Groups say pipeline renewal comment period too short

by The Associated Press

More than 20 environmental, Native and community groups are asking Interior Secretary Gale Norton to give the public more time to comment on the trans-Alaska pipeline right of way renewal process.

The 45-day comment period began July 5 with publication of a draft environmental impact statement produced by Argonne National Laboratory for the Bureau of Land Management.

The Alaska Federation of Natives and the Association of ANCSA Regional Corporation Presidents and CEOs Inc., sent letters that said Argonne’s analysis of subsistence impacts of the pipeline might need work.

“To our knowledge, the firm had no previous experience with subsistence prior to taking on this project,” wrote the group’s executive director, Vicki Otte.

Most of the groups asked Norton to double the comment period to 90 days. Otte sought to have it more-than doubled to 120 days.

Summer is busy for people engaged in a subsistence lifestyle, so the comment period should be extended, said Buddy Brown, Tanana Chiefs Conference president, in a July 15 letter to Norton.

Rob McWhorter with the Joint Pipeline Office in Anchorage said BLM and Interior officials would consider the requests. The pipeline’s first 30-year right-of-way grant and lease came from the federal and state governments, respectively, in 1974 as construction began.

The July 5 draft impact statement says the “preferred alternative” is to renew the grant for another 30 years. The commissioner of the state Department of Natural Resources issued a proposed decision favoring a 30-year lease on the same day.

Neither the state nor federal documents propose major new regulatory obligations for the pipeline. The JPO said the renewal is a fairly narrow action and some issues raised should be handled in a different forum.