Toksook Bay wins Alaska Rural Water Association award for best tasting water in the state
March 26, 2018
Toksook Bay, a community of roughly 600 people on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta’s Nelson Island, won the 2017 Alaska Rural Water Association award for the best-tasting water in the state.
The award comes on the heels of ANTHC’s completion of a new water treatment plant in the community, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development. Toksook Bay is an ANTHC Alaska Rural Utility Collaborative (ARUC) member community and the two have partnered throughout the years to provide sanitation for residents in this part of the Y-K Delta. When asked about the plant’s day-to-day operations, Richard Curtis, the water plant’s operator, noted the team effort between ANTHC and local personnel, explaining that ANTHC should be proud of the award as well.
Nine communities throughout the state brought samples to the Alaska Rural Water Association’s annual conference. Judges at the conference used clarity, odor and taste to evaluate each sample. Toksook Bay won out against some much bigger communities like Valdez, which has a population of about 4,000. The local responses to Toksook Bay’s water supports the judges’ findings. Numerous positive posts on ARUC’s website show residents’ enthusiasm for the job the water plant operators are doing. Toksook Bay will now represent Alaska in a country-wide competition.
“It will be pretty cool to do well,” Curtis said of his water plant’s sample going to nationals. But either way, as Curtis emphasized, “Somebody is doing something right.”
For more information about ARUC, visit https://www.anthc.org/alaska-rural-utility-collaborative-aruc/.