Tatitlek Management Services wins $2.8 million State Department maintenance order

An Anchorage-based Alaska Native corporation whose home village sat at the epicenter of the Exxon Valdez oil spill has won another multimillion-dollar federal contract, part of a business that now employs 1,300 people and reaches far beyond Prince William Sound.

The company, the Tatitlek Corporation, landed a State Department task order worth about $2.78 million to run operations and maintenance work over the coming year. It is one of several recent State Department awards to the corporation's subsidiaries, including a separate $765,000 maintenance order this month and, through a related company, a $255,000 order for psychological support services starting in September. Together, Tatitlek companies hold roughly $160 million in work at the State Department's Washington headquarters alone.

The corporation's roots are in the Native Village of Tatitlek, a small Alutiiq community tucked along the Tatitlek Narrows in Prince William Sound. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef just two miles away, and the village became a center of the spill response, its people and economy among those the disaster hit hardest.