Concern About a Local Site Contaminating or Affecting Animals

Myrtle Johnson from Nome reported, "The only problem is that all them caribou and the animals that wander all over the hillside. What they are eating is grass from the hillside. If they are eating grass up there where the site is contaminated isn’t it going to affect us?"

Charles Edwardsen Jr. of Barrow observed, "We have to address what Nuiqsut is saying as the North Slope--and we have to address Ikpikpuk Island and we need to address it as a critical habitat area for Nuiqsut. And we need to address the habitat area of the whale, of the fish and all these we can see. We need to make everything equal--the critical habitat area from Canada to the St. Lawrence Island to the Bering Sea--and we need to name this as the critical habitat area of the whale. We need to create the highest priority for the threatened species--the only way we will survive is if we emphasize the critical area for the species. The critical habitat means they cannot harass them when it’s a nursery--it's a whaling nursery. The industrial noise is enormous.

Please go to the next step, possible causes of these concerns.