An Ahtna-owned company will demolish buildings at a West Virginia park

A company owned by the Ahtna people of the Copper River valley will tear down abandoned buildings at a national park in West Virginia.

The National Park Service awarded Ahtna Global $748,234 to demolish surplus and abandoned structures at New River Gorge National Park, the country's newest, redesignated a national park in 2020. The work runs through June 2027.

Ahtna Global is a subsidiary of Ahtna, Inc., the regional corporation headquartered in Glennallen and owned by more than 2,300 shareholders. Demolition is a real line of its business, not a one-off. The New River Gorge job is a task order under a $200 million national demolition contract the company won in 2021, and federal records show it has taken about $320.6 million in federal work across eight agencies since 2008.

The company competed for this one against two other bidders rather than taking it through the no-bid authority that Alaska Native corporations can use for federal contracts.

None of that work is in Alaska. It is one more piece of a pattern that runs through Alaska Native corporations: village and regional companies, headquartered in the state and owned by Alaska shareholders, doing federal work in the Lower 48 and sending the proceeds home.