[CPEO-MEF] FORMER SITES, NATIVE PEOPLES: "Cleaning Up a Legacy of Pollution on [St. Lawrence] Island" (AK)

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Cleaning Up a Legacy of Pollution on an Alaskan Island

By KIRK JOHNSON
New York Times
August 3, 2015


ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND, Alaska - America’s Far North cherishes its image of wild purity in a landscape so vast it can sometimes seem barely touched by people. But the roughly 600 military installations across Alaska - some dating from World War II, others built during the Cold War - tell a different story, in polluted sites that were never fully cleaned up, and in the related health problems that have lingered and festered.

Bases and listening posts scattered from the far northern tundra to the remotest atolls of the Aleutian Islands used or stockpiled cleaning solvents and pesticides, chemical warfare agents and unexploded ordnance. Some were left behind in remote or unpopulated areas when geopolitical tensions eased and bases were abandoned; others were merely fenced off with signs and  warnings.

One of the biggest and most polluted military sites is here on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska’s farthest western reaches close to the former Soviet Union. Here, a 4,800-acre radar station, Northeast Cape, bristled with electrical components containing polychlorinated biphenyls, better known as PCBs, that were later linked to cancer and banned in many countries. Tiny fish living downstream from the site, eaten by birds and larger fish that islanders harvest for food, are loaded with PCBs, scientific tests have found. And PCB levels in residents are multiple times higher than in most other places in the nation, studies show.

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/us/native-alaskans-study-and-clean-up-a-legacy-of-pollution.html?_r=0


--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
LSiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org




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