• Alaska Clean Water Actions Grant Now Closed! (Go To Section On Page)
• BEACH Grant Program (Go to Section On Page)
• Village Safe Water Program (Go To Section On Page)

The Alaska's Clean Water Actions (ACWA) was established by the Governor's office and Alaska's resource agencies to prioritize waterbodies for appropriate stewardship actions and to better coordinate resources and agency efforts to protect and restore these waterbodies.

The purpose of the ACWA grant solicitation is to address water quality, water quantity, and aquatic habitat issues. The current grant period is for State Fiscal Year 2018, July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018. The current grants have been awarded until spring 2019 and the next solicitation request is scheduled for the fall 2018.

The Alaska BEACH Grant Program studies Alaska's beaches for pollution of bacteria, specifically, fecal coliform and enterococci. BEACH stands for Beach Environmental Assessment & Coastal Health. This act was signed into law in October 2000 because people were concerned about becoming sick while using their local shores/beaches, especially in places where people come in direct contact with the water. The Act enabled the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to award grants to help governments implement beach water monitoring, and notification programs if monitoring revealed a problem.

Rural Alaska is characterized by over 280 isolated villages scattered across an area more than twice the size of Texas. Populations in these communities are predominately Native and range between 25 and 6,000 residents, averaging about 300 residents per village. Nearly all villages are accessible by air and water only. Most residents practice a blended subsistence lifestyle and depend heavily on moose, caribou, walrus, whale, seal and fish for their food supply. Unemployment rates frequently exceed 50%. Many of these communities lack a safe source of drinking water or a safe means of sewage disposal – The Village Safe Water Program (VSW) is working to change this. As one of the three Facility Programs established within the Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Water, the role of the VSW program is to work with rural communities to develop sustainable sanitation facilities.