In conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation issued 548 notices of intent to sue the U.S. Department of the Interior for failure to clean up contamination on lands transferred to Alaska Native corporations. According to the DEC, a variety of contaminants pollute these properties, including petroleum, heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and solvents – all of which can pose serious health risks.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski spoke on contamination on Thursday:
“It’s actually really very devastating when you think about it. this is the matter of contaminated lands. Contaminated lands that this problem is not only not going away, it’s getting worse. It really pains me to say, but significant lands in Alaska including formerly used defense sites were contaminated. The federal government knew they were contaminated, but they were still conveyed to the ANCs as contaminated lands and the government’s saying, ‘okay, this is part of your land settlement so we’re going to give you these lands, but you can’t use these lands cause they’re contaminated.’ There are horrible consequences that we’re seeing to this. We’ve got clusters of illnesses. We just had a report that was presented to the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention just this past week, but this is causing real suffering, true consequences, deaths in these communities. It’s no fault of the people who live there and, again, received these lands in settlement from the federal government. It is a federal responsibility for us to take care of this.”
The DEC says that the neglected contamination poses a continuing threat to human health and the environment. Gov. Dunleavy, Attorney General Treg Taylor, and DEC Commissioner Jason Brune sent letters to President Biden and the DOI in May demanding action.
The DEC says that despite repeated direction from Congress since 1990 and persistent requests from the state of Alaska, the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management haven’t completed a site inventory, identified the types of contamination, measured how far the pollution may have spread, or completed cleanup of these ANCSA properties.
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