HJR 15-FEDERAL CONTAMINATION OF ANCSA LANDS  3:45:26 PM CHAIR GIESSEL announced HJR 15 to be up for consideration [CSHJR 15(RES), version 28-LS071\U, was before the committee]. VASILIOS GIALOPSOS, staff to Representative Millett, sponsor of HJR 15, explained that the resolution urges the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to hold the federal government financially responsible for contaminated sites that were found on lands conveyed to Native corporations through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Though the intentions were good, several encumbrances occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s that culminated in the U.S. Congress passing legislation in 1995 to have a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Interior. That report identified 650 such contaminated sites that ranged in size and from a variety of agencies and departments and a variety of contaminants (PCPs, arsenic, mercury, petroleum); many of the sites are in the area of living settlements and cultural habitats. 3:46:06 PM SENATOR DYSON joined the committee. MR. GIALOPSOS explained that lands were conveyed for a specific societal purpose, but now have an additional encumbrance upon the corporations and shareholders. Remediation costs in the range from tens of millions to tens of tens of millions. But the main motivation was just the hypocrisy that there is a consideration for wildlife in in one decision in one aspect of the Department of the Interior or another federal department or agency and yet the situation is allowed to perpetuate. 3:48:31 PM REPRESENTATIVE MILLETT, sponsor of HJR 15, said these are similar to the legacy wells except that these are lands that were given to Native with the right to develop, live on and subsist. You can't live on contaminated lands or subsist on them. 3:50:05 PM SENATOR FAIRCLOUGH said that when they refer to "legacy wells" that "travesty" strikes closer to the mark of what they are trying to say as far as devastation of the lands that have been left behind. 3:51:30 PM MAVER CAREY, President and CEO, Kuskokwim Corporation, an ANCSA corporation comprised of ten villages upriver from Bethel all the way up to Stony River, said she is also Chairman of the Board of the Alaska Native Village CEO Association that is comprised of other village corporations and their executives and 9 out of 13 regional corporations. When the federal government conveyed millions of acres of land to ANCs they included lands contaminated with arsenic, asbestos, PCBs, unexploded ordinances, mining waste chemicals, spilled diesel fuel, petroleum and oil, solvents, toxic metals, and mercury. As ANVCA gathers more data about these sites, they are finding even more than 650 and contamination in drinking water and drums of toxins buried in soil saturating the tundra and infecting the local food and water sources. White Alice sights that were left behind after the Cold War are leaking contaminants such as PCBs and PCEs. The known health effects of these specific contaminants include cancer, miscarriages, attacks on the central nervous system, suppression of the immune system to neurological learning disabilities. Clearly contaminated land can result in a significant health risks to residents of the State of Alaska, the animals and the environment. 3:53:54 PM MS. CAREY said that almost 20 years after ANCSA was passed and signed into law the Alaska Native community has raised the concern that the Department of Interior (DOI) had conveyed contaminated lands to ANCs. In 1995, Congress directed the Secretary of Interior to prepare a report on these specific contaminated lands that were conveyed to ANCs; so in December 1998 the DOI submitted a report to Congress entitled "Hazardous Substance Contamination of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act Lands in Alaska." In that report the DOI acknowledged conveying 650 contaminated sites to ANCs; the report identified numerous types of hazardous wastes including the ones she spoke of earlier recognizing the unjustness of conveying these lands to ANCs in the Settlement of the aboriginal rights and recommended an approach to fully identify these sites and to clean them up. The report included six recommendations almost 20 years ago and none have been done. The conveyance of these significant amounts of contaminated lands to ANCs is unjust and although Congress did not intend to stick Alaska Natives with them BLM has spent over $10 million on cleaning them up and the job is not done. This would have bankrupted the corporation. 3:57:27 PM She had five recommendations on how the state could assist the situation. 1. Pass this resolution 2. Push the federal government to acknowledge their financial responsibility to clean up the contaminated lands they transferred to ANCs. 3. Urge Alaska's governor to include this as one of the lobbying priorities of his Washington, D.C. office staff. 4. Conduct high level meetings with all relevant federal agencies and identify which lead agency is responsible for the timely remediation. 5. Help ANVCA identify these sights and prioritize them. 3:58:27 PM CHAIR GIESSEL said that Senator McGuire would be in Washington, D.C. related to Arctic issues and would carry that message. 3:58:55 PM BRENNAN KANE, Chair, Land Committee, Alaska Native Village CEO Association, Anchorage, Alaska, supported HJR 15 and its companion SJR 12. He said he was also Vice President and General Counsel of Eyak Corporation. He said that Representative Millett's staff mentioned the 1998 Interior Department report, a copy of which was being emailed to the committee right now. The report was a "solid piece" of work that included six recommendations. Three bear mentioning: establishing a forum for ANCSA land owners and federal, state, local and tribal agencies to collaborate on cleanup of these contaminated sites, compiling a comprehensive inventory of contaminated sites and recommending further cleanup federal actions. In the report the department said they were going to coordinate the implementation of these six recommendations, but nothing happened over the next 15 years, Mr. Kane said. It's important to note that BLM's people are "solid people" and recently informed them that they will now review those 650 sites that are listed and see which ones had been remediated. But additional sites have been found since 1998. ANVCA wants to work collaboratively with everyone to address these sites. This issue needs attention and this resolution will give it that visibility. MR. KANE said the cost to clean up these sites would bankrupt most native corporations and HJR 15 addresses the unjustness of Alaska Native Corporations being subject to legal exposure for contamination caused by the federal government. And as landowners, Alaska Native Corporations are subject to strict liability under federal and state law for contamination on their lands, even if that land was contaminated by the federal government prior to conveyance. So HJR 15 proposes a solution to this problem: if the federal government conveyed contaminated land to an Alaska Native Corporation through ANCSA the federal government is financially responsible for the remediation of that land. 4:04:04 PM P.J. SIMON, Second Chief, Allakaket, Alaska, said he also sits on the Tanana Chief's Executive Board and he supported HJR 15. He lives in Allakaket next to Hughes that has had a White Alice early warning site since the Cold War called Indian Mountain. The planes are in a museum and Air Force personnel have retired, but right now this site has contamination; remediation is in order to protect the natural resources up there. He said they support the military at Alatna and Hughes and hope they can bring the White Alice site behind Hughes where 600 truckloads of contamination needs to go out. This would also add an economic boost for the area. 4:06:02 PM CURTIS MCQUEEN, Chief Executive Officer, Eklutna, Inc., said he has the authority to testify on behalf of the Tribe and Cook Inlet Regional, Inc. (CIRI). They are in strong support of this resolution, but are in a bit of a different situation in that contamination has been being cleaned up on some Eklutna lands for the last six or seven years through Army Corps of Engineers funds. They even recently found a large diesel spill from an old motor pool and were able to cook that gravel into asphalt, which ended up in the Anchorage road system. They are also due 17,000 acres of JBER land, however some of the lands that have had contamination identified on them and are looking for funds to try to clean those lands before they are delivered. Some other communities are not as lucky. 4:08:34 PM MICHELE METZ, Lands Manager, Sealaska Corporation, Juneau, Alaska, supported HJR 15. Their issue was community landfills that were conveyed with their land. She had also been authorized to convey that the ANCSA regional CEOs had met earlier and passed a motion in support of this issue and getting it resolved at the federal level. 4:09:45 PM CHAIR GIESSEL, finding no further comments, closed public testimony. CHAIR GIESSEL offered Amendment 1, labelled 28-LS0717\U.1. 28-LS0717\U.1 Nauman 2/25/14 AMENDMENT 1 OFFERED IN THE SENATE BY SENATOR GIESSEL TO: CSHJR 15(RES) Page 2, following line 9: Insert new clauses to read: "WHEREAS, in that report, the United States Department of the Interior proposed six recommendations to "fully identify contaminated sites and clean-up needs of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act lands"; and WHEREAS the United States Department of the Interior has not fully implemented any of the six recommendations it proposed to the United States Congress; and" Page 2, line 22, following "Act": Insert "; and be it FURTHER RESOLVED that the Alaska State Legislature urges the United States Department of the Interior to fully implement the six recommendations in its 1998 report to the United States Congress" REPRESENTATIVE MILLETT said she fully supported the amendment and agreed with two whereas clauses and one resolve that were inserted. The other body had some consideration about who they had addressed the resolution to and decided not to fill in names, since a new Department of Interior Secretary people was being appointed. 4:11:40 PM She introduced three Kuskokwim Student Education Foundation Scholarships students who are shareholders in the contaminated lands. CHAIR GIESSEL moved Amendment 1. There were no objections and it was adopted. SENATOR DYSON moved to report HJR 15, version 28-LS0717\U, as amended, from committee to the next committee of referral with attached fiscal notes and individual recommendations. There were no objections and SCS CSHJR 15(RES) moved from committee.