TAKOTNA, ALASKA — In a flat, piney river valley deep in the Alaska interior, the village of Takotna is marked by a dozen or so houses, a shop, a tiny post office and a school. Intrepid gold miners ventured here decades ago. A small tribe of Athabascan Indians has hunted and fished the woods and riverbanks for generations.
This summer Takotna, population somewhere between 46 and 61, has become one of the best-known villages in Alaska -- thanks to the $18.7-million airstrip the federal government is funding on the edge of town. The 3,300-foot gravel runway, complete with night lighting, will replace the short one on a wind-swept hill where several planes have crashed.
The cost of keeping rural Alaska afloat has been one of the state's most enduring challenges. Now a place that sees itself as the nation's last frontier, where countless communities depend on bush planes and boats for their food and fuel deliveries, is having to support its outposts in an age of cable television, cellphone networks and the Internet.
And in an era of dwindling public revenue, even Alaskans increasingly wonder how much they can afford to support those who choose to live miles from civilization.
"For decades, Alaskans have numbed themselves to the shock and oddity of the state and federal expenditures that fall all around us. The latest example is . . . a new airfield for the tiny community of Takotna. Why does this sort of expenditure occur?" the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner asked in a recent editorial.
According to the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska, about $1.4 billion a year in state and federal government subsidies, purchases and wages goes to more than 200 far-flung villages in the state -- from the frigid Arctic coastal plain to the soggy, impenetrable tundra of the deep Alaskan interior. Federal dollars help pay for airline service and mail delivery, subsidize electricity rates and fund health clinics, among other things.
This year, more than $42 million of President Obama's federal stimulus package has been earmarked to supply plumbing for remote Alaskan villages that still use portable toilets and haul water in by the barrel.
And $70 million will go to rural airport improvements -- not including Takotna's, which is being funded under a separate government grant.
