ANCSA Land Status in Chugach Census Area: The Chugach Alaska Land Exchange

How the split estate happened: an oil spill settlement with an unintended consequence

Following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council used settlement funds to buy thousands of acres of land for habitat restoration and protection across Prince William Sound and the Copper River region -- including surface estate acquired from the ANCSA village corporations for Chenega, Nanwalek (English Bay), Eyak, and Tatitlek. Most of that acquired land became part of Chugach National Forest. But under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act's structure, village corporations typically hold the surface estate while the regional corporation -- here, Chugach Alaska Corporation -- holds the subsurface (mineral) estate beneath village corporation lands. Chugach Alaska was not a party to those specific spill-settlement acquisitions, but it retained the subsurface rights under all the land the government acquired from the village corporations, creating a split estate: the government (via the Forest Service) controls the surface, while Chugach Alaska legally owns what's underneath it, unable to develop those subsurface rights given the restrictions that come with National Forest surface land.

The proposed fix: a specific, acreage-defined exchange

The Chugach Alaska Land Exchange Oil Spill Recovery Act of 2025, introduced in the 119th Congress as S.2016 in the Senate and H.R.3903 in the House, would resolve the split estate through a direct trade: Chugach Alaska Corporation would convey approximately 231,000 acres of its subsurface estate to the federal government, and in exchange would receive approximately 65,374 acres of fee-simple land -- full surface and subsurface title -- at specific parcels the Forest Service identified in its own Chugach Regional Land Study and Report. Those parcels total roughly 63,414 acres of National Forest System land and include named tracts in the Copper River area: the Kushtaka Lake Parcel (about 7,876 acres), the Snow River Parcel (about 11,462 acres), and the Hinchinbrook Island Parcel (about 2,617 acres), among others.

The stated purpose, according to Chugach Alaska's own testimony to Congress in support of the bill, is straightforward: give the corporation land it can actually use -- described as culturally significant, economically viable, and accessible -- in place of subsurface rights it has held for decades but could never develop given the surface-use restrictions on the National Forest land above them.

Chugach Alaska's seven village corporations, and what this means for land buyers

Chugach Alaska Corporation's region includes seven ANCSA-recognized villages: Chenega, Eyak (Cordova), Nanwalek (English Bay), Port Graham, Qutekcak (Seward), Tatitlek, and Valdez -- meaning ANCSA land-status questions in this census area can involve any of several separate village corporations plus the regional corporation itself, each with potentially different land-ownership and subsurface interests on the same or adjacent parcels. For a buyer evaluating land anywhere near Cordova, Tatitlek, or the Copper River-area parcels named in the pending exchange, this split-estate history is a genuine reason to check both surface and subsurface ownership -- and current legislative status -- directly rather than assuming a single deed or plat resolves the question. As of this research pass, the exchange bill remains pending in Congress rather than enacted; confirm its current status, since a resolved exchange would materially change which specific tracts are federal National Forest land versus Chugach Alaska Corporation's own fee-simple property.