Trudeau government re: Pacific Northwest LNG. CBC.ca. If, for instance, you attach some value to the natural habitats of wild salmon or the threat posed by greenhouse gas emissions….
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What’s next for Pacific NorthWest LNG project? 4 questions answered
Former Alaska Governor Sean Parnell. Northern Gas Pipelines stock photo by Dave Harbour
Fairbanks News Miner by Max Buxton (Below is part of the story of how Governors Parnell and Walker have attempted to have a fiscally irresponsible Alaska state government subsidize a Fairbanks natural gas utility. Former Governor Parnell wanted to transport far away Prudhoe Bay gas to the Interior Alaska city while Walker now focuses on using Cook Inlet gas that South Central Alaska counts on for its home heating and power generation. Big government and cronyism at its worst. All this at a time when Governor Walker presides over a deficit budget and pursues a Venezuelan-like effort to control Alaska’s traditionally free market energy business! -dh commentary)
(Article) Frost vapor filled the air and ice crusted the hoses at Fairbanks Natural Gas’ storage facility in south Fairbanks as history was made Wednesday.
The unloading of a pair of 40-foot cryogenic tankers marked the successful completion of the country’s first delivery of liquefied natural gas by rail, just as a flurry of snowflakes began to fall from the sky.
Crews kept careful watch on the joints, making sure… READ MORE
Is the U.S. government “stealing” Alaska? If not, we can certainly say it has stolen the “Frontier State’s” sovereignty! See this documentary on the subject. -dh
Alaska Governor Bill Walker. Northern Gas Pipelines file photo by Dave Harbour
(Note: use of the word “stealing” in the articles below is not a word we would have used. Instead, we would have more correctly pointed out how the Federal government has continuously, since statehood in 1959, denied Alaska more and more access to and multiple use of both federal and state lands. As a result of this erosion of statehood promises, Alaska can surely not consider itself to be a “sovereign” entity now when most of its land is literally owned by the federal government and the rest is severely regulated by outside forces. The federal presence exercised in the state is so overpowering that citizens could with credibility — as they did in territorial days — once again consider themselves to be inhabitants of a “colony” being preserved by federal powers for federal, and not state, purposes. -dh)
Tenth Amendment Center. JUNEAU, Alaska (Aug. 29, 2016) – The federal government just stole an area of land the size of New Mexico from the state of Alaska, and the state didn’t blink an eye. But it could fight back it if wanted to.
MRCTV by P. Gardner Goldsmith. The excellent writers at the Tenth Amendment Center have recently reported a huge story that is getting very little pop media coverage: the federal government has just seized 100 million acres of Alaskan land, a tract equal in size to the state of New Mexico.
And, supposedly-conservative Alaskan Governor Bill Walker isn’t doing a thing about it. …
So why is Governor Walker quieter than a church mouse on this?
… because he wants to keep the feds happy in order to facilitate the gas pipeline…?
If Alaska is ever to gain its rightful place as a State among equals it is important that its leaders, within and without government, understand the history, beginning with the 1867 “quit claim of Russian Interests” (not real estate sale) that protected aboriginal interests, that were not settled by any interim acts, including the Statehood Act, that allowed the State of Alaska to select 103 million acres (plus certain other interests) of vacant and un appropriated lands.
In 1971 Congress passed and President Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Act (ANSCA), creating the 13 main corporations a and eventually the village for profit companies. The Native Act contained the controversial section 17(d) that eventually resulted in the Alaska National National Interest Lands (ANILCA). President Carter was still in office in late 1979 when the Act came up for a vote, following the election of Ronald Regan. Many Alaskans wanted the vote delayed until Regan was inaugurated. This included Walter Hickel, then former governor and Secretary of Interior. Alaska’s Democratic Senator, then proposed , in the interim, to filibuster the Act and delay a vote. His tactic was opposed by his fellow Senator Ted Stevens, so the vote was taken (all three Alaskans voted “No” but to no avail.
Subsequently the federal government created more than 100 million acres of new “conservation units” (read mostly off limits for development and use).
Some Alaskans have accused the federal government from taking lands from the State and want the lands returned, and at least one recent candidate for the U.S. Senate has campaigned on this issue. But he was wrong, the Feds did not usurp Alaska land, rather the Federal Government has acted in bad faith and abandoned the agreements at statehood to support the new State in using all lands to create a society able to basically maintain itself, not possible now with off limits federal lands blocking access.
As a personal note I recall having dinner with our first governor, Bill Egan, at a restaurant in Douglas near the end of his second term. At that time Governor Bill volunteered that despite the land selections his administrations had made (ncluding the Prudhoe Bay Area.) he regretted his conservative approach to land selection “might have been a mistake”. He was succeeded months later by Jay Hammond and the rest is history. Little State land has been transferred to private ownership (and much of that was purposefully taken from habitat substandard for healthy living, note swamps and areas in shadow more than half a year). Agriculture anf forestry have been virtually ignored or opposed, even where technically viable; Alaskans import a vast majority of food and building materials, and the economy has depended predominantly on the vagaries of oil alone while the State and local governments have grown beyond belief.
Thank you for this bit of history, Terry, and your part in it. Before he passed, I was helping Governor Bill write a speech for the Common Sense for Alaska symposium, “The Challenge of Plenty”. This was all about anticipating future financial shortages (i.e. Remember the grasshopper and the ant fable?), controlling spending and developing a sustainable budget. Since a sustainable budget also presupposes reasonable access to federal lands (i.e. OCS, ANWR, NPR-A, permitting in general, etc.) the Feds need to be supportive and not obstructionists. In that vein, the wise old governor said, “Dave, the state needs to beware of the vulturistic federal government!” We always got along well and the issue of federal overreach (i.e. although we didn’t use the actual term, then) was just one more area of agreement between that older democrat mentor and this younger republican. -dh