U.S. Ponders New Uses for Alaska Military Base

Worried that inaction might create the world’s largest and most remote ghost town, Alaska and federal officials are considering possible new uses for a soon-to-be-abandoned U.S. Navy station.

The site in question is the Adak Naval Air Facility, about 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage in the bottom arc of the sparsely populated Aleutian Islands.

Once a busy military post during World War II, the island later became a surveillance center to guard against Soviet incursions in the North Pacific and Bering Sea.

But the end of the Cold War ended Adak’s military mission, and the station is scheduled for closure. Adak’s population is down to 600 now from 1,000 a year ago, and the island is set to be emptied by Jan. 1, 1998, Navy officials said.

To prepare, a joint state-federal panel gathered at a public workshop recently to ponder conversion of the $1.5-billion worth of facilities on the remote island.

Many said the Navy station in the center of one of the world’s busiest commercial fisheries should be put to use by that industry.

“I think that Adak airport, with a deep-water port nearby, is an asset to the United States of America that this nation would be crazy to lose,” said Clem Tillion, a longtime industry leader and member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the southern half of the island, also is in favor of conversion of the military post on the island’s northern half.

Whatever is decided, it should be done soon, said John Martin, superintendent of the 3.5-million-acre Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, which includes Adak’s nonmilitary southern half.

“I would like to have it done by the end of September 1997 so that our office still has lights and electricity,” Martin said.

Alaska Natives say the site should be given to the Aleut people, who have suffered for hundreds of years as Russians and then Americans exploited the wildlife and rich fisheries there.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is working on a deal to grant Adak land to the Aleut people, said Deborah Williams, head of the U.S. Interior Department in Alaska.

At the height of its military activity, Adak housed about 100,000 people--most of them tent-dwelling soldiers sent to the remote island to defend against a feared Japanese invasion of Alaska during World War II.