Statewide Alaska reclamation.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES

In December 2015, US Senator Lisa Murkowski released a statement chastising the federal government for its double standard regarding abandoned well cleanup. "Even as federal regulators put forward more stringent regulations for well cleanup on National Wildlife Refuge System lands, the federal government continues to long-neglect its obligation to remediate the wells it drilled, and then abandoned, in what is now the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska," was stated in the release.

The US Navy and US Geological Survey drilled more than 130 exploration wells on Alaska's North Slope between 1944 and 1982, remediating only a handful and abandoning the rest, according to the release.

"The federal government may see new regulations as part of the solution, but has conveniently ignored the fact that it actually created much of the problem in Alaska. We still have more than one hundred abandoned exploration wells, drilled decades ago by the federal government, in desperate need of being cleaned up and capped. We would never tolerate this type of willful refusal from a private company," Murkowski said.

Abandoned federal government exploration wells are just one part of Alaska's reclamation and remediation picture. Natural resource extraction was a serious interest in Alaska before it even became a state, from gold rushes to timber to drilling for oil. Now, when an oilfield is developed or a mine is proposed, reclamation is accounted for before construction begins, but that absolutely has not been the case for most of the state's history. Alaska is dotted with a dizzying known number of abandoned mines and wells, and it's almost certain that there are undocumented contaminated and/or hazardous sites statewide as well. What is being done to resolve this problem, and who's taking care of it?

Contaminated Site Program

One significant player is the Contaminated Site Program, part of the Division of Spill Prevention and Response of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Program Manager Jennifer Roberts explains that her program is separate from the Emergency Response program. Emergency Response, she says, responds to new situations, cleaning up and closing the site out, generally with timelines of a year or less; any historic issues or spills that need a longer cleanup or monitoring period get transferred to the Contaminated Site Program.

"My program handles historic, longterm, groundwater contaminations, etc.," Roberts says. "Currently we have sites like Flint Hills Refinery; all of the military bases that are on the Superfund [a federal program to clean up contaminated sites]--Eielson, Fort Wainwright, Elmendorf, Richardson, Adak--and other superfund sites like Salt Chuk Mine. Red Devil isn't on the list, but is a Superfund-caliber site. We also have the North Slope legacy wells."

The purpose of the Contaminated Site Program is to monitor and ensure that these sites are remediated, and Roberts says the program's goal is usually to find an appropriate responsible entity to perform the clean-up.

"If we can find who was the owner/operator/releaser, that's the first entity that we turn to to do the clean-up. In some cases it gets complicated quickly," she says.

In Alaska, it's quite possible for a business to be working in partnership with two or three landowners with various surface or subsurface rights, often including state or federal governments. For instance, as part of Alaska Native Claims...