Traditional subsistence hunting has always been a pillar of life along Alaska's remote North Slope. 'We depend on a clean environment to feed our families during the year,' Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, a 66-year-old resident of the village of Nuiqsut, told ABC News. With the arrival of COVID
Traditional subsistence hunting has always been a pillar of life along Alaska's remote North Slope. Dependable migrations of bowhead whales, Arctic grayling fish, and the country's last remaining caribou herds have provided for generations of indigenous Alaskans who make their home on America's northernmost edge.
With the nearest hospital hundreds of miles away and the virus pushing northward, some fear the village -- with a population of just 500 -- would be wiped off the map if community spread took hold. In April, the Bureau of Land Management -- the agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for the administration of public lands -- moved forward with"virtual public comment hearings" on revised plans for the controversial ConocoPhillips Willow Oil Project.
"The Willow project will be one of the first North Slope projects designed and built-in compliance with new EPA rules that reduce emissions and minimize environmental impacts," the spokesperson wrote. Despite the technical challenges and emotional pleas from village members for an extension, the Bureau of Land Management closed the public comment period on May 4, effectively cutting off organized public input as the agency finalizes its plan for the project en route to getting final approval. The agency is still accepting comments via mail and the Bureau of Land Management website.
"The [oil development] process is sacrificing our village," Ahtuangaruak told ABC News."It shouldn't be forced down our throats when we are not effectively able to participate." "People are hurting around the country," Bob Deans of the Natural Resources Defense Fund told ABC News."And unfortunately, the administration chooses this opportunity to wage a multi-fronted assault on the environment and public health."
Meanwhile, top officials at the Bureau of Land Management and Department of the Interior have also recently doubled down on their vow to conduct oil and gas lease sales inside the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before the year's end. The move would be an unprecedented step toward opening America's largest wilderness area to oil and gas development.
But according to former California State Bureau of Land Management Director Jim McKenna, a 40-year agency veteran, the Bureau of Land Management appears to be ignoring the conservation aspect of its mission. Pendley, the agency's temporary head, spent much of his career as an attorney representing oil and gas interests in public land disputes, arguing that the federal government should transfer or sell most of its public lands to states.
"When I came to Nuiqsut, the lights were 20 miles away," Ahtuangaruak said in reference to the oil and gas facilities."Now I have lights to the east of us from development at Prudhoe Bay, to the north of us from the offshore development in the Beaufort Sea, to the west of us from the National Petroleum Reserve, and now to the south of us from the new developments."
"[When] I stopped working at the clinic, there were 70 [respiratory illness cases] -- but when I started, there was just one," she said."There were nights I was up all night helping people breathe." "The 2004 incident you are referring to was a records-keeping violation following a deck spill during a routine maintenance operation," the spokesman wrote. ConocoPhillips's subsidiary, Polar Tankers,"immediately terminated the ship's captain" and agreed to pay a $500,000 fine and a $2 million community-service payment to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
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