BACKGROUND: A Refuge or a Roadway?
The Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, which contains Izembek Lagoon and surrounding watershed areas, is an extraordinary wetlands complex. It includes some of the most striking wildlife diversity and wilderness values of the Northern Hemisphere. Rich eelgrass beds draw hundreds of thousands of migratory waterfowl traveling the Pacific flyway every year. The entire Pacific brant population and the world's population of emperor geese depend on the wetland habitat of the refuge at different times of the year. Brown bears roam the refuge in very high densities and the southern Alaska Peninsula caribou herd depends on refuge habitat for its survival. Threatened Steller's eider and tundra swan, salmon, wolf, wolverine, harbor seals and sea otters all seek out the refuge for its unique habitats.
With values like these, it's no surprise that in 1980, when the Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), it designated 95 percent of the refuge's 304,000 acres as wilderness. Izembek Refuge and Lagoon also was the first wetland site in the United States recognized for its global significance after the U.S. became a member of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance in 1986.
THE REGION'S PEOPLE
The community of King Cove lies just south and east of Izembek Refuge and the waters of Cold Bay, about 18 air miles southeast of the community of Cold Bay. King Cove's population of 800 is larger than Cold Bay's, where fewer than 90 people live. Yet the larger town has only a gravel airstrip, while Cold Bay has the third longest civilian airport in Alaska. Thus, residents of King Cove must travel to Cold Bay by air and boat to use the larger airport. High winds and inclement weather can make this trip a difficult one and many King Cove residents have long advocated for a road to Cold Bay.
The Congress has been attentive to the need. In 1998 Congress and the American public had the opportunity to review a proposal to build a road between the two communities. As then contemplated, the road would have intruded into designated wilderness in the Izembek Refuge. After much debate and much public opposition to the plan, the Congress rejected the road through wilderness. Instead, it created the King Cove Health and Safety Act, which provided the Aleutians East Borough (AEB) with $20 million dollars to construct a year round transportation system between the two communities, using both boat and road routes, but without entering designated wilderness in the refuge.
A NEW PROPOSAL, ALSO FLAWED
Now, a scant five years later, the borough again proposes to bulldoze a 17-mile road from King Cove west and north into the Izembek Refuge. The road would cross lands in the refuge that were especially designated to protect subsistence values and economic opportunities for local people, but in a manner compatible with the very specific purposes of the refuge.
The road now proposed would end at a hovercraft terminal, a substantial industrial development including fuel storage tanks and other features, within the refuge and right at the wilderness boundary.
The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) established the refuge to, "conserve fish and wildlife populations and habitats in their natural diversity," and, "to ensure...water quality and necessary quantity within the refuge," among other things. A road and port facility in the refuge, and an industrial complex at the very boundary of protected wilderness, is flatly incompatible with those purposes. Bulldozing a road into the refuge will fragment habitat, create an industrial development adjacent to wilderness and increase the risk of polluted run-off into Cold Bay waters.
It will also ease, and thereby likely increase, motorized access into refuge wilderness.
Remarkably, the two agencies today have determined that the 17-mile road through the refuge will have no serious environmental impacts, a finding that flies in the face of the Fish and Wildlife Service's own analysis just a few years ago. Its 1997 briefing report found the highest brown bear habitat use to be in the current proposed road corridor. "The proposed road would alter bears' normal behavior in this remote and pristine area primarily by affecting seasonal habitat use. Bears would likely abandon some traditional summer and fall foraging areas and denning sites, especially during road construction and possibly permanently," said the report. "With increased human access into this remote area, brown bear hunting would undoubtedly increase."
The report noted that a section of the currently proposed road and the area slated for the hovercraft port facility are part of the highest-use habitat for caribou migration and wintering. A road could alter the animals' use of the area and would increase human disturbance of caribou.
Also worrisome is the fact that proponents of the old road route view the new road as merely the first step towards finally gouging the road through designated wilderness to Cold Bay. That violates the intent of Congress when it passed ANILCA and it violates the clear direction of the King Cove Health and Human Safety Act.
A BAD IDEA, WORSE BECAUSE IT IS UNNECESSARY
Most significantly there is no need to sacrifice the refuge or its wilderness to guarantee a reliable transportation system for the King Cove residents.
The Army Corp of Engineers, in conjunction with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, has prepared a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) which analyzes six alternatives. The Corps' preferred option (Alternative 1) is the borough's choice: the costly 17-mile road into the refuge. But there are two other very sensible alternatives in the DEIS that would create a reliable transportation system for King Cove's people. Both avoid any intrusion into the refuge. Both meet the requirements of the King Cove Health and Safety Act. And both offer alternative solutions far cheaper to build and maintain.
Both these alternatives call for construction of 5.6 miles of road from King Cove west to Lenard Harbor outside the refuge. There, either a hovercraft (Alternative 3) or a ferry (Alternative 4) would carry King Cove residents across Cold Bay to the town of Cold Bay itself with its much larger airport. Thus, Alternatives 3 and 4 meet the needs of the community and simultaneously protect refuge wildlife and wilderness values.
