A big barge is headed to Kodiak as part of what officials are calling an unprecedented cleanup of Alaska shorelines to remove hundreds of tons of debris, much of it from the 2011 Japanese tsunami.
The multiyear project is being funded in part by $2.5 million in tsunami cleanup money from Japan, said Janna Stewart, who is overseeing tsunami marine debris cleanup for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Alaska received far more than did other Pacific states from Japan for tsunami cleanup work because the state has far more coastline, much of it remote and hard to access.
"Everyone else can drive to the beach in their pickups and have a community cleanup," Stewart said Wednesday. "There's almost no place in Alaska where that can be done."
A magnitude 9.0 earthquake in March 2011 resulted in the 30-foot tsunami that destroyed Japanese coastal communities and disabled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Debris that includes polystyrene foam, building parts, plastics, lumber, nets, docks, boats, ropes and buoys has been washing up on U.S. and Canadian shores.
DEC contracted with Airborne Technologies Inc. for aerial coastline surveys done in 2012, 2014 and again this year to identify the worst spots and document the cleanup. Over 15,000 pictures were taken, Stewart said.
This summer's barge operation is expected to cost more than $1 million. The bulk of that will be covered by DEC's $900,000 contract with Gulf of Alaska Keeper, an Alaska nonprofit organization, to coordinate the work.
Some debris already collected with various funding sources ended up in Alaska landfills. Then last year, Anchorage's landfill stopped accepting marine debris unless nets were cut into pieces, which was too labor intensive for the project, Stewart said.
More than 250 tons of waste is being stockpiled, mainly along the Gulf of Alaska, awaiting pickup by the coming barge, she said. Crews have stuffed debris into sturdy super sacks, then cached it, mainly above the high-tide line, Stewart said. One big piece wasn't stashed high enough, though, and floated away, she said.
Helicopters will ferry debris to the barge, making what DEC estimates will be 3,000 trips over the next month.
Named the Dioskouroi, the barge is nearly 300 feet long and will be able to hold enough trash to cover several football fields. It is scheduled to arrive in Kodiak by July 16 for a kickoff that will include state, federal and private business officials.
The barge will stop at debris caches as it heads back to Seattle including in the Kenai Fjords area, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, on Sitkalidak, Montague and Kayak islands, and in British Columbia, Stewart said. In Seattle, the debris will be offloaded and sorted for recycling. The trash component will go by train to a site in Oregon, according to DEC.
The state may seek more funding to continue the project, Stewart said.