Palin Close to Getting Road Cutting Through Alaska's Izembek National Wildlife Refuge

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It's not just the negative effects of the drilling sites in Alaska that would bring harm to pristine and sacred land, it's negative environmental impact of the roads that will lead to and from the sites. Here's Palin looking to pave over protected land . . .


from NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/opinion/18thu4.html


First a Bridge, Now a Road

September 17, 2008 -- First there was Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere, an infamous pork-barrel project that eventually succumbed to public derision. Now comes the Izembek road — some call it the Road to Nowhere — another Alaska boondoggle and a surefire environmental disaster.

American taxpayers should not spend a dime on this project and Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, should make sure that they don’t have to.

The road would connect the remote fishing hamlet of King Cove on the Alaskan peninsula to an airport 25 miles away in the village of Cold Bay. By all accounts, the hovercraft service on which King Cove’s 800 or so residents rely to reach Cold Bay has met every evacuation need since it began in early 2007.

The problem is that the road would slice through the federally protected Izembek National Wildlife Refuge — an extraordinary preserve where millions of migratory birds congregate each fall before resuming their global travels. It would imperil not only the birds but rich concentrations of other animal life.

Congress, for good reason, designated the area as a wildlife refuge in 1960 and as permanent wilderness in 1980. When the road proposal first appeared in an appropriations bill 10 years ago, President Bill Clinton, at the urging of Bruce Babbitt, the interior secretary at the time, threatened a veto unless the project was removed.

Now, 10 years later, the Alaska delegation is perilously close to getting the road. The project has the enthusiastic backing of Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate who supported the Bridge to Nowhere until it became insupportable.


read: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/opinion/18thu4.html


related:

Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness Threatened by Road
http://www.defenders.org/programs_and_policy/habitat_conservation/federal_lands/national_wildlife_refuges/threats/izembek_national_wildlife_refuge.php

Road To Ruin
by Bruce Babbitt, June 25, 1998
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07EFD6113CF936A15755C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

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