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Corps of Engineers Halts Cleanup after Workers Discover Buried DDT-tainted Junk

Alaska Department of Natural Resources

The Army Corps of Engineers last fall halted cleanup of fuel-tainted soil near Birch Lake, about 60 miles south of Fairbanks, when workers uncovered buried junk that included barrels with residues of a different contaminant – the banned pesticides DDT and chlordane

Cleanup project manager Beth Astley says contractor workers discovered the junk while excavating soil contaminated by leaky fuel-storage tanks in an area that’s now part of the Birch Lake State Recreation Site.

“We ran into some trash, some buried metal, some drums that were empty,” she said. “And when we got to some rusted-out cans of insecticide that were labeled as containing DDT, we stopped.”

Astley says Anchorage-based Bristol Environmental Remediation Services had to stop excavating the site because its contract called for removal of soil contaminated by fuel.

“That’s a different contaminant than we thought we were removing, which is petroleum,” she said. “So we stopped, we sampled, and at that point, we decided to terminate the removal effort until we could determine the full extent of this buried debris that may contain pesticides.”

The Birch Lake cleanup is one of several the Corps has conducted in recent years along the old Haines to Fairbanks Pipeline, a 626-mile, 8-inch line built by the military in the 1950s and shut down in 1973.

Astely and other Corps officials talked about the discovery of the toxins last week at a public meeting in Delta Junction.

“The pesticide contamination is different,” she said, “because it requires us to ship soil out of the state for disposal, because there’s no permitted landfills in the state of Alaska that will accept this soil contaminated with pesticide.”

Credit Alaska Department of Fish and Game
The fuel- and pesticide-contaminated soil and junk is located in a military-personnel recreation area built by the Air Force when it was managing the Birch Lake Tank Storage Site that was part of the old Haines-Fairbanks Pipeline.

Astley says workers found the debris about three feet below the surface in an area between where two large above-ground tanks were located. She couldn’t say exactly how much of the debris is buried at the site. She says a geophysical survey the Corps conducted at the site last month may help agency officials estimate the amount of excavation that’ll be needed to remove the junk, which includes some crushed 55-gallon drums that may have been used to mix the pesticides.

“So we have a better idea of the area that contains this buried waste, which includes mostly crushed drums,” she said, “But we don’t know how much of that might contain residue from pesticide drums that were crushed and disposed of.”

Astley says the DDT and perhaps the chlordane were being used to kill mosquitos. That was a common use for DDT from when it was developed in 1940s until it was outlawed in 1972. It’s categorized it as a carcinogen, and tests have shown other health impacts.

Chlordane was used as a pesticide from 1948 until it was banned in 1988 after tests linked it to neurological and reproductive systems disorders. But Astely says the toxins shouldn’t present a health threat now that the junk has covered with a plastic liner and re-buried with clean fill.

“And so now the next step is to go back and to investigate the extent of this buried debris and to remove any hazardous debris or soil remaining at that site,” she said.

Astley says once that analysis is done, Corps officials will develop a new contract would to remove the junk and contaminated soil. She says if all goes well the work could be done in the summer of 2020.

Credit Eielson AFB file photo
DEC Contaminated-Site Specialist Danielle Duncan says she thinks it's unlikely the DDT and chlordane present a threat to human health, because it's been re-buried and because so far only residues of the toxins have been found.

Astley’s state counterpart agrees the junk shouldn’t threaten human health, both because it’s been re-buried and because it appears there were only small, residual amounts of the pesticides in the crushed drums and cans.

“This isn’t something that’s on the surface – this isn’t something that if you were to be on-site you’d encounter,” said Danielle Duncan, a contaminated-site program specialist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. “So, as far as an immediate threat to human health and the environment, that’s not the case.”

Duncan, who’s been working with Astley on the cleanup projects, says the Corps’ tests showed the presence of the pesticides in soil around the buried junk, but she thinks it’s unlikely to have seeped into the groundwater or the lake’s surface water. She says DEC will, however, likely conduct tests to confirm that.

“That is on our radar,” she said, “as is groundwater (testing).”

Elsewhere along the Haines-Fairbanks Pipeline route, Astely says the Corps in 2017 finished cleanup of two Haines-Fairbanks Pipeline contaminated sites at Scottie Creek, near the Alaska Border, and at Dot Lake, south of Delta Junction. She says the Corps officials now plan to study another lesser-known site near Tenderfoot Creek, just north of Shaw Creek, where the pipeline burst in 1971 and spewed fuel into the creek.

Editor's note: State and federal officials invite anyone interested in finding out more about the cleanup at Birch Lake to call Project Manager Beth Astley, at (907) 753- 5782 or Beth.N.Astley@usace.mil; or Danielle Duncan, DEC contaminated sites specialist, at (907) 465-5207 or danielle.duncan@alaska.gov.

Editor's note 2: This story was revised to correct Beth Astley's name and e-mail address and to clarify that pipeline-cleanup projects near Scottie Creek and Dotk Lake were completed last year. 

Tim has worked in the news business for over three decades, mainly as a newspaper reporter and editor in southern Arizona. Tim first came to Alaska with his family in 1967, and grew up in Delta Junction before emigrating to the Lower 48 in 1977 to get a college education and see the world.