Pollutants taint military legacy in Alaska

updated 1:56 p.m. ET Aug. 27, 2007

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Like countless generations of Yup'ik Eskimos, George Noongwook's grandfather once pulled salmon and trout from the Suqitughneq River on St. Lawrence Island. But Noongwook has never done so.

The whaling captain from the village of Savoonga worries that the remnants of a 180,000-gallon diesel fuel spill from a deserted Cold War surveillance site will make him sick.

"There hasn't been anyone fishing there in my lifetime because all the fish died," said Noongwook, 58. "They're back now, but everyone knows it is contaminated so they go elsewhere."

The old Northeast Cape Air Force base, 140 miles from the Russian mainland, is one of at least 640 contaminated military installations across Alaska dating from World War II and the Cold War.

In all, they will cost at least $1 billion to clean up, the Army Corps of Engineers says.

But funding for military cleanups in Alaska is dwindling steadily as the focus of cleanups has shifted to states with buried munitions, such as Hawaii, said Pat Richardson, a spokeswoman for the corps, which oversees the bulk of polluted sites in Alaska. The corps in Alaska received $20 million in 2007, down from $50 million in 1998.

And while state regulators say about half of the polluted sites have been sufficiently cleaned, environmental groups and residents don't consider some of those jobs complete.

Alaska became a transit hub for weapons and supplies sent to Russia during World War II. In 1942, the Japanese capture of Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands also spurred speedy military buildup.

During the Cold War, radar and satellite stations sprang up along the northern and western coasts to watch for Soviet air attacks over the North Pole.

"Our people welcomed the military, our men enlisted, they helped rescue downed planes and the Department of Defense has not taken into consideration the human health effects of these places," said Vi Waghiyi of the Norton Sound Alaska Project, an arm of the nonprofit Alaska Community Action on Toxics.

Congressional hearing sought
Waghiyi hopes to travel to Washington next year with elders from St. Lawrence Island villages to seek a congressional hearing on the two badly polluted military sites on the island, she said.

Many of the decaying or downsized outposts are sullying lands and waterways used as primary food sources by at least two dozen tiny communities. Thousands of rural Alaskans depend on wild plants and animals such as caribou, salmon and berries for sustenance.

The military said it has been steadily clearing away the most conspicuous remnants of war, including barracks, radio towers and mounds of rusted oil drums.

"At Northeast Cape we're now moving to the leftover contamination in the ground, the nonvisible impacts, which are very real," said Carey Cossaboom, a project manager with the corps.

Old barracks and radar stations from the Arctic coast to the Aleutian Islands contain now-banned materials such as asbestos and lead paint, according to state environmental records. Long-abandoned landfills harbor unknown quantities of tainted scrap metal, diesel fuel, pesticides, heavy metals and PCBs — highly toxic compounds used to insulate transformers — that have seeped unchecked into soils and rivers, the records state.

Conflicting studies on any lingering health hazards concern many rural residents, who blame the sites for recent increases in cancer and other diseases.

MORE FROM ENVIRONMENT

Environment Section Front

S. Africa's baboon gangs get more aggressive ‘Flotilla’ of icebergs sails toward New Zealand   GOP opens probe into climate science e-mails Climate change fears spark ‘new nuclear age’   One man’s trash is another man’s house CO2 levels rising as climate talks loom Warming’s impacts worsened since Kyoto 5,600 new species found in deep sea Quiz: Test your wildlife knowledge   Hollywood goes green Environment Section Front   Add Environment headlines to your news reader: