Residents of Tuluksak can fill their water bottles with drinking water from a new reverse osmosis system installed by YKHC remote maintenance workers and approved by the State of Alaska Drinking Water Program today.
The Tuluksak Native Community coordinated with leadership in the school to provide community access to the water station, which is located inside the school, for several hours a day. The boil water notice for the village was lifted.
“We are grateful for the efforts of everyone involved to set up this temporary drinking water station,” said YKHC President and CEO Dan Winkelman. “This system provides residents with regular access to clean drinking water while we continue to work on medium and long-term plans to restore water to the community.”
The reverse osmosis system, which is part of the short-term solution to provide potable water to Tuluksak, uses water drawn from the Tuluksak River. The water is transferred through pipes to school, treated with a series of cartridge filters, chlorinated, and processed through the reverse osmosis system.
“Providing safe drinking water to the people of Tuluksak is a priority,” said Brian Lefferts, Director of Office of Environmental Health and Engineering at YKHC. “YKHC is proud of the work being done by our Remote Maintenance Workers and our partners at ANTHC, the State of Alaska, the Tuluksak Native Community, CRW Engineering and others to develop short, medium and long term solutions to restore safe water to the village. It’s been amazing to see how hard people have worked on this.”