398 



courage commiinication and assure basic necessary improvements 

 to the environment and to the pubHc health through local ex- 

 changes. We support your efforts, Senator Murkowski, to include in 

 the environmental component the role for the state and the aid 

 package. 



In summary, prompt notification is required for future nuclear 

 incidents and the basic environmental radiation monitoring system, 

 estimated to cost about $285,000 in capital funds in necessary. And 

 lastly, appropriate monitoring of water, animals, plants, fish, wal- 

 rus and people for radioactive material should be initiated, and 

 preventative and responsive strategies developed through working 

 directly with facilities in Russia which pose potential threats. 

 Those conclude my remarks, Mr. Chairman, and I will submit it in 

 the complete text to you. 



Senator Murkowski. Thank you very much, Charles Tedford. I 

 want to thank the panelists. We've heard from the health panel. I 

 think clearly the highlights have been self-evident and are cer- 

 tainly food for thought. And we appreciate the extent of your docu- 

 mentation and your recommendations. Obviously we see this proc- 

 ess not as a single hearing to reach a final resolution, but a hear- 

 ing in an evolutionary process of the problems and then proceeding 

 on an orderly course of corrective action. But first of all, we have 

 to highlight the extent of the problems and I think we've seen that 

 communicated by the members of the previous panel and certainly 

 substantiated by those of the health panel. I want to thank you for 

 participating, and we certainly appreciate our Russian academician 

 and his translator and we wish you a good day. 



We're going to continue on with our next panels. I think the sig- 

 nificance of the next panel, which is noted as the non-governmental 

 organizations, is representative of a significant group that has 

 been, you might say, maintaining a level of awareness for some 

 time in their concern over what's happening in the Arctic. Mr. 

 Charlie Johnson will represent the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. 

 He's also a member of the Arctic Research Commission, fi'om 

 Nome, Alaska. He is followed by Dr. Stephanie Pfirmem and Scott 

 Hajost of the Environmental Defense Fund, followed by Joshua 

 Handler of the Nuclear Free Seas Program, Greenpeace. I would 

 ask that that panel come before us and we will proceed. And Again 

 I would encourage you to keep your remarks down to six to 10 min- 

 utes, and we will, of course, take any additional remarks for the 

 record and you may feel free to summarize your remarks. I'll call 

 on Mr. Charlie Johnson first. Please proceed. 



STATEMENT OF CHARLIE JOHNSON, D«>UT CIRCUMPOLAR 



CONFERENCE 



Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm here representing 

 the Inuit Circumpolar Conference which is comprised of the 

 Inupiat, Yupik and Kalalit people of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, 

 and now Chukotka in Russia, which at our general assembly last 

 month in Inuvik, Cgmada became our full-fledged members. I am 

 pleased to be here to represent the collective views of the indige- 

 nous people of the north and to state our concerns about the pos- 

 sible contamination of our homeland. Our people have been the 



