The Ambler road and LNG pipeline promise development, but their multibillion-dollar price tags and subsistence impacts demand a harder look.
supporting the proposed Ambler road and the LNG pipeline, intentionally or unintentionally, does not address the key reason these projects have not been built — their enormous costs to the state. Moreover, the editorial contains the narrowest of visions for Alaska’s future, focusing only on resource development.
$65 billion. Spending Alaska’s limited funds on either of these proposed megaprojects would have harmful statewide impacts because that money could be used instead, for example, to fix existing public infrastructure, fund education and assist small businesses. The editorial states unequivocally that “development and protection are not mutually exclusive.” While that might be true in some cases, those living and subsisting closest to the proposed Ambler road disagree. Beginning in the 1970s, people in the Upper Kobuk region advocated for subsistence over industrial development, believing their way of life would be harmed regardless of supposed mitigation. Today is no different. During federal public hearings in 2024, more than 80% of testifiers spoke in support of keeping the region road-free. Kobuk River residents want to remain unconnected to Florida and Washington, D.C., and they like to eat caribou, salmon and seal oil more than pizza and beef. The proposed road likely would devastate the already declining Western Arctic Caribou Herd and harm vital fish habitat for both subsistence and commercial harvests. The editorial also states that “Alaska has seen projects delayed for years not because they failed environmental standards but because of endless rounds of 500-page reviews and drawn-out court cases.” Thehad a rushed environmental impact statement completed during the first Trump administration. The project required a supplemental EIS during the Biden administration to address the original EIS’s scientific deficiencies in analyzing wildlife declines and its poor analysis of subsistence impacts. These two items were actual “failures” in the original analysis and should not be dismissed as needless “500-page reviews.” When the federal government completed the supplemental EIS, it found that “the No Action Alternative preferred alternative because any of the action alternatives would significantly impact resources … in ways that cannot be adequately mitigated.” The lengthy supplemental EIS analysis and associated court cases were necessary for the federal government to document its rationale for no action, i.e., no Ambler road because its adverse impacts could not be mitigated, just as the local population has been saying since the 1970s. It’s time for Alaskans to stop selling ourselves short. The state can have more than just an economy built on resource development facilitated by pro-development administrations in D.C. Instead, Alaskans — and ADN editorial writers — could be looking to the future by supporting renewable energy and energy efficient infrastructure, sustainable tourism and fisheries, and larger numbers of remote workers, and then providing quality education for Alaskans to fill those jobs., P.E., is an Alaska-licensed engineer who is president of LNE Engineering and Policy, an Anchorage-based consulting firm with tribal and environmental organizations as clients.is a founder of Protect the Kobuk, a growing group of Northwest Arctic residents and tribal members who oppose development of the Ambler Road. She lives in Kotzebue with her husband and young son.Basketball offers healing from Halong for Western Alaska evacuee families
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