Kivalina Landfill.

The village of Kivalina, northwest of Kotzebue, was already in grave danger. The barrier island on which it sits (bottom right) is forecast to be underwater before this decade is over. Then the remnants of Typhoon Merbok struck the Western Alaska coast in mid-September, scattering debris around the area (bottom left).

Luckily, Kivalina was prepared. Work had begun earlier in the summer on rehabilitation of the village landfill, led by Delta Backhaul Co. "Due to the recent landfill cover and newly fenced-in waste collection area," says company owner Doug Huntman, "environmental damage was kept to a minimum."

Delta Backhaul, aided by local laborers, tidied up the 6.7-acre site, closing the majority of the old landfill through consolidation, compaction, and cover and developing a more manageable 1-acre site. All the better for Kivalina's eventual relocation, whenever that massive effort takes place.

"This project will serve as a model for future landfill clean-up projects in rural Alaska," Huntman says.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) inspected the Kivalina landfill in 2018, resulting in a poor score of 14 percent. That report helped prioritize efforts to rehabilitate the landfill.

The most basic part of the rehab was a litter patrol. Sam Huntman, Zach Huntman, Robert Swan, Brett Norton, Brian Adams, and Kirk Koenig helped clean up the perimeter (top left). By the end of the project, more than 500 tons of trash was removed from the old site.

A honey bucket trench has been established for village residents to dump their sewage (middle left). "The improvements at the current site will greatly reduce the impacts from solid waste in Kivalina, protecting clean drinking water and substance resources," Huntman says. The rehab also set up a staging area for electronics waste, which can be backhauled to a recycler (middle right).

More than forty years' worth of accumulated garbage was packed into 5-cubic-yard super sacks and staged on the beach (bottom left). Due to funding shortfalls, the sacks are stuck for the winter until they can be shipped to Seattle in the spring for final disposal and a regulated...