Evaluation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Water and Sanitation Project in the Village of Buckland, Alaska - Phase 2

Abstract

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is the lead agency for a multi-year sanitation pilot project in the village of Buckland, in Alaska's Northwest Arctic Borough. Providing safe drinking water and sewage disposal for rural communities has been and continues to be a major public policy goal in Alaska. The federal and state governments have spent more than $1 billion building sewer and water facilities in rural Alaska in the past several decades, but many unsafe and inadequate water and sewer systems remain. A wide range of government agencies and Native organizations have been involved in rural sanitation projects, but until recently one notable exception was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The corps has regulatory authority over and provides technical expertise for water-related projects across Alaska—for example, oil, gas, and mining activities that affect wetlands. But historically it has not been involved in providing sanitation systems in rural Alaska. That changed in 1997, when Congress asked the corps to apply its expertise with cold region design, construction, and operation of water and sewer facilities to projects in rural Alaska.

This report evaluates just the planning and the phase one design activities of that pilot project. The Environmental Protection Agency hired the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) to do this evaluation.