Unalaska’s Alaska Native village corporation, Ounalashka Corp., is set to receive $1 million from the federal government to clean up contaminated land, according to a Friday statement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA will distribute $2.5 million in grants to three Alaska Native corporations, as part of its Contaminated ANCSA Lands Program. The funding is aimed at rehabilitating land that was contaminated when the federal government conveyed it to Alaska Native corporations as part of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
The Ounalashka Corp. said it will use the grant money to remove soils contaminated with PCBs and conduct an initial round of soil and groundwater sampling at a WWII-era warehouse.
“The Ounalashka Corporation is pleased to be one of EPA’s first selections for contaminated ANCSA lands project funding,” said Ounalashka Corp. President Denise Rankin. “Several sections of the land deeded to OC were contaminated lands from the actions of the WWII Aleutian Islands campaign."
Rankin said the corporation has struggled with the means to clean up its lands, and the price tag only increases from year to year.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, as vice chair of the Committee on Indian Affairs, visited Unalaska in 2022 to hold a congressional field hearing. There, she urged Congress to helm the cleanup efforts.
“It is a stain on the federal government that contaminated lands were transferred to Alaska Natives as part of the commitment under ANCSA,” Murkowski said. “The contaminants that remain on these lands remain a threat to Alaskans.”
The State of Alaska sued the federal government last year, claiming it was the Fed's responsibility to rehabilitate the lands, but the courts ultimately rejected that lawsuit in July.
