Toothless: Girdwood's water fluoridation system has been offline since last August.

A memorandum sent by Alaska Wastewater Utility General Manager Mark Corsentino through Anchorage's power-hungry Municipal Manager Amy Demboski to the Anchorage assembly had a subliminal stirring message for the residents of Girdwood: Make sure your teeth cleaning products have fluoride in them because the system that provides the town with fluoride is broken as hell.

The memo, which the assembly received this week, states that Girdwood's existing fluoride system is approximately 20 years old, high maintenance, and has had multiple components replaced over time.

Corsentino wrote that a fluoride chemical dosing pump failure in March 2021 had caused a "several-month-long outage" until a replacement pump arrived. The replacement pump was installed in July 2021 and operated for only a month before someone determined it was not a proper fix to the system and was providing "unreliable and inconsistent results."

But don't worry, the system that has only been offline since LAST AUGUST will only be offline for a couple more years — until 2024! Oh wait, you didn't hear? You didn't know about that?

Well, perhaps interestingly, Corsentino said at today's utilities meeting that they hadn't yet informed the Girdwood community that the fluoride system was offline but noted that they were planning to tell the Board of Supervisors at an upcoming meeting — so, you know, that's something — although I wonder what's kept them from informing the public all these months?

AWWU has been "actively analyzing" and designing a replacement system to be installed as part of the active Girdwood Well Upgrade Project.

I honestly have so many questions about this. The memo is below. Maybe you have questions too?