[CPEO-MEF] A toxic legacy comes to light

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Alaska
A toxic legacy comes to light
AGENT ORANGE: Army sprayed two chemicals along pipeline route in '60s.
By Liz Ruskin
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: December 15, 2002)

Washington -- Steve Howdeshell, an environmental program manager for the
Tanana Chiefs Conference, had heard for years that the Army may have
sprayed Agent Orange -- a herbicide suspected of causing cancer in
Vietnam veterans -- along an old pipeline corridor between Haines and
Fairbanks.

He could not find military records of it, but wariness lingered in
Interior villages.

"We've talked to people who remember as kids playing in the pipeline
corridor and being told, 'Oh, don't play there. They sprayed something,'
" he said.

This summer Howdeshell found a Canadian report that confirmed the U.S.
Army had sprayed the pipeline with the two chemical ingredients of Agent
Orange, perhaps annually, in the 1960s.

Now he, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Alaska Department of
Environmental Conservation have begun discussing what to do about it.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.adn.com/alaska/story/2326949p-2383880c.html

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