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Road to Umiat work begins with fieldwork on accelerated schedule
The state is moving forward on a road to Umiat.
The Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is preparing to spend more than $1 million on environmental studies and fieldwork to be completed before next winter.
The department is on an “accelerated schedule” and hopes to finish the work by October.
According to a request for project proposals, the department is looking to build a 90-mile year-round road from the Dalton Highway to Umiat, the staging area in the Brooks Range Foothills.
But the fieldwork doesn’t mean the state is sanctioning the project yet.
A road to Umiat would offer an overland route to the Gubik Complex, a series of natural gas prospects currently being explored and delineated by Anadarko Petroleum.
No pipeline exists to bring that gas to market, but Gubik is considered a possible supply depot for both a large-diameter pipeline into Canada, and a smaller “bullet” line to Anchorage.
No roads run west, yet The Alaska road system covers more than 1,000 miles from Homer to Prudhoe Bay, but does not extend at all to the communities spread across the western half of the state.
Roads to Umiat and to Nome have been proposed in the past as a way to spur development of resource prospects currently burdened by transportation costs.
Western Alaska contains known deposits of oil, gas, coal, gold and other precious metals.
The state requested similar proposals for information about the foothills in 2005 and 2006.
Former Gov. Frank Murkowski created the “Roads to Resources” program to direct state dollars toward transportation projects designed to encourage development. Former Gov. Wally Hickel also proposed major road projects as a way to spur economic development.
In her State of the State address to lawmakers in January, Gov. Sarah Palin promised to commission preliminary work on a road to Umiat and pursue a road to Nome.
In early March, the state began looking for existing aerial imagery of a section of the Brooks Range Foothills, east of the Colville River, covering some 5,600 square miles.
A road through the Brooks Range Foothills is expected to cost around $4 million a mile.
The preliminary work comes as falling oil prices have tightened state budgets.
—Eric Lidji
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