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Controversy arises over land surveying BLM says it is going to use GPS technique for Alaska land transfers to the state; DNR says the technique not yet proven in field ALAN BAILEY Petroleum News
The Bureau of Land Management has announced that it is going to use GPS technology to speed up the surveying of Alaska land being transferred from federal to state ownership. But the Alaska Department of Natural Resources has objected, saying that, while the new technology has potential, it is not yet ready for deployment.
Under the terms of the Alaska Statehood Act, the federal statute granting Alaska statehood, the state was given the right to select 28 percent of the total land area within the state’s borders. The state entitlement amounted to more than 100 million acres. The state government subsequently made land selections, particularly focusing on regions such as the central North Slope that held significant resource potential to support the state’s economy.
Painfully slow Although the state has been able to move forward with economic development in the lands that it selected, the process of formally transferring the land title to the state, including the surveying of the land, has proven complex and painfully slow. An original target of completing the land transfers by 2009, the 50th anniversary of statehood, was not achieved. BLM says that 40 percent of the land transfer still remains unfinished.
The traditional method of surveying for the formal transferring of land involves flying small teams out to the field for periods of several weeks. Teams must cut lines through the bush, dig holes in the frozen tundra and set metal cylinders, called monuments, into the ground, typically at two-mile intervals. The surveying costs millions of dollars per year. But many monuments subsequently shift or are lost, for a variety of reasons, BLM says.
Completing the land transfer using this traditional surveying method would likely take at least another two decades to complete at a cost of more than $120 million, BLM says.
GPS technique Instead, the agency announced on Dec. 19 that it is going to start using GPS satellite-based navigation to establish, define and mark the boundaries of state lands. This will halve the time taken and the cost of completing the surveys, while also providing the state of Alaska with better information, BLM said.
“Fulfilling the obligations of the Alaska Statehood Act is a priority for me and for the bureau,” said BLM Director Neil Kornze. “I asked the BLM team in Alaska if we could come up with a more efficient way to complete the land transfers that are owed to the state. The innovations the team brought forward - that we’re implementing today - ensure that the BLM is surveying land in ways that are faster, more accurate, and more cost-effective. This is the kind of smart innovation people expect and deserve from their government agencies.”
But DNR has responded that, by unilaterally deploying the GPS technology, BLM has terminated a critical agreement with the state of Alaska and abandoned the proven method of conducting the land surveys. As a consequence, BLM has reneged on promises made in the Alaska Statehood Act, said DNR Commissioner Andy Mack. BLM has decided to abandon the placement of monuments for the identification of land ownership without first demonstrating that the GPS-based approach works, DNR said.
Technical problems While the GPS-based approach does have potential and DNR is committed to testing the approach, with the future possibility of using this technique for the surveying, some as-yet unresolved technical problems prevent the technique from being deployed at present, DNR said. And, given those technical issues, there is no evidence to back up BLM’s claim that the GPS technique will save time, save cost or increase survey quality, the agency said.
DNR participated with BLM in a field test of the GPS technique this year and has agreed to further tests next summer. A review conducted by the National Society of Professional Surveyors indicated that proving out the new technology still requires further work, DNR said.
“We will work with our congressional delegation and the incoming administration on a resolution to the survey method that works for all parties,” Mack said.
Mack also commented that a series of obsolete land withdrawals form the biggest obstacle to the speedy fulfillment of Alaska’s land entitlement.
DPPS testing BLM said that in 2013 it successfully tested a surveying technique called a direct point position survey, or DPPS, in which GPS technology, using satellites and terrestrial relay stations, pinpointed key locations on the ground. Use of this technique in Alaska will significantly reduce the number of monuments that need to be placed in the ground, BLM said. And, given the high quality of the DPPS data, the technique will also simplify any resurveying that might need to be carried out, the agency said.
BLM said that the DPPS method is tied to the National Spatial Reference System, a system that defines latitude, longitude and elevations throughout the United States.
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