Alaska News

Photos: Alaska gold miners give EPA agent taste of the 'gang treatment'

CHICKEN, ALASKA -- When water regulators from the state of Alaska, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others surged out of the remote Alaskan wilderness near the remote gold-mining community of Chicken, population 17, locals didn't quite know what to think.

Strangers are few and far between hundreds of miles from Alaska's largest cities, and strangers on gold-mining claims are lucky to be met alive at all.

According to local accounts of the mid-August incidents that were later corroborated by legislative staff to both of Alaska's U.S. senators, Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, the agents were armed with guns and wearing body armor. Jackets worn by the regulators -- members of the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force, it was later revealed -- were emblazoned in big, bold letters with one intimidating word: POLICE.

FULL STORY: EPA faces gold miners over Alaska dirty water raids

Yet when an EPA agent returned about one month later to answer questions about the raids, few new details were revealed. Neither the EPA nor the task force, which included regulators from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, made any arrests or closed down any mines that were allegedly polluting local waterways in violation of the Clean Water Act. No citations were issued. Nothing appears to have come of it, at all, except for another backlash from over federal overreach in Alaska, and a likely further deterioriation among locals of trust in Uncle Sam.

BACKGROUND: Chicken gold miners cry foul over EPA's armed, armored raids

Did it really take eight armed men and a squad-size display of paramilitary force to check for dirty water?

Contact reporter Sean Doogan at sean(at)alaskadispatch.com and photographer Loren Holmes at loren(at)alaskadispatch.com

ADVERTISEMENT