Wilderness designation for coastal plain?

Petroleum News Alaska Staff

The Washington Times reported June 14 that the Clinton administration is proposing to designate 5 million acres in four western states — including 1.5 million acres in Alaska — as wilderness study, wilderness or national monument areas.

The article does not indicate what area of Alaska would be designated, but the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a 1.5 million acre area and there have been rumors that the Department of the Interior would recommend wilderness designation for the coastal plain, eliminating any possibility of oil and gas exploration there.

“We’re taking it very seriously,” Cam Toohey, executive director of Arctic Power, told PNA June 16. “Any efforts by the Department of the Interior or the White House to further restrict the coastal plain from development would be a definite threat to Alaska,” Toohey said.

The Washington Times said that the designations would be made before the 2000 presidential election to placate environmental voters and quoted Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, as saying: “We have to be wary. They want to appease the extreme environmentalists who have this on their agenda and want this to happen.”

Murkowski, who is chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, also predicted: “In the next 19 months we will see a significant movement to usurp congressional authority.”

The Washington Times quoted a written statement from a spokesman for Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt which said Republicans should be helping the department by drafting legislation to “protect” these areas from “big mining companies, the big oil companies and the big developers who want to chop up what’s left of their unspoiled American public lands.”

Along with 1.5 million acres in Alaska, The Washington Times said the following designations were under consideration: 2.6 million acres in Utah as a wilderness study area; 505,350 acres in Arizona as a national monument; and several miles along the Upper Missouri River in Montana as a national park, conservation area or wildlife refuge.