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Obama visit puts spotlight on rough plight in rural Alaska

File - In this May 24, 2006 file photo, frozen human waste from honey buckets litter the frozen Newtok River, in Newtok, Alaska. It’s a good bet that President Barack Obama, like most Americans, has never used a honey bucket. The five-gallon drums serve as rudimentary toilets in large swaths of rural Alaska, where residents haul the waste-filled buckets to nearby sewage lagoons to be emptied. Obama’s historic visit to the Alaska Arctic on Wednesday will shed a rare spotlight on the plight of Alaska Natives and others who populate more than 200 far-flung villages in Alaska, toiling under third-world conditions unimaginable in most of the United States.(AP Photo/Al Grillo, File)
File - In this May 24, 2006 file photo, frozen human waste from honey buckets litter the frozen Newtok River, in Newtok, Alaska. It’s a good bet that President Barack Obama, like most Americans, has never used a honey bucket. The five-gallon drums serve as rudimentary toilets in large swaths of rural Alaska, where residents haul the waste-filled buckets to nearby sewage lagoons to be emptied. Obama’s historic visit to the Alaska Arctic on Wednesday will shed a rare spotlight on the plight of Alaska Natives and others who populate more than 200 far-flung villages in Alaska, toiling under third-world conditions unimaginable in most of the United States.(AP Photo/Al Grillo, File) File - In this May 24, 2006 file photo, frozen human waste from honey buckets litter the frozen Newtok River, in Newtok, Alaska. It’s a good bet that President Barack Obama, like most Americans, has never used a honey bucket. The five-gallon drums serve as rudimentary toilets in large swaths of rural Alaska, where residents haul the waste-filled buckets to nearby sewage lagoons to be emptied. Obama’s historic visit to the Alaska Arctic on Wednesday will shed a rare spotlight on the plight of Alaska Natives and others who populate more than 200 far-flung villages in Alaska, toiling under third-world conditions unimaginable in most of the United States.(AP Photo/Al Grillo, File)

By Associated Press 1 min read

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – It’s a good bet that President Barack Obama will never use a honey bucket.

The five-gallon drums serve as makeshift toilets in large swaths of rural Alaska, where residents empty the waste into nearby sewage lagoons.

Obama’s historic visit to the Alaska Arctic on Wednesday will shed a rare spotlight on the plight of Alaska Natives and others who live in more than 200 far-flung villages under conditions unimaginable in most of the United States.

Obama’s goal is to showcase the havoc he says human-influenced climate change is wreaking on Alaska’s delicate landscape.

The result is that entire rural villages are sinking into the ground as permafrost thaws, protective sea ice melts and temperatures rise.