Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Shungnak, AK

Shungnak is an incorporated city in Northwest Arctic Borough, on the Kobuk River about 150 miles east of Kotzebue, and the 2020 census counted 272 people there, living in 72 households.

The Inupiaq names for Shungnak are Isiŋnaq and Nuurviuraq, and the name Shungnak comes from the Inupiaq word Isiŋnaq, meaning jade, a stone found in the surrounding area.

Shungnak was originally settled in 1899 about 10 miles to the east along the Kobuk River, but erosion along the river in the 1920s drove residents to resettle in 1927 at a site originally known as Kochuk, which they renamed as the new Shungnak.

To avoid confusion between the two villages, the old Shungnak site became Kobuk in 1928, and the present Shungnak formally incorporated as a city on May 4, 1967.

Shungnak has a mixed economy in which market, subsistence, and public sectors all contribute, and a 2012 survey estimated residents harvested about 100,872 pounds of wild food, led by caribou, sheefish, and chum salmon.

The city covers about 9 square miles, and its 2020 median age was just 24.5 years, with about 39 percent of residents under 18 and about 95 percent Alaska Native.

The Northwest Arctic Borough School District operates the Shungnak School in the community.

Shungnak's municipal water comes from a reservoir intermittently filled from the Kobuk River, after an earlier water infiltration gallery was destroyed by ice, and groundwater wells have proven unsuccessful.

The town has a 4,001-foot gravel runway owned by the state of Alaska, and when low Kobuk River water levels blocked barge fuel delivery in the summer of 2026, gasoline delivered by plane reached $26.82 per gallon at the town's only filling station.

A hybrid solar-plus-storage microgrid, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Northwest Arctic Borough, supplements Shungnak's diesel power with a 225-kilowatt solar array and 384 kilowatt-hours of storage.