Old Harbor Environmental Department

The Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor’s Environmental Department is managed by the Environmental Coordinator with one Environmental Technician working in the field. The Coordinator is responsible for all grant management, reporting and community outreach programs.  The Environmental Technician focuses on improvements at the landfill, solid waste sorting, recycling, supporting outreach programs, air quality, water quality and environmental emergency response.  The Environmental Department is currently managing a FY23-26 IGAP Grant and will upkeep on the Air Monitors that were received from the ANTHC IAQ subaward. With IGAP and KANA's Environmental Departments working together for Backhaul Alaska we are able to get a good portion of hazardous materials out of the village. ie. Lead Acid Batteries, old electronics, household hazardous waste, and fluorescent lights. 

The Environmental Department received an Air Quality grant from ANTHC to do outreach and learn more about Air Quality. With this grant, we were able to get funding for a full time Air Quality Technician and part time Coordinator. Wyatt Pestrikoff has put up PurpleAir Monitors we received from them as well which upload real time data to the PurpleAir website. This can be found at map.purpleair.com. This grant was only funded in FY23 but we accomplished a lot and even did a presentation at the Alaska Conference on Environmental Management in 2024. 

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation's Division of Water has the Alaska Beach Program, which collects water samples at recreational beaches. The Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor along with KANA and the Sun'aq Tribe are part of the Kodiak area sampling. We sampled water for bacteria that can impact public health for anyone who swims at these beaches and notify people when the levels dangerous. Fecal coliform and enterococci, in high levels, are known to cause illness in humans which is why we're sampling recreational beaches. It was a two year project with a sample in 2023 execceding the regulatory limits, 2024's sample we are still waiting for.  

The goal of Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor’s Environmental Program is to protect and restore the health of the air, land, and water in Old Harbor.  To achieve this goal, our current program objectives are: building our staff and environmental program, educating the community about the environment, resolving our solid waste management problems, assessing our air quality, water quality, potential changes to our climate, health of subsistence foods, and preparing for environmental emergencies.

The Environmental Department puts out a newsletter quarterly going over the program as well as environmental topics and pages for the kids to do. 

Department Contacts

Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor                                                                                                     

Environmental Coordinator Environmental Technician

Anastasia Shugak                                           Byran Alexanderoff                                        

(907)654-0298                 blexanderoff@alutiiqtribe.org                                                                                                               

enviro@alutiiqtribe.org