Local contractor Tim Thom’s Solutions has largely completed work constructing a land farm that is designed to speed up cleanup of contaminated soil on borough property near Mile 34 of the Haines highway.
The work is the latest in a long process of cleanup that started at the site after about 1,300 cubic yards of soil was moved from Chilkoot Lumber Company’s Haines sawmill to the Mile 34 gravel pit in 2000 so that it could be incorporated into asphalt for a Haines Highway reconstruction project. At the time, it was deemed too dirty to be used and has remained there in a pile ever since.
According to state records, the site saw intermittent site visits and letters between the state and stockpile owner Chilkoot Lumber Company until 2008. Then there were eight years of dormancy. In 2016, the state requested that the company make a plan for disposal. Then another seven years went by before the state visited the site again after the Chilkat Indian Village brought the issue back up to the borough.
The state arrived at its current plan to landfarm the soil after presenting four alternatives for cleaning up the site in the spring of 2025, and seeking public feedback.
Just one entity, the Chilkat Indian Village, weighed in, recommending a return to the original intention of integrating the soil into asphalt. The tribal government noted that many of the organic compounds, like sawdust, woodchips and bark, that were used to justify abandoning that plan in the first place, had potentially degraded.
But state staff responded saying that publicly available records show the nearest well is located about 350 feet away and that the nature and age of the contaminants are at “a low risk to groundwater.”
They referred to soil samples collected near the stockpile in 2023, which DEC staff said show that the contaminants had not migrated. “DEC will further evaluate this concern by collecting soil samples below the existing stockpile prior to landfarming the soil, and below the landfarm when the landfarming process is completed,” according to its response to comments.
Ultimately, the state chose to go with the landfarming option, which it estimated to cost just over $285,000. DEC contaminated sites cleanup manager Bill O’Connell projected Tuesday that the costs were going to come in significantly below that figure, though there have been some change-orders processed already which have driven up costs.
“The amount of soil that the contractor encountered was more than was originally in the contract estimate,” he said. “More soil to move, manage, sample.”
He projected somewhere around $150,000 in costs, though that could change based on things like whether the state needs to add an additional year of tilling and sampling after 2026 sampling results come in.
State law requires that the person, or business, responsible for the contamination pay for clean up. But, in this case, the borough applied for DEC’s brownfields assessment funding and the state used federal Environmental Protection Agency funding to push the project forward. It has not gone after the Chilkoot Lumber Company to pay for cleanup.
“If we were put in a position where we had to use state fundings, we would pursue cost recovery,” said DEC contaminated sites cleanup manager Bill O’Connell.
The contractor created berms using clean material and then took the contaminated soil and spread it out. O’Connell said the berms have a snow fence and signs around them indicating that the soil is contaminated.
“If someone’s going to roll in there and tear the fence down … there should be enough notification that the soil is not suitable for any use right now,” he said.
The state’s supervising contractor, Fairbanks-based Shannon & Wilson, sampled the soil after it was moved to the landfarm in 2025 and, according to its workplan, will again collect them in the fall of 2026. Tim Thom’s must till the landfarm every two weeks from about May 2026 through September of 2026 to help break down the contaminants.
Depending on what the 2026 soil sampling shows, O’Connell said the state may run the sampling and tilling program again in 2027.