enviroment stories

1.

Since the time when the first drop of oil flowed through the Alyeska pipeline environmentalists have been concerned with oil spills. Spills of any size are dangerous to the environment and have had harmful effects on both the land consumed in the spill and the wildlife that lives there. Oil spills have been a major concern of both the U.S. Coast guard, and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

Lt. Rob Hallinger of the U.S. Coast Guard led a presentation on the plan of action to clean up and prevent oil spills during the Alaska Forum on the Environment, a weeklong convention that pertained to Alaska’s natural habitat. He says that preventing spills is the top priority because spills of all different sizes can occur at anytime

(Lt. Rob Hallinger U.S. Coast Guard 8 seconds) “The responsible party could be anybody, trucking companies individual parties, business corporations, really anybody.”

Hallinger laid out the basic idea of the plan for oil spill response. The USGA drew community profiles of dozens of cities, towns, and villages where an oil spill could occur. These profiles include directories to port authorities, hospitals, and other emergency servies. Each town that has been profiled includes conex containers which store vital equipment for a speedy response. Furthermore, training exercises for Hazardous Material Response teams otherwise known as HAZMAT response teams is conducted regularly. Dale Gardener of the Alaska Department of environmental conservation is the director of HAZMAT training.

(Dale Gardener 10 seconds) “What we have done is identified areas of priority and made plans to protect these sensitive areas through regular HAZMAT training.”

Hallinger says that there are still places that do not have access to the resources and equipment available for oil spill clean up. He used areas in north western Alaska as an examples of locations still needing HAZMAT units.

(Hallinger) “We encourage those who are from communities who don’t have any oil spill response units to come and talk to us about getting something set up.” 

 

The  Alaska Forum of the Environment will continue to host seminars and panels about different topics regarding Alaska’s environment through the end of the week. For KUAA News, I’m Donald McSherry

2.  

The students of Tuluksak school is the small village of Tuluksak have been doing their part ensure a cleaner community while learning valuable skills in welding technology. Students have turned a 3000 gallon drum, into the villages new incinerator for disposing of trash and other hazardous material.

The project comes in response to the problem of high trash content that has been blown from the villages dump to the school yard. Lance Jackson, a teacher at the school said that project has had a lot of good feedback from the students and the community.

(Lance Jackson) “Not only did we do something for the community, we turned our school into a project based learning facility.”

Jackson also says that the students have become very engaged in the incinerators development

(Lance Jackson) “Kids who hadn’t responded to in class assignment were right on top of this project.”

The schools new project will make a large dent in cleaning up the village, but not all of the trash related problems will be so quickly fixed, Though the village has been polluted by toxic chemicals that cannot just be thrown in the incinerator. Not everything can just be burned as hazardous chemicals could pollute the air in the village if burned