State proposes approving revised cleanup plan for old Hiland Mountain prison range

State environmental regulators are proposing to approve a new plan to clean up an old shooting range at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center in Eagle River, after a first round of work last year left lead and bullets behind.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation proposes to approve the revised plan with conditions. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has already approved it, and the public can comment through Dec. 4.

The state Department of Corrections ran the range from 1980 to 1998. It had eight firing lanes and a dirt backstop on a little over half an acre.

Crews spent July to September 2025 tearing out the lanes' concrete walkways and target stands and scraping off the top 4 to 18 inches of soil in parts of the range. They didn't finish. Crews ran into numerous bullets, casings and metal scraps and had to change their approach, according to the revised plan.

Metal detector sweeps turned up bullets, shell casings or metal scraps in every part of the range and along its edges, as many as about 300 in a single pass. Soil at the edges held lead at up to 843 milligrams per kilogram, more than four times the EPA's screening level. Tests also found nitroglycerin, an ingredient in gunpowder, and the metal antimony above state cleanup levels.

The new plan would dig up about 1,150 cubic yards of soil and haul it away as hazardous waste. That's enough to fill roughly 100 dump trucks.

The plan also sets a temporary standard for arsenic. Corrections had proposed cleaning up to 20 milligrams per kilogram, but the EPA said the agency hadn't clearly shown its basis for that number. The plan instead uses the average level found in nearby soil, about half that, until 12 new background samples are tested.

The plan, dated March, expected the work to happen in the spring or summer of 2026, depending on Corrections getting more money. The state's notice doesn't say when it will happen now.