The man who made the case for JBER's new water plant didn't live to see it open

When Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson switched on its new water treatment plant last week, the person most responsible for it wasn't there to see it. Malcolm "Mac" Nason joined Doyon Utilities in 2011 and wrote the business case that ultimately won the funding and approval to build it. He died in 2021, years before the plant was finished. At the ribbon-cutting, the company paused to honor him.

The plant he argued for now serves more than 40,000 people on the Anchorage base — soldiers, airmen, civilians, and their families — and replaces infrastructure that had been treating JBER's drinking water since 1957. Capable of producing up to 7.5 million gallons a day, it uses membrane filtration to clean the water and gives the base room to grow.

For Doyon Utilities, which supplies water across the installation, it's the end of one long chapter — nearly 70 years of service from the old system — and the start of another. And it stands, in part, as a monument to the man who made the argument that built it.