Coast Guard orders $5.8 million chromium cleanup at Base Kodiak's Hangar 1

The U.S. Coast Guard on Oct. 27 ordered $5.8 million in work from Jay-Brant General Contractors, LLC of Homer to remediate hexavalent chromium at Hangar 1 on Base Kodiak.

The award is a delivery order from the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard's parent agency. The federal award record lists the contaminant as CRVI, shorthand for chromium VI. The work is to take place in Kodiak; Homer is where the company is based.

The record sets the work to run through April 24, 2028. The $5.8 million is the amount obligated to date, meaning committed, not spent.

The record does not give chromium test results, contamination levels or what Hangar 1 has been used for.

The Environmental Protection Agency has treated the Coast Guard's Kodiak facility as a hazardous-waste corrective-action site under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the federal law on hazardous waste. A 2021 EPA fact sheet laid out updated storage, post-closure and corrective-action requirements for the Coast Guard Base Support Unit in Kodiak. The award does not say whether the hangar work falls under those requirements.

The cleanup comes as the Coast Guard expands at Kodiak. As of Sept. 28, the Coast Guard had ordered about $458 million in new work at Base Kodiak this year, led by a $315 million fuel pier and berths for its biggest cutters, Alaska News reported. In May, the Coast Guard awarded Tutor Perini Corporation two task orders at the base: $81.8 million for 15 family housing duplexes and $61.6 million for a child development center that will serve more than 200 children. The Coast Guard said both projects are expected to be finished in 2028.