Brownfields Update for the Pacific Northwest

Inventorying brownfields sites has taken on new meaning in rural Alaska, where small communities often times bring challenges not faced in other states in EPA Region 10.

“Rural brownfields in Alaska are much different than any rural development you’ve ever thought of,” says John Carnahan, brownfield coordinator for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

Malinda Chase, brownfield program manager for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, has been going into villages in the watershed to begin documenting brownfield sites. Only one of these communities is accessible part of the year by a road, Chase says. Visitors must travel to the villages by plane, boat or snow machine. The larger coastal communities may have up to 1,000 people, while the smaller interior communities may have 100 or 200 people. For many, the villages have been a family’s home for many generations.

These villages have subsistence- and cash-based economies, Chase says. Unlike rural communities in the lower states, officials will have to look at how brownfields are affecting such factors as moose populations or berry-picking areas because tribal people depend on these resources to live.

These are communities that also depend on fuel-carrying barges traveling along the Yukon River. The fuel is used to fuel generators that provide power and heat homes in the winter. Much of the contamination expected to be found in the villages will include spilled fuel resulting from poor tank farm management, leaking storage tanks and community dumps. Other potential brownfield sites include abandoned military facilities or former Bureau of Indian Affairs school buildings, some of which are dilapidated and may contain asbestos and lead paint, Carnahan says. Communities are very interested in seeing some of these structures assessed and made useable again, rather than left to simply deteriorate over time, he says.

Earlier this year, the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council received a nearly $220,000 State and Tribal Response Program grant from EPA. Using the grant money, the watershed council will visit 20 rural villages in Alaska to begin inventorying sites and educating the public about brownfields. This inventory will collect information about potential contamination, causes and concerns; possible threats to the community, habitat and wildlife; and which sites have good reuse potential if cleaned up. From the inventory, two sites will be selected for Phase I and Phase II assessments.

Also earning grant monies from the State and Tribal Response Program were the Leisnoi Village (Woody Island Tribe), Anvik Tribal Council and the Native Council of Port Heiden. These grants are given to tribes looking to develop a program to identify, document and manage contaminated lands. Activities funded under these grants include locating sites, developing mapping capabilities, conducting assessments, establishing new outreach programs, and creating inventories of brownfield sites within their regions.

Carnahan is excited to see the smaller communities benefiting from the federal grant dollars. There are some high-risk situations and questions of economic revitalization that need to be addressed in these rural areas, Carnahan says. It’s also difficult for our brownfield program to obtain this type of information in these remote locations, he adds. As more of these sites are identified, it’s Carnahan’s hope the state will identify funding sources to address the environmental problems and help revitalize these communities.

Collecting this information for the inventory is labor intensive, Chase says. It involves working jointly with community environmental staff and leadership to map and photograph potential sites, talking with people knowledgeable about the sites and gathering community information. To encourage public awareness and participation about brownfields, community outreach will be woven throughout the inventory effort. A public record of potentially contaminated sites in the Yukon River Watershed also will be available on the YRITWC Web site (www.yritwc.com).

Once more people are educated about brownfields and their potential for economic revitalization, the villages will be eager to see these contaminated sites removed from their communities, says La’ona DeWilde, science, research and mapping director at the watershed council.

“I think people are really ready to deal with these sites,” DeWilde says.