|
ANWR boundary dispute
State contests northwestern boundary; court decision appealed to 9th Circuit
Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
On Sept. 24 the Alaska District Court found in favor of the U.S. Department of the Interior in a lawsuit in which the State of Alaska had challenged DOI's definition of the western boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
(See map in the online issue PDF)
Subsequently on Nov. 24 the state appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. At stake are about 20,000 acres of land prospective for undiscovered oil and gas resources, not far from the Point Thomson field. ANWR is owned by the federal government and managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The State of Alaska owns subsurface land on the North Slope to the west of ANWR.
West bank of Canning River While both sides in the court case understand that the western edge of ANWR should run along the west bank of the Canning River, a river that flows north into the Beaufort Sea, there is disagreement regarding which channel of the river should be used to define that boundary. Some distance south of the coastline the river opens into several channels. A central channel is referred to on maps as the Canning River, while the most westerly channel is commonly called the Staines River.
While BLM defines the western boundary of ANWR as the western bank of the Staines River, the State of Alaska claims that the boundary should run along the bank of the main Colville River channel. There is also disagreement over the precise location of Brownlow Point on the Beaufort Sea coast, the point that defines the northwestern corner of ANWR.
The District Court order in favor of DOI says that the state asserts that "the express term 'Canning River' is unambiguous in denoting the actual Canning River rather than the separate and distinct Staines River or some other asserted distributary of the Canning."
The federal defendants in the case, on the other hand, argue that the phrase "extreme west bank of the Canning River" is undefined and "does not lend itself to a common or ordinary meaning."
Formation of Arctic National Wildlife Range The issues at stake go back to the 1950s, when the federal government formed the Arctic National Wildlife Range, the precursor to ANWR, long before the start of the North Slope oil industry. The northwestern boundary of the new wildlife range was defined as running along the western side of the Canning River.
In 1965, following Alaska statehood in 1959, BLM conducted land surveys and identified "the extreme west bank of the Staines River, a distributary of the Canning River, as boundary of the (Arctic Refuge) Range." This finding relied on a U.S. Geological Survey map that depicted the boundary of the range.
Then, when ANWR was formed in 1980 through the passage of the Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation Act, ANILCA referenced a map depicting the Staines River as the northwest boundary of ANWR. When the Fish and Wildlife Service published a description of ANWR in 1983, it characterized the border of ANWR as running along the west bank of the Canning River -- an accompanying map does not label the Staines River but shows the ANWR boundary at the location of the Staines River.
ANWR boundary In 2015 BLM formally accepted the results of a BLM survey that had noted that the boundary of ANWR follows "the most westerly channel of the Canning River, now called the Staines River."
In 2016 BLM declined a request from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources for the conveyancing of lands west of the main channel of the Canning River to the state, arguing that the Staines River is a named distributary of the Canning River. Then, following an unsuccessful appeal to the Interior Bureau of Land Appeals, in April 2022 the state filed the District Court lawsuit that has now been ruled on.
Ambiguous definition In rejecting the state's arguments District Judge Sharon Gleason agreed that the definition of the northwest boundary of ANWR is ambiguous. But the judge also agreed with the finding of the Interior Bureau of Land Appeals that the situation meets the criteria for deference to a 2012 Department of the Interior survey. This survey noted that the ANWR boundary follows "the most westerly channel of the Canning River, now called the Staines River."
In addition, Gleason found that the IBLA's decision was supported by substantial evidence and not contrary to law. She also argued that maps and dictionary definitions support a conclusion that the Staines River is considered to be a component of the Canning River. A 1906 US Geological Survey Geographic Dictionary of Alaska states that the Staines and Canning were thought to be two mouths of the same river, she wrote. The "extreme west bank" must reference western-most bank of the western-most channel, Gleason added.
Among other points that Gleason raised, she commented that she agreed with the IBLA's observation that the state had not for several decades objected to the federal delineation of the ANWR boundary along the Staines River.
| 