Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Nuiqsut, AK

Nuiqsut is an incorporated city in North Slope Borough, Alaska, on the Nechelik Channel of the Colville River, about 35 miles from the Beaufort Sea coast.

The city was incorporated on June 24, 1975, and its Iñupiaq name is Nuiqsat.

The 2020 census counted 512 residents in 130 households in Nuiqsut, up from 402 in 2010, and 92.5 percent of residents were Alaska Native.

The village was re-established in the early 1970s when residents moved to the area from Utqiagvik, living in tents for a year while housing was built.

Nuiqsut sits in the midst of vast oil reserves and is the closest community to ConocoPhillips' Willow Project in the Alpine oil field of the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska.

The village corporation Kuukpik owns the surface rights to the Alpine field, while the subsurface rights belong to the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, and Kuukpik has received a small royalty from ConocoPhillips since oil production began in 2001.

The native people of the village are Iñupiat, and subsistence hunting of bowhead whale, caribou, fox, and ptarmigan remains part of community life.

Air travel to Nuiqsut Airport provides the only year-round access to the community, with winter access also possible by ice road, and Nuiqsut lies about 10 miles south of Alpine and about 80 miles west of Prudhoe Bay.

The community's single school is Nuiqsut Trapper School of the North Slope Borough School District, serving kindergarten through 12th grade with about 100 students, and its facilities double as an emergency shelter during power outages.

Nuiqsut has one commercial store, a mail receiving location operated by the city rather than the United States Postal Service, a Presbyterian church, a recreation center, and an elders' living center.