Abandoned cars, old refrigerators and rusting oil drums that sprout cobwebs in weedy lots or pile up in landfills -- sometimes leaking toxins into rivers and lakes -- will finally get a one-way ticket out of Bush Alaska.
In dozens of villages along the Yukon River, at least.
Residents can thank a new, 2,300-mile riverside recycling program for sprucing up scenery by back-hauling tons of junk that had been sitting around for decades.
Last year, organizers with the federally funded program and local residents crushed aging clunkers, boats and snowmachines with bulldozers. They fork-lifted the scraps onto barges, removing 1.5 million pounds of waste from about 15 lower-river villages, said Jon Waterhouse with the Yukon River Intertribal Watershed Council.
About 10 beaters and more than a ton of lead-acid batteries left the Athabascan village of Anvik, opening space at a dump that once overflowed with flying bags and Styrofoam scraps, residents said.
"Ugh! It was an eyesore," said tribal administrator Violet Kruger.
The landfill is now organized and the surrounding area has been cleaned up, with villagers preparing to ship more junk out this year.
"It's a huge difference for the better," Kruger said.
Beauty isn't the only benefit, Waterhouse said. High shipping costs in remote villages -- accessible only by plane or boat -- mean freight arrives but rarely leaves. Freezers, computers and snowmachines rot on the tundra -- often in unlined landfills along riverbanks -- weeping pollutants such as freon, oil and transmission fluid into the river's 330,000-square-mile watershed.
"People think of pristine Alaska, but that's not where I work," Waterhouse said.
About 50 tribes, afraid that drinking water and subsistence foods were being polluted, pooled grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and created the tribal council in 1997, said Peter Captain Sr., a founder of the group and chief of the Louden Village Council in Galena.
"Our fish were coming back with anomalies; our animals were getting sick," he said.
In recent years, Yutana Barge Lines, now Crowley Maritime Services, voluntarily shipped out junk vehicles. But the relatively limited effort never reached many villages, said Crowley traffic manager Endil Moore in Nenana.
This program is much larger now and snowballing, he said, with excited villagers along the river clamoring to get their trash out. Much of the waste in villages goes back more than 100 years, he said.
Items removed last year included lots of 30-year-old vehicles, former 3/4-ton military trucks and mysterious electronic equipment that Waterhouse, a 50-year-old former electronics technician, said he can't identify.
The $600,000 program is expanding this year to include computers and home appliances such as washing machines and refrigerators, Waterhouse said. It will cover the entire watershed too, serving 63 villages from Old Crow in Canada to St. Michael on the Bering Sea.
Organizers hope to remove 2 million pounds this summer, he said.
The people in Anvik couldn't be happier, said Mayor Mike Grundberg. The only disappointment came from a few mechanically inclined folks bummed at the loss of their spare-parts stockyard.
"That's our NAPA back at the dump," Grundberg said, laughing.
Old freezers, stoves and computers will leave this summer, plus about 50 glass batteries discovered in the basement of the Christ Church Episcopal Mission School. It closed in the 1950s, he said. The batteries once stored energy generated by windmills.
Everything is recycled after it's shipped to Anchorage, Fairbanks or Seattle, Waterhouse said. Lead and plastic from batteries is melted and re-used after going to companies such as Alaska Battery Supply in Fairbanks. Battery acid is turned into fertilizer. Home appliances, cars, boats and snowmachines are melted down for steel.
The program spruced up yards in Mountain Village, with about 800 residents, said Lyle Myre, environmental director for the tribal government.
Junk cars used to end up at the dump to be burned or buried, but it's about 250 yards from the Yukon River. That practice was stopped, so old cars just piled up around houses, he said.
This year, stacks of 12-volt batteries will fly out on Northern Air Cargo planes. At least 10 more old vehicles will also go, Myre said. The items have sat around forever, he said.
"There was just no system in place to get rid of this stuff," he said.
Daily News reporter Alex deMarban can be reached at ademarban@adn.com or 1-907-257-3410.
