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Kotzebue's Municipal Water Supply

Kotzebue gets its drinking water from a deep tundra lake a couple miles outside town; I think it's so deep that it doesn't completely freeze in winter, which is an amazing feat considering there's permafrost below and the harsh Arctic winter above. The water is pumped to town in the heavily insulated pipe shown below. How heavily insulated is it? The pipe is about 3 inches in diameter and is surrounded by 9 inches of insulation.

 

Kotzebue's water pipe has its own suspension bridge to cross the large tundra lake pictured above. Isn't that quaint?

 

The water pipe looks somewhat like a miniaturized version of the Alaskan Pipeline as it stretches across the tundra. Interesting fact - there are three types of tundra: alpine, dry and moist. Moist tundra commonly has muskegs and tundra pools as seen above.

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