Many residents in the lower Kuskokwim River community of Akiak are still relying on personal and backup generators to provide power a week after mechanical issues halted operations at the community’s power plant.
A mechanic with Northern Generation and Power was en route to the community on Sept. 28, but is currently held up in Bethel waiting for additional parts, according to Akiak Mayor Olinka Jones. The contractor has worked on the community’s power system in the past.
Around three-quarters of the 450-person community are using personal generators, with fuel selling for more than $7 per gallon. Jones said that the city is focused on efforts to get the power plant up and running in the coming days.
"I know people are concerned about how they're going to be buying more fuel. Right now the city is concentrating on all the finances that support the generators," Jones said.
Jones said that the city’s water plant and school are on generator power and remain operational, and that the school has provided access to its library for residents to charge phones and stay warm as temperatures dip. She said that she has not received reports of significant losses of subsistence foods due to the power outage.
Meanwhile, roughly 100 miles west in the Nelson Island community of Mertarvik, power was finally restored on Sept. 26 following a two-week outage at that community’s power plant.
According to tribal administrator Calvin Tom, the work was completed by the same contractor currently assisting Akiak and relied on additional assistance from a state-owned corporation that provides support for rural energy needs and has worked with both communities.
"We’d been out of power for two weeks. AEA, Alaska Energy Authority, got involved, and they loaned us an engine that they had that fits our generator," Tom said.
Tom said that he thinks around a quarter of the community’s roughly 300 residents had access to personal generators during the outage. He said that several people reported losing as much as half of their subsistence foods harvested over the summer due to the outage.
Despite the challenges, Tom said that the community did find a way to keep power turned on for some of the community’s most vulnerable residents.
"We had smaller generators that were powering the water plant, school, clinic, and then I noticed that it was underloaded. So we got the Elders hooked up, and they been on power for a week until we got the new generator in," Tom said.
With Mertarvik’s main generator back online, Tom said that upgrades to a pair of smaller generators needed to power additional infrastructure planned for the community have become a priority.
