Alaska's environmental cleanup work continues: a look at some cleanup projects slated for this summer.

Umiat was established in 1944 by the U.S. Navy as a base for exploring oil in National Petroleum Reserve No.4. The Navy built a 5,000-foot gravel runway, a power plant, a shop, several support buildings and fuel storage facilities, all to support 11 exploratory oil wells. In 1953, the Air Force took over the site to use as a communications base. Some 15 years later, the land was transferred to the state of Alaska.

The military simply packed up and headed out, leaving behind contaminated soils, drums full of various products and improperly abandoned drilling wells.

The story is the same in hundreds of sites across the state, and work will continue this summer to clean up some of Alaska's worst cases.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, the regulatory agency in charge of keeping track of such things, listed 2,313 contaminated sites in Alaska as of early January. These include military sites, as well as other federal, state and private lands.

All the contaminated sites are prioritized based on a scoring system. Investigators look at the types of contaminants, the toxicity levels, how much is there and the location to populations, giving each of these items a score.

For example, contaminates that are found in groundwater or in the wildlife used for subsistence will likely get higher scores. Those with the highest scores get top priority for cleanup efforts and funding. The agency has more than 200 compounds listed as hazardous substances that it regulates.

According to the DEC, 992 sites are on the high priority list, while 680 have a medium ranking and 468 are low priority. Some 173 sites had yet to be ranked in early January.

The federal government is in charge of cleaning up about a quarter of the sites. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Alaska District heads this work. Last November, officials from DEC met with members of the Alaska District's U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a Statewide Management Action Plan to prioritize formerly used defense sites, which the military refers to as FUDS.

By the end of this year, the Corps hopes to include input from various tribal organizations in ranking the regions, said Suzanne Beauchamp, the Corps' FUDS program manager.

Petroleum is the main contaminant found in the state, said Jim Frechione, a DEC environmental conservation manager. Other scurrilous products are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that came from the use of electric transformers and solvents used as degreasers by the military, mostly.

"Really, the military didn't do anything any worse than anybody else," said Jennifer Roberts, a DEC environmental conservation manager working on the FUDS cleanup program. "It was just that their scale was so much bigger. There were no laws then to take this stuff away or report spills."

The Alaska Corps has investigated 603 FUDS properties-which are included in the DEC's list-and found that 299 areas in 130 sites require cleanup, according to the Corps. Total cleanup costs are estimated at $920 million.

Alaska has the third largest FUDS program in the nation, behind California, at 1,100 sites, and Florida, with 650, according to the Corps. Work has continued over the last decade to reduce the numbers and clean up the sites with the highest priorities. Remediation and cleanup work is expensive, and DEC officials say they can't venture a guess at how much money it would take to clean up all the sites in the state, partly because much of the work needed is on private land, and therefore likely will be privately funded. They can't even give an idea of roughly how many acres those 2,500 sites might entail.

The Corps is in charge of inspecting and, when necessary, cleaning any sites that the Department of Defense currently owns or has possessed in the past. Currently owned or possessed lands include Elmendorf Air Force Base, Fort Richardson and Kulis Air National Guard Base, among others.

Still, Alaska was host to hundreds of formerly used defense sites, many before it officially became a state. The military presence in Alaska exploded during the days of World War II and continued into the Cold War.

Most of these old defense sites were small, and located primarily around the coastal regions. Uses varied, but some were used as communications stations, early warning detection sites and military exercise facilities.

Since 1986, the Corps has spent $419 million and completed 128 projects. At the projected average funding of $13 million a year, it will take the corps another 38 years to complete cleanup efforts.

Some years, the federal government sends additional funds earmarked for environmental cleanup work. For fiscal year 2003, the district received nearly $26 million from Congress for work in Alaska. If these windfalls continue, the work could be done in half the time, the Corps says.

About 60 percent of the Corps' current budget is directed toward work at the northeast cape of Saint Lawrence Island, the North Slope's Umiat and at Kodiak Island. Work also is scheduled at Unalaska Island, Cold Bay and Unalakleet.

While work is continuing in Saint Lawrence, part of the project has been completed. Located about 130 miles southwest of Nome, the northeast cape of the island was used as a surveillance station during the mid-1950s through the early 1970s. The stations provided radar coverage for the Alaskan Air Command and, later, for the North American Air Defense Command.

As of early January, cleanup crews had removed from the site about 64 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil and 25 tons of PCB-contaminated soil. Crews also are tearing down asbestos-ladden buildings on the site, according to the Corps. They are about half done with that part of the project. The Corps estimates it has spent about $18 million of the estimated $58 million project. Work will continue next summer.

The entire project is expected to be done in 2011.

One of the primary concerns with contamination, especially in the rural areas, is the affects on the subsistence foods used by Alaska Natives.

During the process of the cleanup efforts, research is often conducted to determine if Alaska Natives are in danger of becoming ill because the foods they eat have become contaminated. In Saint Lawrence, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services, completed a study looking to see if the island's reindeer herds had been affected by the contaminates. The study, released in 2001, found that no health problems related to PCBs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) or organochlorine pesticides would be expected in those consuming a diet containing large quantities of reindeer meat and fat.

Studies on fish in die Colville River are under way in Umiat. Umiat is located in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range, on the north bank of the Colville River, about 120 miles southwest of Prudhoe Bay. The Inupiat village of Nuiqsut, population 433, is about 60 miles downstream.

The study was conducted in the summer of 2001 and the Corps expects the final results in the coming weeks. Initial results indicate that the fish are being affected by PCBs, however. The Corps has already begun work to determine if those eating the fish are being impacted, as well, and if the fish are affecting their health. The results will help determine future work in the area.

The next major focus from the Corps is cleaning up unexploded ordnance left from military exercises and from the Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands during World War II, Roberts said.

"Because of World War II, especially in the Aleutians, we just keep finding more and more spots out there," she said. "Battles were fought in Kiska and Attu and cleaning those areas is going to be a challenge; they are huge sites and no one is there. They are low on our list. The problem is the other World War II sites; we can't find records for some of them." The Navy has spent around $30 million over the last few years cleaning unexploded ordnance on Adak, he added.

Also, monitoring continues in Alaska's five listed Superfund sites. Roberts said evaluations are under way at the Army's Fort Richardson and at the former Naval facilities at Adak, while most of the work is complete at Elmendorf and Eielson Air Force bases and at the Army's Fort Wainwright. Monitoring likely will continue for several years before the sites are taken off the list, Roberts said.

It's important to note that work is being completed. The Corps has cleaned 128 of its projects. In fiscal year 2002, DEC had a total of 3,234 contaminated sites on its list: 921 of these projects were completed or it was determined that no action was required.

Contaminated Sites in Alaska

Breakout listed by Responsible Party


Subtotal Federal  52%
Undefined          2%
Private           30%
Native             2%
Local              6%
State              8%

Source: Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation

Note: Table made from pie chart