[CPEO-MEF] INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, FORMER SITES: "Unalakleet [AK] woman wins on appeal against U.S. Air Force for contaminating her land"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Unalakleet woman wins on appeal against U.S. Air Force for contaminating her land

By Colin O’Connor
KNOM (Nome, AK) 
November 4, 2020


Unalakleet resident Emily Nanouk is fighting the U.S. government in court for the health of her family and sanctity of her land. Nanouk’s property was contaminated by toxic chemicals which she says had detrimental health effects on her family and home.

Since the 1960s Nanouk has not only used her land in Unalakleet to raise her family, but also for subsistence activities like hunting, fishing, and berry picking.  In 2003 she noticed a strange smell and dead vegetation between her property and the abandoned North River Relay Station.

“It’s not gasoline, it’s not oil, it was a sweet smell.  I knew it wasn’t right, there was something wrong.  There was no green stuff around it, there was no green willows, no berries.  [It was] dead around that area.  I knew there was something wrong,” she said.

This relay station was built as part of the White Alice Communication System to allow for early warning of any potential Soviet air attack during the Cold War, and was operated by the United States Air Force. By the 1970s new satellite technology rendered these systems useless. So, the Relay Station was closed in 1978 and the Air Force abandoned the site.


…

For the entire article, see
https://www.alaskapublic.org/2020/11/04/unalakleet-woman-wins-on-appeal-against-u-s-air-force-for-contaminating-her-land/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org





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