[CPEO-MEF] FORMER SITES: "Sitka’s abandoned Fort Babcock to be scrubbed of PCB pollution," AK

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Sitka’s abandoned Fort Babcock to be scrubbed of PCB pollution

by Jacob Resnec
CoastAlaska
January 21, 2022

Eight decades after the fact, the federal government plans to spend $2.2 million to clean up a contaminated former army site on Kruzof Island near Sitka. It isn’t going to happen overnight. The Army Corps is still designing the effort. Actual work and removal of the PCB-contaminated soils isn’t expected until 2024. 

But to understand how and why Fort Babcock came to be requires a 20th Century history lesson on the rise of Imperial Japan as a Pacific power. And few people in Sitka know as much about the area’s military history as high school teacher Matt Hunter. 

As an amateur historian, he curates a website on Sitka Harbor’s WWII-era military sites. He says when Imperial Japan invaded its neighbors in the 1930s, the United States realized it had few Pacific defenses outside of Hawaii and the Panama Canal zone.

…

For the entire story, see
https://www.kcaw.org/2022/01/21/sitkas-abandoned-fort-babcock-to-be-scrubbed-of-pcb-pollution/

—

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
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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