Many places in AK unfortunately have a history of barely-regulated mining [1], which is now being joined by a push to expand and deregulate the oil and gas industry in those areas [2].

Unfortunately remote is no guarantee of clean and in some cases might even mean the opposite because being out of the public eye allows companies to ignore externalities that they would otherwise have to take responsibility for.

[1] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/most-toxic-town-...

[2] https://www.npca.org/articles/1721-offshore-leasing-plan-thr...

Great point, but the articles mentions extremely small areas compared to the entire state over the period of decades.

Unfortunately those extremely small areas do not exist in a vacuum and and connected to the rest of the state by things like watersheds, especially when we're talking about timescales like decades.

The areas are still very small including watersheds.