Kids Tasked With Dumping Alaska Village’s “Honey Buckets” Likely Psyched To Finally Get Indoor Plumbing

Line’em up, boys. (catastrophegirl)

Aren’t chores the worst, kids? Yes, sure, taking out the trash and emptying the dishwasher are both bummer gigs, but let’s all just thank our lucky stars that we were never in charge of dumping buckets of human waste at the town receptacle. To that end, kids in one Alaska village where many homes don’t have indoor plumbing are probably pretty pumped to hear that “honey bucket” duty is almost at an end.

Those dark and stinky days are almost over for children in a western Alaskan village, reports the Associated Press, as the more than 100 homes in the area will soon be getting indoor plumbing after an influx of cash from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The $12.5 million in funding for Alaska is part of $325 million in grants and loans going to rural communities nationwide, as part of an effort to bring the whole country up to date with the modern world.

“It’s really designed to make sure people live in communities and in areas that provide the basic protections and the guarantee of basic protections that we all, as Americans, ought to have,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told the AP. “It’s an adequate supply of quality water. It’s the ability to treat sewage properly so that it doesn’t do harm or damage to the environment.”

The remote village of Akiachak will get $5 million in grant money for constructing sewer mains and other essential systems that will then be hooked up to the 100 houses in the community that still use something called the “Honey Bucket” system for waste. That’s not to mention having to go outside to chip away at ice in the winter and bringing it home to melt.

The system right now works as un-sweetly as its name: It’s usually up to the family’s children to haul away large buckets used as toilets and bring it to village receptacles for dumping. Those buckets can leak when overfull, said the chairman of the village tribal council, who lives in one of the homes without indoor plumbing.

He’s excited for the future, that’s for darn sure.

“It’s going to be real different,” he said. “The whole community will be really happy.”

Here’s where we cut to a shot of all the kids doing jumping high fives all over town.

Alaska village to get indoor plumbing as USDA gives $352M for rural water systems nationwide [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist