Yukon River Unified Watershed Assessment - Yukon River Inter ...

Yukon River Unified Watershed Assessment
Many of these communities also lack piped sewer and water to their homes, and rely on
“honey buckets” and outhouses for sewage disposal, which presents its own unique problems.
Communities are usually located on a waterway with the sewage lagoon in close proximity,
exposed to annual flooding and erosion. This annual occurrence causes the sewage lagoons
to overflow and disperse debris throughout the community and the river. Equally, a threat
to the sewage lagoon is the erosion of the riverbanks. Naturally, occurring erosion causes
the sewage spills from “honey buckets”, flooding or direct disposal into the waterways, to
move downstream to the water intake of the communities downstream. Additionally, many
of the communities that do have piped sewer systems have inadequate treatment sy stems.
These systems are old, unreliable and hard to maintain due their age and lack of available
maintenance parts.
The increase in tourism activity has also enhanced the generation of waste. There are few
approved or maintained campgrounds along the mainstem Yukon River within Alaska. Many
of the tourists traveling the Yukon River, have limited options as to what to do with their
waste generation, while camping on the gravel bars and islands within the drainage.
Unfortunately, the lack of options and the remoteness encourages the practice of dumping
sewage and other waste directly into the river.
Figure 7 - Landfill locations and permit status in Alaska
Unregulated “open dumps” throughout the drainage are thought to play a major role in
contamination of the waters in the drainage. These “open dump s” are unpermitted landfills
which are built in the lowlands next the river. The landfills are not lined, lack adequate
containment or opportunities to sort and segregate hazardous waste and have little
maintenance. In addition, open burning of waste is a common practice. These practices
present a leachate hazard to the drainage as well as a human health risk. Recent
environmental awareness efforts are working to reduce the amount and type of waste going
into these landfills as well as providing the necessary training and education to the
communities to improve the condition of their landfills or to build new ones which are not
apt to leach into the surrounding waters. The quality of maintenance is also improving. The
landfills, especially the lower river on the delta is subject to periodic flooding with a
movement of the landfill material into the river.
June 2002 Page 14 of 44