Alaska Makes a Costly Effort to Run Lead Out of Town : Environment: High levels of the material have been found in the soil of Skagway. Gardens and yards will be vacuumed to lower the concentration.

Homeowners’ gardens and yards in the Gold Rush town of Skagway will be vacuumed this month in a high-tech spring cleaning aimed at removing lead from the soil.

The work, which started last week, is the final step in one of Alaska’s most expensive pollution cleanups.

Extremely high levels of lead were discovered in 1988 in the soil in Skagway, a shipping port for lead and zinc ore for decades. But fears that the 700 residents were threatened by lead poisoning were eased by the results of blood tests conducted by the state.

State health officials concluded that the lead posed no significant threat. Lead levels in the blood of virtually all the residents tested were below average. Officials explained that Skagway’s lead is in a raw form, which is not as easily absorbed into the body as processed lead.

Still, the state Department of Environmental Conservation ordered lead levels in the soil reduced to within federal standards. The first phase of the cleanup, in industrial areas, was halted for winter in December but resumed earlier this month.

The residential cleanup began last week, and the entire operation may be completed by May, said Paul Taylor, vice president of Alaska operations for White Pass Transportation Inc., which owns the Skagway ore terminal.

“We want to get this whole lead thing wrapped up before tourist season,” Taylor said.

Despite early problems with the cleanup, including several violations of cleanup procedures and disagreements among the four companies involved, the work has proceeded on time, said Dick Stokes, a Department of Conservation regional supervisor in Juneau.

The companies estimate they’ve spent as much as $6 million on the cleanup, and the state has spent about $175,000, Stokes said.

“It’s probably been the largest non-oil cleanup in the state,” Stokes said. “I certainly think it’s been the most complex, being right in the middle of a town.”

Preliminary results of follow-up soil tests in what were once the most contaminated areas show lead levels below the limit of 1,000 parts per million, Stokes said. Before the cleanup, concentrations were as high as 133,000 p.p.m.

Much of the cleanup has employed large vacuum trucks that can suck up soil several inches deep. The vacuum separates the fine, lead-filled soil from the coarse soil. The ore then is filtered through screens at the terminal and washed into holding ponds, Taylor said.

The lead that settles to the bottom will be recovered and the water filtered.

“In the end we’ll have a few thousand gallons of clean water and a truckload of lead,” Taylor said.

The residential cleanup, unlike the industrial effort, is optional. Property owners are being offered the services of the vacuum-truck crews to get the lead out of their yards.

“We aren’t planning to rip up any sidewalks or even tear up established lawns,” Stokes said. “We’ll try to target loose soils in places where tracking would be the most significant.

“There hasn’t been a whole lot of interest. I think we’ll end up with one or two dozen lots where we’ll do some work.”

Before the blood-test results were announced last fall, state officials had considered ordering an indoor cleanup of homes where vacuum-cleaner samples had shown high concentrations of lead. That idea was rejected in light of the small health risk.

“It would be too expensive and too disruptive. It wasn’t justified,” Stokes said.

Instead, the state has told residents to reduce their exposure to the ore by increased hand-washing, frequent dusting and damp-mopping, and avoiding tracking soil into their homes.

Concern over the lead appears to have subsided in Skagway as it prepares for summer, which every year brings thousands of tourists on cruise ships and day excursions from Juneau, 92 miles to the south.

A group formed to monitor the cleanup, Get the Lead Out, disbanded recently. And when the state held a public hearing on the spring cleanup plans earlier this month, only about 20 people showed.

Lynne Smith, a mother who has lived in Skagway on and off for 13 years, said the group’s members were not fully satisfied with the cleanup.

“But we’ve really gone through a lot in the last year,” she said, “so we just have to decide what we will do in our own individual lives as far as protecting our children.”