Byford soil barging project to heave to next week

With the addition of funds by the Alaska Legislature into next year’s budget, treated soil at the former Byford junkyard site will be shifted to a staging area for transport off-island.

For decades used as a private scrapyard, the four-acre site was significantly contaminated with lead, petroleum and other toxins by the time it became the subject of an extensive cleanup led by the Department of Environmental Conservation in 2016. While 62 containers of the most heavily contaminated materials and debris were shipped southward for disposal, the increasing magnitude of the cleanup meant more than...