Murkowski secures icebreaker funding

Sen. Lisa Murkowski says that she has persuaded the Senate Appropriations Committee to include $32.5 million in funding for a polar icebreaker program in the Homeland Security Subcommittee’s $44.3 billion budget for fiscal year 2010.

“The funding would go to finish the reactivation of the Polar Star, which is coming out of caretaker status, and directs the Coast Guard to study whether a new heavy polar icebreaker class is needed or if a major service life extension for existing heavy icebreakers is a better course of action,” Murkowski said in her June 24 newsletter. “Right now the only working heavy icebreaker, the Polar Sea, has seven years remaining on its service life.”

In an era of a warming climate, increased Arctic shipping and burgeoning international interest in Arctic offshore natural resources, Murkowski has repeatedly expressed concerns about the shortage of U.S. icebreakers.

“At present the Russians have 18 icebreakers, and are planning on building three more. Finland has seven and Canada six,” Murkowski told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 5. “The United States has two working icebreakers and a third in caretaker status. Even China, which doesn’t have any Arctic waters, has one. I would encourage the committee to strongly support increasing the U.S. icebreaker fleet and replacing the two aging polar class vessels.”

—Alan Bailey