this one. On April 29, 18 parents, teachers, and students, nearly all from Bethel, called into the Lower Kuskokwim School District board meeting. They pleaded with the district to allow students to return to in-person school five days a week, and for sports to resume. The district is taking action to meet those demands.
In March 2020, the Lower Kuskokwim School District, along with many districts around the nation, closed down in-person schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic. LKSD kept in-person schooling closed while the virus hit the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta harder than almost anywhere else in the country. Carolyn Iverson, a parent and school social worker in Bethel, said that she was on board with those decisions at the time. Iverson is married to KYUK’s general manager.
Credit Google Maps screenshot
An 18-year-old died when he was shot while bird hunting with two other young people in Nightmute on April 26.
“Joseph George was shot in the head at close range by a minor as a goose flew by,” Alaska Department of Public Safety Information Officer Gretchen Weiss-Brooks wrote in an email to KYUK.
She says the three young people were “hunting a few hundred feet from the Nightmute airport.” Village health aides responded to the scene, and “for the death to be officially declared,” the health aides contacted the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation to confirm that George was dead.