Revitalizing Adak Island
In 1942, during World War II, the US Army Air Corps built the Adak Army Airfield, where as many as 90,000 troops were stationed during peak activity. The Airfield played an essential role in the US’s defensive actions against Japanese forces occupying Attu and Kiska. In 1945 the facilities were transferred to Alaskan Air Command and then transferred again to the U.S. Navy in 1950 until the facility was closed on March 31, 1997, through the Base Realignment and Closure Program of 1995.
On March 17, 2004, Aleut received 47,150 acres (about twice the area of Manhattan) of land and many repurposed facilities on Adak Island as the result of a Land Transfer Agreement with the United States Government facilitated by the Department of the Interior under public Law Order 7609.
A significant amount of the land transferred to Aleut was contaminated from military use, including left-behind building materials like asbestos and lead paint. The health and safety risks of the contamination on Adak hinders the economic development opportunities for the island, where potential investors and developers are deterred by the costs and liabilities associated with such sites.
Cleanup efforts require substantial funding and resources, and while programs like the EPA’s Contaminated ANCSA Lands Assistance funding program provide some support, the scale of contamination exceeds these available resources. Aleut has expended its own funds to address some of the most pressing contamination on Adak, but as time and weather impact the former military site, the need becomes more critical.
A unique and decisive solution is needed to address the environmental impacts of the military’s presence on Adak, beyond the current approach, which requires multiple grant programs in a complex legal and regulatory framework.
Since the 2004 Land Transfer Agreement of Adak, Aleut has been expending the corporation’s resources on cleanup efforts, managing the most acute cases of land contamination left behind and addressing instances of deteriorating infrastructure that pose immediate health and safety risks to people on the island. In recent years, Aleut has worked through Federal programs that provide much-needed resources for the cleanup effort. Because of the enormity of the cleanup effort, Aleut seeks a more direct path to the necessary cleanup efforts on Adak – for the benefit of Aleut shareholders, the people, and the community of Adak.
