Alaska Community Action on Toxics 2025 Highlights from Executive Director Pamela Miller

First, we extend our immense gratitude to all of you for supporting our work throughout the year, through volunteering, testifying, participating in our events in the community and webinars, and contributing financially. You inspired and encouraged our collective work and made everything possible even in these challenging times. Thank you!

Creating opportunities for building community and solidarity during these difficult times was especially important this past year. ACAT staff organized events including film series, webinars, and workshops that were very well attended and brought people together for discussion and engagement toward positive change. Our monthly Alaska Collaborative on Health and Environment webinars featured leading scientists, health and policy experts, and community leaders—consistently drawing more than 200 people from throughout Alaska and the country. Our Yarducopia organic gardening program was highly successful through our training programs, building community gardens, providing thousands of pounds of produce to food banks, and diversion of organic waste through composting. We have received an enthusiastic response to our new Plastic Free 907 campaign designed to engage businesses and establish local ordinances to reduce the use of plastics throughout Alaska. ACAT made considerable progress on building our Community Science Resource Center, providing information and resources to support community monitoring and environmental health research concerning air, water, and soil quality, and human health biomarkers.

ACAT staff and our Tribal partners from Sivuqaq (St. Lawrence Island), the Native Villages of Gambell and Savoonga, traveled to Washington, DC in March to raise awareness of the military contamination and persistent pollutants in the Arctic along with the food security and human health implications of that pollution. This trip was a culmination of 25 years of community-based research, advocacy and partnership of tribes, universities, and ACAT. While in D.C., we filed a formal legal petition and met with the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur for Toxics and Human Rights, Dr. Marcos Orellana, concerning violations of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples resulting from military contamination of the Island. Not only are we in this for the long haul, but we found that we can find a way forward even in these dark times.

The following are statements made by members of the Sivuqaq and ACAT delegation:

“Those before me have been protecting our lands and now I want to help protect the lands and speak for the ones who can’t speak for themselves.”

-Trisha Waghiyi, youth leader and great granddaughter of Annie Alowa, a Yupik elder and environmental health advocate who began the fight seeking justice and accountability from the military

“I am a grandmother, and I am doing this for my grandchildren. I want them to be healthy and self-sufficient and not suffer like our generation has with the pain of all the deaths in our family and community from cancer.”

-Sandra Gologergen, Tribal Council Member of the Native Village of Savoonga

Here is a summary of statewide and national media coverage from our news conference at the National Press Club, including Alaska Public Media, Grist, Environmental Health News, Alaska Beacon, and Cordova Times:

• Leaders from Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island take contamination claims to U.N.
• Alaska Natives want the US military to clean up its toxic waste | Grist
• Alaska Natives want the US military to clean up its toxic waste | Alaska Beacon
• Sivuqaq delegation calls for accountability on military cleanup  | The Cordova Times
• Alaska Natives push for UN intervention in military toxic waste cleanup – EHN

State Legislation on Chemicals, Plastics, and Voting Rights

Representative Andy Josephson introduced a bill (House Bill 25) to ban carcinogenic polystyrene food packaging and we are working toward advancing more comprehensive policies on plastics, including the elimination of intentionally added microplastics, and elimination of the most dangerous plastics and chemical additives. Rep. Josephson invited expert testimony and a briefing from ACAT. HB 25 is well on its way toward passage. Please sign our petition and contact your legislators to let them know this bill is important for our environment and health! ACAT staff made two trips to Juneau in 2025 to provide invited testimony on HB 25 and to meet with legislators on our priority legislation concerning chemicals, plastics, and voting rights. We have continued to organize meetings with policymakers throughout the summer and fall to build further support for our priority legislation. We are pleased that Representative Carolyn Hall will introduce and pre-file a bill to establish health protective and enforceable drinking water standards for PFAS in the upcoming legislative session. Senator Scott Kawasaki will introduce a companion bill in the Senate.

Eliminating the World’s Most Dangerous Chemicals

The Stockholm Convention is the only global, legally binding treaty to eliminate the world’s most dangerous chemicals. In May, ACAT, working as a participating organization of the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), played a key role in global bans of high-production chemicals and chemical classes that disproportionately harm Arctic Indigenous Peoples. These include medium chain chlorinated paraffins (additives to plastics), long chain perfluorocarboxylic acids (a large group of “forever chemicals”), and chlorpyrifos (a widely used pesticide).

International Treaty on Plastics

Within the UN Plastics Treaty Negotiations, we advocated for a strong plastics treaty that drastically curbs plastics production and addresses the entire life cycle of plastics from the extraction of fossil fuels to plastics and chemicals manufacturing, use, and disposal. We uphold and support a health and human rights-based approach in the development of the new treaty. ACAT staff and other IPEN participating organizations worked effectively to ensure that the treaty will contain strong provisions to limit plastics production, measures to control the use of harmful chemicals in plastics, and to protect health, human rights, and the environment throughout the life cycle of plastics.

We worked in solidarity with many movement partners including Indigenous Peoples, scientists, and organizations working for just transition.