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Hope for Tok to serve as staging area on pipeline construction Third in series: Tok jeweler about labor opportunities an Alaska Highway natural gas pipeline project could provide Patricia Jones PNA Contributing Writer
There’s no mistake what Bonnie Jenkins sells at her shop located at the crossroads of the Alaska Highway and the Glenn Highway. Large yellow and black letters, attached to the front of her shop, proclaim her product in capital letters — GOLD.
Jenkins, who designs and produces nugget jewelry sold at the Jack Wade Gold Co., is also an active member of the Tok community. She’s served for several years in the community’s Chamber organization, a group that has helped oversee construction of a beautiful log visitor center, also located in the heart of this Eastern Interior community.
A gas pipeline project built down the Alaska Highway would definitely affect the town of Tok, which sprung up as a community thanks to the highway construction starting 60 years ago.
“My business won’t see much of an impact, but it definitely will be good for the whole highway,” Jenkins said. “I’m totally in favor of it. It’s something we’ve long needed, so yes, I’d like to see it come down the highway.”
Community a staging area She anticipates that Tok would become a staging area for construction both east and west, although benefits from the actual construction work would likely be short-lived. “Sounds like it will be here today, gone tomorrow,” Jenkins said.
That view came from community meetings held in Tok in the past with Gov. Tony Knowles’ committee on the gas line. “Good questions were answered then,” Jenkins said. “I don’t think it’s going to be near the big deal that the oil line was.”
One issue raised during that previous meeting, and something that weighs on Jenkins’ mind, is the rules surrounding pipeline workers.
“We asked about some sort of agreement with Canada so our workers could actually work on part of the Canadian route,” she said. “Here, they’re hauling big stuff from the Lower 48 through Canada, and they have to use their pilot cars (in Canada) but Canadians can haul all the way to Prudhoe Bay.”
She opposes construction of a gas line across the Beaufort Sea and then south through the Mackenzie River Valley, she said, because the “…majority of it would be in Canada, and it’s still a fact that it’s a foreign country.”
Natural gas would be a plus Yet she acknowledged that the oil companies, owners of leases that contain the vast supplies of North Slope natural gas, will make the final decision. “The state could always not give permits,” Jenkins added. “It could sit there for another 10 to 15 years.”
Permanent impacts to Tok from the gas pipeline will probably be fairly minimal, she added. “Two or three year-round jobs, maybe up to five. It doesn’t need any real tending and care.”
She does advocate facilities that would allow Tok to draw off a supply of usable natural gas, something that could be utilized by a wood products manufacturing plant.
That development idea has already been kicked around by the Tok Chamber and different manufacturing operators looking at the community, Jenkins said. The prohibitive cost of electricity — about 20 cents per kilowatt — spurned those efforts in the past, she said.
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