The real emergency in Alaska is keeping the public in public lands

Alaska is facing a public lands emergency. Some of our best and wildest places are being handed over to private, usually foreign, industry — and Alaskans and U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill in order to do it. The latest example is the proposed West Susitna Industrial Access Road, which the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA, has convinced the Army Corps is an “emergency” to permit. Nothing could be further from the truth.

At the end of September, the day the Army Corps announced this “emergency” and an incredibly short three-week comment period, I was returning from a trip doing one of my favorite things in the world — floating and fishing the Talachulitna River in the West Susitna region. 

The trip was bittersweet. Years ago, my first cast on the Tal, I landed a 50-pound king salmon. It was once a place you and some buddies could triple up on massive kings. At least for now, in a story that’s all too common, those days are gone and Alaskans have fewer opportunities to fish. Still, the river is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and we were able to get out after rainbows and grayling. 

When I got back to Anchorage, I heard the news and read over the 16-page application. As an Alaskan, a father, a business owner, a fisherman and a public land owner, I was enraged. Since when is it an emergency for U.S. taxpayers and Alaskans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of our money destroying one of our best, most accessible wild places to build an industrial road for Outside and foreign-owned gold mining claims? The comment period for this decision, which started September 25, ended on October 13. 

This is AIDEA’s portion of the more than 100-mile West Susitna Industrial Access Road, which the State of Alaska has broken into segments, avoiding transparency for the entire project. AIDEA’s section alone is 78.5 miles. It would cross 148 streams, build 10 bridges and 140 culverts, and fill in 65 acres of wetlands with zero proposed mitigation. 

The real emergencies are already here, including the decline of our salmon — especially our kings — which this industrial road will accelerate. Another emergency is the way we are being cut out of the future of our own public lands. 

AIDEA has played a big role in that process. At the end of the summer Alaskans became outraged over AIDEA’s request for a 20,000 acre public land giveaway in the Houston area. AIDEA wants the land for free, claiming that handing the land over to them for an industrial park including potential data centers is a “public and charitable” use. 

Nothing about that is charitable. What AIDEA is proposing is taking public lands out of public hands and handing them over to industry, the vast majority of which is located outside the country or the state. In both instances, AIDEA claims it will all pencil out economically, but this is the same state-owned corporation whose poor financial decisions have cost Alaskans $10 billion since the early 1980s. AIDEA has failed project after failed project on the record books.

The West Susitna Industrial Access Road has also already cost Alaskans tens of millions of limited state dollars. This past August, on a weekday morning when most Alaskans were hard at work, the AIDEA board approved another $25 million Alaska dollars for the project. AIDEA is meant to be subjected to legislative oversight, but over the years, that oversight has eroded.

What is happening in the West Su right now is AIDEA’s playbook of handing over our public dollars and lands to foreign corporations, now with federal help. 

There is indeed an emergency. But the real emergency is forcing taxpayer-funded projects like this for Outside and foreign companies while everyday Alaskans struggle with grocery bills, high fuel costs, closing schools and neglected everyday needs. 

Alaska’s public lands, and public dollars, don’t belong to a small cabal of industry insiders. 

They belong to us all. 

Keeping the public in public lands is the real emergency.