Celia M. Hunter - Conservation Legacy

Conservation Legacy

Soon after its formation, ACS found itself opposing two other major battles: Rampart Dam and Project Chariot. The first battle was over the proposal to build a dam on the Yukon River at a location known as The Ramparts. The Rampart Dam would have created a lake 300 miles (480 km) long and affected climates and ecosystems clear into the Yukon Territories. Also, the lake would have submerged numerous small villages and individual cabins in the area, inundated millions of acres of rich waterfowl and wildlife habitat, and displaced large numbers of mammal populations. Celia, Ginny and others involved with ACS worked hard to expose the shortcomings of the proposal. Rampart Dam would have theoretically produced vast quantities of electrical power and involved the construction of a large aluminum processing complex in Southcentral Alaska to take advantage of the cheap power. Debates took place in Fairbanks and were largely attended by the public. Ginny remembers Celia talking about the economics of the project and not just about saving moose and ducks, to the great surprise of the industrymen against whom she debated. By doing her homework, Celia was successful in exposing common sense complications and problems with the proposal.

The second battle was known as Project Chariot, a proposal that involved blasting using a nuclear bomb to blast a harbor out of the northwest Arctic coast 30 miles (48 km) south of Pt. Hope. Dr. Edward Teller and others from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had come to Alaska to convince residents that atomic power in the Arctic would bring a wealth of benefits to the state. He toured the state and convinced the Alaskan delegation and the Anchorage and Fairbanks Chambers of Commerce of the economic benefits that would result from a permanently open port at Point Hope. Academics at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks were not so easily convinced. The University's professors demanded to know how Dr. Teller and the AEC would identify the impacts of a nuclear explosion with no pre-blast knowledge of the land and its inhabitants. That was how they got the first Environmental Impact Statement investigation! This was ten years before NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) became law under President Nixon. What was found really pulled the rug out from under the project, because it was one of the richest areas in Alaska. As it turned out, AEC was more interested in experimenting with the blasts and with the radioactive fallout than Alaska's economic and social well-being.

The ACS became involved, and in the March 1961 issue of the ACS News Bulletin explored the broader significance of Project Chariot. Data from dedicated University scientists like Dr. Leslie Vierick, Don Foote, and Dr. William Pruitt provided indisputable evidence for their case. Celia wrote, "The consequences were laid out insofar as they could be known or calculated, and the price Alaska might have to pay in terms of having vast areas so contaminiated they could not be utilized, was forecast." The ACS Bulletin was distributed widely in Washington, DC and reprinted through other organizations such as the Sierra Club. Ginny Wood remembers the effectiveness of the networking: it soon brought the issue to a national audience. Seeing the Sierra Club briefings, Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall became puzzled as to why the AEC did not go through him on the project and asked to be sent all the information that the Sierra Club was receiving. As a result, ACS developed a direct line to the head of the Department of the Interior, effectively undermining Edward Teller and the AEC.

While Project Chariot was never explicitly canceled and the AEC never admitted that the project was completely misguided and irresponsible, the proposal ceased to gain momentum. The truth of the devastation Project Chariot could have caused was finally realized. "This is how close the US and Alaska came to having their own Chernobyl catastrophe and the perpetrators of the plot were government employees of the AEC and the Lawrence Radiation Lab - people so intent on their own narrow goals that they would willingly have sacrificed everything within northern Alaska to achieve them," Celia explained.

Disaster was not entirely averted. The battle that Celia thought was being played out in the open was being played behind closed doors, as well. Before the AEC left Alaska, they imported several tons of radioactive waste and buried it in the vicinity of the proposed harbor site to examine how it disseminated through the ecosystem. Celia talked about the findings in an interview with Hilary Hilscher, "they were turned down; they realized that they couldn't go ahead and make a nuclear blast because people were already loaded to the gills with the radioactivity. So what did they do but import a bunch of it and bury it and didn't tell anybody and now, 33 years later, it suddenly comes to light. I think those people were absolutely dastardly."

ACS took on many other battles utilizing both reactive and proactive strategies to protect Alaska's environment. They were instrumental in removing bounties on wolves, a fight that lasted nearly a decade. ACS fought the Susitna Dam project, similar to the Rampart Dam. They worked on community projects preserving open spaces in Fairbanks, and were proponents of trail systems as well as alternative transportation. Residents in many Alaskan communities started local ACS chapters to fight issues in their own backyards. ACS chapters worked on their own issues and communicated through the News Bulletin. The organization grew and worked tirelessly for 20 years before finally dissolving. Ginny, Celia and others realized they no longer had the resources to run such a large organization. They ended the ACS and divided the money up for the Alaska Center for the Environment (ACE), Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC), and The Northern Alaska Environment Council (NAEC.) The women had established a strong conservation movement throughout Alaska to carry on with needed work.

In 1969 Celia was offered a position on the Governing Council of the Wilderness Society, in 1976 she was made president and later executive director; she was the first female to head a national environmental organization. In 1972, Celia was nominated by Secretary of the Interior Rogers C.B. Morton to sit on the joint Federal State Land Use Planning Commission where she articulated the environmentalists' viewpoint. She worked with the Commission until it dissolved in 1980 with the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act.

Even with her notoriety, Celia did not stop looking for ways to further conservation in Alaska. In 1980, Celia and Denny Wilcher started the Alaska Conservation Foundation (ACF) to bring more resources to the conservation movement in Alaska and to continue the statewide networking that had been started with ACS. Celia served on the ACF Board of Trustees for over 18 years. She served on innumerable other boards including Alaska Natural History Assn., Nature Conservancy, Trustees for Alaska, and The Wilderness Society. Beginning in 1979, Celia contributed a regular column to the Fairbanks Daily News Miner offering an alternative voice with environmental and liberal themes to the community. In 1980 the Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act (ANILCA) was passed, doubling the size of the Arctic National Wildlife Range and renaming it the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.