Mining and the law: Hope springs eternal as congressman seeks to sell units of Alaska parks

For those who thought radicals wore their baseball caps with the bills firmly cocked to the right, a leak out of the U.S. House of Representatives Resources Committee proved that the green men and women of the environmental movement can be radical too. Draft legislation was circulated in September proposing, in part, to sell off units of the national park system. The environmentalists' response made it clear that such a move would be equivalent to plunging a dagger through their hearts.

This tidbit, buried in a draft energy bill, recommended that 16 units of the park system be sold and the receipts be used to offset the costs of other legislative proposals contained in the bill, costs that would be incurred to reinvigorate our antiquated domestic energy infrastructure. The intriguing part of the land sales idea was that nearly half of the expendable units are in Alaska.

Stalwarts such as Jim Stratton, Alaska director for the National Parks Conservation Association, and the Sierra Club's Carl Pope were outraged. Even the local paper saw fit to pontificate against the proposal in an editorial. Of course these sacrilegious thoughts are non-starters; however, that doesn't mean that they should not be looked at.

Units proposed for sale rarely visited

The units of the system that were proposed for sale are expensive, huge, and rarely visited. The committee draft used as its cutoff the idea that the units were visited by less than 10,000 visitors per year. The Alaska units do not even approach that number. Furthermore, it is very likely that nine out of 10 residents of Alaska could not place any of them on an outline map of the state, and probably 99 out of 100 couldn't say what unique values any one of them features.

Blocking a route to the sea

Four of the Alaska units, Bering Land Bridge, Cape Krusenstern, Kobuk Valley and Noata, are clumped together under the general name of Western Arctic National Parklands and are managed by a single superintendent. Collectively, these four units have barely 10,000 recreational visitors per year, although they do cost the taxpayers more than $3 million annually to maintain - about $300 per visitor. They do, however, serve at least one Luddite objective because they are roadblocks between Interior Alaska and the western sea.

Several years ago, when the Red Dog zinc mine was getting cranked up, there was a need to get ore to tidewater. The logical route was across Cape Krusenstern National Monument. Although this mine had an incredible potential to contribute to the welfare of the people of northwest Alaska, the state, and the entire nation, the National Park Service rolled up its sleeves to block the quick selection of a logical route from the mine to the dock. It took an act of Congress to obtain the needed permits.

Any new mines in the western part of the state are likely to face the same kind of virulent opposition to road building, including railroad construction. If you take a moment to identify exactly where these four units are, you will quickly realize that, taken together, they serve a single purpose: to thwart highways to the sea.

Facts won't change any minds

For those who believe developing western Alaska is wrong, this is a fine thing. Besides, we are saving one of the last great places - an area teeming with wildlife just waiting to have their photographs taken for Sierra Club Magazine. In reality, most of the time the bulk of the area, over 18,000 square miles, is wet tundra over which one can fly for hours without seeing a wolf or a caribou or a moose or even a fox.

Now I realize that no one is going to have his mind changed by the facts. This is a national treasure secured for generations yet unborn at great personal sacrifice by the true believers during the heady days of the ANILCA wars. Proposing a retreat from the excesses of yesteryear simply is not marketable when we are talking about national parks. Even the spokesperson for Representative Pombo, who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources, made it very clear that this language was incorporated in the draft bill only to make a point.

On the other hand, what a point it is. In the meantime, check out Congressman Tancredo's, R-Colo., quite serious proposal, H.R. 3855, to unload some of the national forest land. Look out Region X.