Is it possible at this point in time to use Echo to announce items such as “Front Door”, Back Door", “Water Leak Detected” type of announcements via Smartthings alerts?
Or,
"It’s a little warm today, do you want me to turn the AC on? "
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No.
Even the Amazon Skills Kit developers currently have no method of initiating sounds or speech from the Echo without it first being woken and asked a question. This is unlike The Ubi.
It can be programmed, however, to listen and respond to a command roughly like: “Alexa, SmartThings window status report, please.”.
Theoretically, this is slightly more feasible, since perhaps Echo Apps will be able to “tack on” to various other requests (i.e., “Alexa, what's the weather”, or “Alexa, is it hot in here”, and then your proposed response could follow). Natural language systems work best in dialog mode. Lots of research in this field. Great presentation on the exact topic by an expert from Nuance at the O’Reilly SOLID Conference #SolidCon.
What a teaser the subject was. I missed the “?” and thought it was announced 
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So sorry Ron!!! That was not the intent at all
Suggest editing title to: “Can Amazon Echo Announce Alerts from SmartThings?”.
You can use Echo as a Bluetooth speaker to announce anything you want, but the sound would have to be produced by another device, e.g. a Raspberry API with Bluetooth dongle.
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Or you can have it respond like this if you have the remote: Hacking Amazon Echo Through it’s Remote
No problem I should have known better 
My Ubi does that. 
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I have my Echo announcing alerts. It’s one way only but it’s useful for things like when I receive mail, etc. More detail on this is here: Playing around with Amazon Echo (technical interface discussion)
LOL - subject line now changed.
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Isnt there an app to play a sound on alert? That’s all you are really asking it to do. I do not know if ST can control it as a speaker, but really that’s all it really would need to be as a sound alert.
The asking if the AC should be turned on is a little different though.
Yes, it’s called Big Talker. I’m using that in conjunction with the generic media renderer app for my Echo alerts.
I just picked up an Echo this week and was really disappointed to find out that I can’t trigger it to play sounds/alerts. That seems like a pretty critical feature for a home assistant. Read through some of zj4x4’s posts and it prompted a question. Is there a way I can use an always on android device to receive alerts from smartthings events (such as a door being opened) and have it play a sound (such as “door opened”) via bluetooth to my echo?
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An Android phone with ST app already does that. If the phone is in a mode to announce notifications (like when driving or laying around at home) it could be heard directly or via a Bluetooth speaker, I believe.
I think @dgbsf is referring to my LANdroid device. It allows an Android tablet/phone to announce events using Big Talker, and to chime, strobe, etc. One-stop download is at the home page here.
Actually, I’m not familiar with your device, although it does sound like a good solution. What I have done is just use my Android phone with SmartThings app and a notification announcement (text to voice) app, plus, optionally, a Bluetooth speaker connected to the phone. All ST notifications (as configured, e.g. door unlocked, etc.) will then be heard over the speaker. No Amazon Echo required. I do see security limitations with voice activation on any device for disarming, unlocking, etc., however, just notifications should not be a problem.