Representatives from the U.S. Army are visiting Haines this week to meet with local specialists regarding a contaminated site cleanup located near the ferry terminal. A public meeting on Thursday evening (4/4) will discuss the latest findings and next steps in the ongoing, decades long, clean up effort.
Henry Leasia is a Public Involvement Specialist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Leasia lives in Haines. He explains the history of the contaminated site.
“What’s locally known as the tank farm in Haines was a fuel terminal that was operated by the military…the U.S. Army,” Leasia said. “It operated from 1955 to the early seventies. And it helped pump fuel from a pipeline that went from here all the way to airforce bases around Fairbanks.”
Haines local Anne Marie Palmieri is the unit manager for the DEC’s oversight team. She says she knows that the public has a lot of questions about the tank farm’s clean up. Questions such as where the contamination is and how people could be exposed.
“The DEC is putting together a fact sheet,” Palmieri said. “We will put it on our website. So it will be available to the public there.”
Palmieri says the fact sheet will be available soon.
On Thursday evening (4/4) there is an informative meeting at the Chilkat Center for the Arts from 4 – 5p.m. It’s a meeting for the Haines Fuel Terminal Restoration Advisory Board, and it is open to the public. Representatives from the the U.S. Army will be presenting about what they’ve learned while conducting an analysis of the contamination site over the last several years.
The U.S. Army owns the land that is contaminated and is in charge of the clean up. Their efforts are overseen by the state DEC.
The pipeline for the fuel terminal was decommissioned in the 1970s, and the Army started cleaning up contamination from petroleum in 1990. It’s been seven years since the Army has been to Haines to update the public about the process. Palmieri says the Army’s long absence hasn’t been intentional. The onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020 posed travel restrictions, and the most recent planned visit was canceled due to weather.
Tuesday’s meeting is an update of some of the analysis that the Army has completed in recent years. They will share results from a remedial investigation that was completed in 2020. And they will present what work projects that they hope to complete on the site this summer, and in the long term.
Henry Leasia with the DEC says that since the Army last held a public meeting in Haines, they have discovered a new contaminant.
“And I’m not sure at what step in the process that this came up,” Leasia said. “But they did find PFAS chemicals at one part of the site. And some of the work that they are hoping to do this summer is to learn more about that contamination and where it is on the site.”
PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The US Environmental Protection Agency says that PFAS chemicals break down very slowly and can build up in people, animals, and the environment over time. The EPA says that exposure to PFAS is known to cause an increase in the risk of some cancers, decrease fertility, increase blood pressure in pregnant women and cause developmental delays in children.
Leasia explains that PFAS are found in everything from Teflon and waterproof jackets to fire extinguishing foam. He told KHNS that when PFAS when it is found in the environment, firefighting foam is a likely contributor.
“And so in some areas of Alaska where firefighting foam was used at airports, they’re finding PFAS contamination,” Leasia said. “And there was fire suppression infrastructure at this particular site. So that might be what the PFAS is related to.”
A full report history, dating back to 1993, is available on the DEC’s website. The cleanup process for a project of this scope is long. Lea sia said the Army’s remedial investigation helped to fill in some gaps in data, and that the Army’s next step will be to conduct a feasibility study.
