"Tuntutuliak"

Typically, when a contaminated site is discovered it’s up to the landowner — or the person responsible for making the mess — to clean it up. But there are dozens of sites where this process has broken down.

As a child, Alice Fitka was punished for speaking her Yup’ik language in school. Since then, she’s spent decades teaching it in the Western Alaska village of Tuntutuliak.

This spring has seen record-breaking warm temperatures across Alaska. In the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the Kuskokwim River is melting early — with devastating consequences.

In rural Alaska, one problem thwarts a thousand good ideas: the high cost of energy. From generating electricity to heating homes to fueling boats and snow machines, energy expenses eat into budgets, are a barrier to business and add to the prohibitive cost of water and sewer systems.

Federal and state funding isn’t keeping up with the need, and the situation is likely to get worse due to climate change.

Rural communities that have raised the money for modern sanitation systems face the threat of their ultimate failure from lack of funding for operations and maintenance.