Evergreen bases Gulfstream in Alaska

In early August, Evergreen International Airlines Inc.'s Gulfstream 3 jet was hauling movie stars and corporate executives around the West Coast.

Now the limousine-like aircraft is hauling government officials and contractors from Anchorage to Amchitka Island as part of the cleanup on the remote Aleutian island, occupied for years by the military and the site of atomic testing 30 years ago.

Evergreen in August was awarded a $350,000 contract to haul passengers and small cargo through September. Other airlines had been providing charter service to the remote island since April.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of Energy and their contractors will be detonating unexploded ordnance on the island, as well as razing abandoned military sites, removing PCB-contaminated soil, and capping pits of drilling muds left over from nuclear testing on the island in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Evergreen's 12-passenger jet was previously based out of Seattle, said Greg Thies, Evergreen's director of marketing.