The United States military was active in the Copper Valley during World War II, and continued to carry out exercises here into the 1970s. On March 15, I talked to Tazlina Village Native American Lands Environmental Mitigation Program (NALEMP) Program Coordinator Rick Young about that era, and about the work Tazlina Village is currently doing to remove waste left behind.

AS: Can you tell me more about where the waste in the Dry Creek area came from?

RY: The debris that’s there is left over from World War II when they built the [Gulkana] airstrip. The airstrip was originally military. We started calling that the “Dry Creek site” because it was originally called the Gulkana Airport site. That was confusing because NALEMP thought it was Gulkana [land]. Gulkana land comes up around there but Tazlina Village used to be right over on the south end of the Gulkana airport. 

When the military came in 1944 or ‘43 the village was there. The military came in and they told the people in the village, “OK, we’re going to build a military base here. You guys have to leave.” It was pretty short notice. And the homes- particularly the one that comes to mind is the Stickwan home that was in the village- they burned their homes. 

The site was used after the war for maneuvers for the army. They dug foxholes and did all kinds of things, just staying prepared for war. I graduated from high school in 1970 and there were still maneuvers going on. At that time [the military] had huge fuel supplies and some stored ammunition. 

It was sometime in the ‘70s that the military quit. A lot of the debris they just dumped in the woods, the way the military did things in those days. There were big debris piles. They would drive things off into Dry Creek into the creek bed and just leave them. Some was buried. I understand there are still caterpillars and all kinds of equipment that was just buried. 

There’s an old - it looks like a tank and had a gun turret on top- used for transporting military personnel. They unhooked the tracks and drove it off the tracks and let it sink in the moss. Over across the road in the state park there’s huge slabs of cement out in the woods. They had military hospitals, it goes further over in that direction to the northwest of there. There’s some Native allotments that were contaminated. 

It’s too much for a small village to do. Most of our work is contracted out. It’s going to be going on for years. 

We’ve spent quite a bit of money on tests and we’ve found contaminated ground with fuel. We’ve found lead. There’s contamination like you would expect from batteries. This summer we’re going to be doing more soil sampling. We expect there’s more contaminated soil. We know there’s contamination that we found and we don't know how much we haven’t found. It is something that can be dangerous to one’s health. I’ve told people not to pick berries or mushrooms [in certain places].

There’s oil which stays around a long time, there’s gasoline type products. If they’re exposed on a hard surface they can evaporate over that many years and not be a problem. The problem is we’ve got permafrost. The gasoline sinks down into the soil until it hits permafrost. Where it’s hitting permafrost it pools. 

There could be some live munitions somewhere. I’ve found a 500 pound bomb head. Luckily it didn’t have powder, it was just the head. That was when I got my first training on what munitions looked like. I thought it was an old Cadillac bumper. I went up and kicked it- I turned around and the guy I was walking with was peering through the trees. He recognized it as an old bomb head. Anyway the DOD bomb squad came out. I haven’t found anything like that around the airport but odds are they’ve got stuff somewhere stashed. We know they buried some guns up at Ewan Lake. 

Young went on to describe the lengthy process of securing authorization to start cleaning up the site.

This project is a huge project. I first brought it up as a cleanup to the military and at that time it was a “formerly used defense” (FUD) site. We couldn’t do anything with it [because] the military said they were in the process [of cleaning it up] but never did anything. They needed to release it before we could do anything. 

I was able to get funds through the NALEMP program that was started to clean up FUD sites that the military released. I was able to work on that in Gulkana. By the time I moved back to Tazlina Village as their administrator in 2005 I had started working with the NALEMP program here and I had to wait a few more years until the military finally released it. 

I think I started with that in 2014. Maybe it was 2016 before we got to do our first work. Where we’re at right now:  I think we’ve had over 500 barrels removed with stuff inside and some had to be cleaned before we could move them. There’s an oil storage tank you could park a semi in with a full trailer we got torn down and cleaned up, a huge project. The next couple of years we’re probably going to go over a half million dollars cleaning up stuff out in the woods and contaminated soil. There’s a lot of that debris that we haven’t even found yet. 

Through all this I learned a lot and I got more training. I kind of got to the point where people started to recognize me. Besides I’m pretty mouthy, I’ve talked to every congressman and senator. They started to listen because I wouldn't leave them alone. I got to know people in the Environmental Protection Agency. None of these things ever come voluntarily. You’ve got to push to get something cleaned up. 

What really helped was: I got a grant to do a study of planning what the tribe would like to do with some of their land, and we had an artist. The program was called “Vision to Action.” I held a meeting with a councilman and all the tribal members I could get together. We sat down and I said, “What would you like to see done on the property? Just dream big.” 

They decided, “We’d like to have a tribal college. We’d like to have training for youth to show them how the elders used to live. The artist drew all these pictures. When I went to talk to a congressman or woman or someone high up in the government I would have copies of these pictures and say, “This is what our tribe would like to see done with their land if we can clean it up.” 

You give them a nice report and when you leave the room they probably throw it in the trash. Those pictures caught their eye, it’s something they can show other people in a few seconds. Something as little as that can be instrumental. 

You Might Also Like:

Old Gakona and Gulkana History with Bob Neeley

Native Village of Tazlina Works to Reclaim its Homeland

Powerful Public Testimony at CRNA Climate Change Plan Meeting