Army's $100 Million Housing From Hell: Alaska’s Taku Gardens

For Immediate Release: June 12, 2008
Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337

ARMY’S $100 MILLION HOUSING FROM HELL: ALASKA’S TAKU GARDENS — Responsibility Evaded for Uninhabitable Base Family Housing atop Weapons Dump

Washington, DC — For more then three years, the U.S. Army has hemorrhaged money into an Alaskan housing complex that will likely never be occupied, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). After a damning internal investigation, the Army ordered a new review which excused any misconduct as a failure to communicate, conceding only that “this was not an organization optimally aligned for success.”

Under intense pressure to provide housing at booming Fort Wainwright, in 2005 base officials authorized building 128 units on a 54-acre site, called Taku Gardens but with only cursory environmental assessment. Unfortunately, that site was an old weapons and equipment dump, profoundly contaminated with munitions (some holding chemical agent), dioxin, PCBs, tons of drums and equipment (including an entire locomotive and a forklift). By the time construction was halted, 79 units had been built but will likely have to be torn down.