A neighborhood drinking arsenic-tainted well water wants help paying to join the city system

A Sand Lake-area homeowner came to the Anchorage Assembly this week with an alarming claim and a costly request: her street is drinking from arsenic-tainted wells, and she wants help paying to fix it.

Taylor Asher told the assembly that Seaview Street relies on four shared community wells with arsenic above allowable limits, and that some neighbors drink the water anyway. "This is a public health and safety issue for our neighborhood," she said. Connecting to city water, she said, runs about $40,000 per lot — roughly 15% of her home's value — a sum she called an impossible barrier. She asked the assembly to steer a federal water-improvement grant, if Seaview Street qualifies, toward her street.

It's a sympathetic case, and arsenic occurs naturally in groundwater across much of Alaska, which means the contamination may be no one's fault. But the request lands on a hard question the assembly didn't answer Tuesday: who should pay to connect a private-well neighborhood to the public system?

The Seaview wells are privately shared, not city-built, and hooking up to municipal water is ordinarily a property owner's cost. Asher is essentially asking the city to direct limited grant money toward an upgrade to private property — something other private-well neighborhoods across Anchorage could just as reasonably request. And the grant itself isn't settled: she said she'd only been told the municipality received it, with no street-level allocations finalized.

There are complications even within the neighborhood. The street hasn't voted to request a connection at all — in part, Asher said, because residents who could afford it are wary of forcing poorer neighbors into a mandatory hookup. She also urged the city to coordinate water and sewer work, so homeowners don't sink $15,000 to $20,000 into aging septic systems just before public sewer arrives.

No assembly member responded. Whether Seaview Street sees any of the money remains an open question.