IHS awards $65 million for water & sewer system in Teller

For the first time in Teller’s municipal existence, residents can be hopeful that a piped water and sewer system will be installed in the community.
Last week, the Indian Health Service announced that $65 million would fund construction of Teller’s first water and sewer system. The money is part of the Biden administration’s 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, IIJA for short, which is now in its last year of distributing allocated funds. In 2026, IHS allocated $700 million to critical sanitation projects to tribes nationwide. Between 2022 and 2026, the IIJA provided $3.5 billion to IHS to develop critical tribal water infrastructure, including drinking water sources, reliable sewage systems and effective solid waste disposal facilities
In previous years, the IIJA has funded the beginnings of water and sewer projects in Shishmaref, Wales, Stebbins and now Teller.
The funds will go to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, according to Denise Michels, Norton Sound Health Corporation’s administrative director for the Sanitation Department.
Last week, IHS Deputy Director Benjamin Smith traveled to Teller to deliver the news.
According to an IHS video posted on Facebook, Teller Mayor Blanche Okbaok Garnie told Smith the realities of living in a community without running water – the hardship of hauling water in five-gallon buckets from the washeteria to their homes, of waiting one’s turn to do laundry in the community’s washeteria and that people are just not using enough water due to the fact that it is so hard to get. A major public health concern is the use of honey buckets and the disposal of human waste, as homes are not equipped with flush toilets. She said that her grandmother started to advocate in the 1960s to do away with the honey buckets, and then her aunt Jenny Lee would continue that work.
IHS Alaska Area Sanitation Facilities Construction Director Capt. Chris Fehrman said no access to water has a huge impact to public health. The amount of $65 million contributed to the project by IHS is the beginning, and further down the line, they’d be partnering with the EPA towards the project as well, he added. Smith said that projects such as this need partners and pointed to the involvement of Norton Sound Health Corporation, the tribal health consortium for the Bering Strait/Norton Sound region.
Norton Sound Health Corporation’s CEO Angie Gorn said when she first arrived in Nome years ago, the last community that received a water and sewer system was St. Michael and she had thought that every five years or so communities would get funded for water and sewer service. That is now over 30 years ago and only a few others have since been funded for those services that most take for granted. She acknowledged NSHC board of director’s prioritizing sanitation projects, all the work that Garnie has done.
Garnie thanked the tribal administrator who had walked in at the end of the video being filmed.
According to IHS, the Teller project will serve 70 homes with reliable, safe water and wastewater services.