BLM report on ANCSA land contamination: environmental services needed across Alaska.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Environmental Services

In some circles, Alaska's state flower isn't the forget-me-not, it's a different beast entirely: a tundra tulip. A quick glance through a wildflower book won't find it, though. Tundra tulips are fifty-five-gallon drums used in past decades to transport fuel to remote mining camps or military installations and left behind to flower into rust when the sites were abandoned.

Those sites, such as former DEWLine and White Alice sites, radio towers, tank farms, asbestos-laden buildings, bomb impact areas, legacy wells, mines, and dumps are found throughout Alaska, from the tip of the Aleutians to the top of the North Slope. Many are a result of World War II and the Cold War, times when environmental controls were less rigid than today.

Many contained toxic materials such as arsenic, solvents, PCBs, asbestos, mercury, mining chemicals, oil and petroleum, and unexploded ordnance. Hundreds of these contaminated sites are now under the ownership of Alaska Native corporations, and the effort to get them cleaned up has been going on for decades.

In the meantime, Native leaders are concerned with the health and safety impacts of the contamination on local populations. According to the Alaska Native Village Corporation Association, "anecdotally villages report higher rates of cancer and other illnesses linked to hazardous substances." Many of the rural contaminated sites are near villages whose residents practice subsistence lifestyles. Only limited research has been done on the contaminants' impacts to fish, berries, and wildlife in those areas.

A report released in July details the problem and the steps taken to solve it. The "Report to Congress: Hazardous Substance Contamination of Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act Lands in Alaska" is the latest chapter in a long and tangled history between the federal government and Alaska Natives.

In 1959

When Alaska became a state, the federal government owned all but a tiny percentage of the land. However, when oil was found on Alaska's North Slope, it quickly became clear that a pipeline to carry the oil to market would not be built until the government addressed long-simmering land claims from Alaska Natives, who had lived in the area for thousands of years.

After years of work and debate, President Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971. The sweeping act aimed to provide a fair settlement of aboriginal land claims, providing Alaska Natives with 44 million acres of land, about the size of Oklahoma, and $962.5 million, in exchange for them dropping the claims. The twelve Alaska-based regional corporations created under ANCSA set about selecting the land, mostly in areas traditionally used and occupied by...