Arctic commission work a step forward

Rep. Herron says report gives state a place to start; on ANWR, OCS decisions, Bethel Democrat says feds need to talk to Alaskans

Steve Quinn

For Petroleum News

House Majority Whip Bob Herron is petty angry, very proud and a tad suspicious.

Angry that the federal government has decided to designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge wilderness, thus, he says, breaking a promise under the Alaska National Interest Lands and Conservation Act, ANILCA.

He’s proud to have co-chaired the Alaska Arctic Policy Commission, which concluded two years worth of study, meetings and travel - all capped off with a three-part final report: an executive summary; the report itself; and implementation plan. The Bethel Democrat worked closely with co-chair Lesil McGuire, eight other legislators and 16 other Arctic experts.

But he questions the timing of the feds announcement, for it was well known the commission had to follow state statue and produce the report that calls for Alaska to treat the Arctic for its research potential, economic development prospects, opportunities for community growth and readiness for increased activity in Arctic waters.

Herron spoke to Petroleum News about developments these last few weeks. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.

Petroleum News: News from the Obama administration on ANWR and OCS comes just days before the commission released its report. Did you feel a bit undermined or as if your legs were taken out from under you because of the timing?

Herron: I could understand why someone would think that. I don’t know if it was intentional or not. Usually events that are either bad for you or good for you are unintended, so I hope not. The Legislature recognized that it needed to get schooled up on Arctic policy, and I’ve said this many times, the number one target should be itself in learning about what its responsibilities are.

As the entity, that entity with the purse strings and writing laws, they should understand, and writing laws they should understand what it means to have an Arctic policy that benefits all Alaskans. I put it in the context this way: if you are knowledgeable in any topic, you are only going to make better decisions. So this journey by 26 Alaskans - 10 legislators and 16 peer experts - I think it was a small example of how hard it is to craft policy that can be enduring, it doesn’t matter what the policy is, but also flexible enough that it can evolve as well.

I think just like all the other things facing the state in the past, in the present and in the future, is that it’s got to adjust. It’s got to grow. We believe we took this snapshot, we’ve given a report and unlike a lot of other reports we crafted this implementation plan that again has three targets.

One is the Legislature should start to do things. Like Cathy Giessel said, the Legislature has been doing a lot of things but they haven’t been defined as Arctic. Now there are initiatives, projects and tasks they should take hold of. I didn’t really say this clearly enough, but will in committee as we are reviewing the Arctic policy bill, which will pass, but I’m going to say to the individual legislators personally and in committee: “OK, do you see something in the implementation plan document that is something of interest to you as an individual or to your committee? Why don’t you take that initiative, figure out how you can work well with others and move that initiative or project ahead? Don’t wait for somebody else to do it. You do it.”

There are enough issues with the Arctic policy and with the implementation plan, we talk about many things: infrastructure; energy; social issues like behavioral health. I’m so proud of all the people involved in writing this document. It was a collective conversation that said we can do it. Plus, the high profile U.S. chairmanship of the Arctic Council and the nearly 20 Arctic-related meetings that will be held in this state until April 2017.

Petroleum News: You mentioned the Legislature as being one target of the final report. Who are the other two?

Herron: The executive branch and the federal government, all 22 agencies. There are 22 federal agencies that do something in Alaska related to the Arctic. Of course that is what the executive order that Obama put out: All 22 of you need to play nice and work together. I wonder if an NFL team was like our federal government. Do you think they would be successful and win a Super Bowl? With the federal government you have agencies that openly dispute each other. They don’t work as a team. If Obama were the quarterback and he had 10 agencies, would you want those agencies blocking the other agencies from doing their job? No.

Petroleum News: So if your target audience is the Legislature, federal agencies and the state’s executive branch. Let’s talk about the executive branch. A lot of folks seem happy to have Craig Fleener as the governor’s Arctic policy advocate, including you. What do you like about him?

Herron: It’s his resume. He’s a military officer from the National Guard. He’s a Gwich’in, who has spent time on the Arctic Council. He’s a biologist. He has all of those traits plus he has the confidence of the governor. That’s quite a combination to be someone at a cabinet-level post who wants to be active in Arctic issues. That’s quite a benefit.

He definitely has my confidence. After that series of events that changed his role in the election (stepping down as Lt. Gov. candidate to make way for Byron Mallott on the unity ticket), he came to us and said this is what I want to do. He wants to do it; it wasn’t an assignment just given to him. These are big tasks. I think he’s up for it. Arctic policy is not going to be a flash in the pan.

Petroleum News: With Arctic policy not being a flash in the pan, what do you do with this commission to keep advancing the state’s interest, or is that where the Legislature comes in?

Herron: That’s why there are two committees. The Senate can work on things right there on the implementation plan. So can the House. Some conversation is what do we recommend to the Legislature after the commission finishes its report. We could form another group but that’s why the recommendation is for the houses to each have their own or a joint one.

The reason that I put the joint one at a lower priority is the joint one would have x-number of people. When you have two committees then you have more people in the conversation. All of the people on the (Economic Development, Tourism and) Arctic Policy committee, they wanted to be there for Arctic policy. The way this is crafted, Arctic policy fit well.

Some would say they are going to go off in different directions. I said I don’t think so. What do we do with all policy issues? We debate them, figure them out in each individual house. If it makes it through both, it’s usually well vetted on both sides. You can’t say that about all laws.

Petroleum News: Getting back to key people in place, you’ve got Craig Fleener having support from the governor and the Legislature, but you’ve also got Sen. Murkowski in a key role as the chair of the Senate’s Energy Committee. How important is that, given last week’s news out of Washington?

Herron: It’s very key. She spoke at length of how important Arctic policy is to her personally and to her committee. Where she sits, she’ll have a lot to say going forward in matters relating to the Arctic. I’m very glad she’s there. The past delegation and the current delegation, they saw what the future was and continues to be with Arctic policy.

Petroleum News: OK, let’s go to the commission’s implementation plan. I’ll go off all four recommendations to you to get a sense of what each means to you, starting with the first one: The state will promote economic and resource development.

Herron: Well, it’s about benefitting Alaskans. It’s about benefitting the communities where those Alaskans live. Economic development means it has to be reasonable. It can’t be like a colony where they extract it and leave it behind. It’s going to have to help build infrastructure that will be good for the future of Alaska. It’s how do we get reasonable economic development? How do we get something that’s value added?

It isn’t like going up to the planet Mars if we were to go up there to extract a resource we needed. People live here; they have for a thousand years, and I think it’s going to be a part of the world where people want to stay.

Petroleum News: That was noted in the press conference that some people believe others see Alaska as a place where there is pristine land, but not a place where people live. Did you get a sense of that?

Herron: All of the time. So some person is jogging in Central Park and they love being outdoors. In their mind, they know there is a place somewhere that is pristine and untouched. They want to keep that. Well, that’s what everybody wants. Then you remind them that people live up there. We want to be sure in our mind that there is a place that we save because we screwed up everything else, but at the expense of who?

The people who enjoy being up here, average folks making a living, providing for their families and living in a part of the world that is unusual, different, but at the same time is something that is again good for people who want to invest in Alaska. Invest in all sorts of ways. Not just economic development. They want to invest in the environment. They want to invest in a healthy way of life.

Petroleum News: On to the second recommendation that says the state “will address the response capacity gap in Alaska’s Arctic.” What is capacity gap?

Herron: Right now do we have enough capacity to respond to any kind of accident? Is the infrastructure needed to respond to safe refuge, to react to any kind of incident? Right now, in the South Bering Sea, along the Aleutians, we have 3,500 vessels annually that do their great circle route. They are coming from each side of the Pacific delivering goods around the world. They go through the Aleutian chain. In relative terms we’ve been lucky.

If Canada is able to export its stranded resources throughout all of the provinces and get them safely to Prince Rupert or to any of their western ports, that number of ships could double so we would have not 3,500 ships, we may have 7,000. Of course through the Bering Strait, depending on how the future of the northern sea route and the Northwest Passage develop over time, then we will have more traffic going through the straits that are not either coming from or going to Alaska.

We have a lot of shipping that supports all of our communities along the Alaska coast. That’s just our domestic traffic. The traffic that is going to go through the Bering Straits sometime, well we don’t have enough capacity.

It’s responding to events that we wouldn’t have control over. That’s what I mean: building up capacity. But it’s also capacity and infrastructure that helps us develop our own resources overseas and to other markets. Obviously, that’s what we are doing right now with the gas line.

Petroleum News: Great. Number three is the state “will support healthy communities.” Now that speaks for itself, still how do you see this?

Herron: The thing about healthy communities is that we want to protect people in so many ways, public safety, public health, a good environment to raise families. These are the basic three tenets of making sure you have a happy population.

Petroleum News: Last one. The state “will strengthen Alaska’s Arctic science and research.” How do you view this?

Herron: Well, we already have world-class research going on at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and really the system throughout Alaska. It’s taken a lot of work from a lot of people over the last how many generations who have strived to have our university system become the leader in research. The University of Alaska Fairbanks is the very important part of the university of the Arctic. That’s 142 universities around the world into Arctic studies. We are the perfect laboratory to do all of that. We felt it was key that Alaskans are in this search for the science and how the research will provide answers that we need to have a good Arctic, a safe Arctic and an Arctic that is responsible

Petroleum News: Your colleague Bennie Nageak had some pretty choice words about the news out of Washington on Friday. Do you think it will take more comments from people like you, Rep. Nageak, Sen. Olson, Sen. Hoffman - people who live in the affected areas - to get people’s attention?

Herron: The national strategy for the Arctic region, the executive order the president just put out, the national ocean policy: what has it all said to us? They said we consider the state of Alaska and the Alaska indigenous people of that great land, we will consult with them before any Arctic initiatives are offered by the federal government. This now goes back to the start of our conversation. Was this planned because they knew we were about to come out with a very strong attitude about Arctic policy? The Legislature had to do this. It’s over many years. First it was the climate commission. Then it was the Northern Waters Taskforce. Now it’s the Alaska Arctic Policy Commission and we finally got a group of people who wanted to sit down and get things done.

Bennie is just indicative of people thinking, “Hey wait a minute. You said you were going to consult with us. Then you surprise us?” In a lot of ways it’s well-meaning people who don’t live here, probably won’t’ ever live here and may never come here. They want to make decisions for us. As Bennie said in Resources today, they don’t think we are smart enough.

My whole thing is please talk to us. Let us have a decision-making process together and not behind closed doors, outside the state of Alaska and by people who think they know better and know what’s best for Alaskans. If we can come together and agree to disagree, and we can work it out, and be involved in the decision making process, these edicts that come from the federal government, maybe we can live with them a little better.

ANWR, well there are all sorts of words you can use, but it was very irritating. It was like a whack-a-mole arcade game. You get the satisfaction of knocking that initiative down. It’s a vicious game. I want to be partners - we have to be partners - with the national government. The sub national - Alaska - doesn’t want to be treated like a junior partner. The frustration you’ve heard over the last several days is you can’t say one thing and then decide that if we consult with them we will disagree with them. We’ll consult with them when we know they will agree with us. That’s disingenuous.

Bob Bartlett wrote - and we put it in our cover letter to our report - there are two dangers happening to Alaska. There are those who want to develop Alaska, take everything and leave nothing behind without building a legacy. Then there are those who want to lock up our own potential for their own agenda, no matter what it is. They will prevent us from realizing our future. The guy said that 60 years ago. Clearly, he was a visionary.

Does it seem like that’s what’s going on now? There are people who want to exploit us and there are people who want to exploit us in another way. Much to our disadvantage of course. Both ways.

This letter took a while to write. We did write a letter when (Admiral Robert) Papp and the state department said that their priorities for the Arctic Council would be climate change, ocean governance and oh yeah, something about people. We wrote a really strong letter to him. He was not happy. So we agreed to keep the conversations going. But that’s why that letter was written. We did it because we felt their Arctic Council priorities, though legitimate, were not framed in the order they should have been. Now this letter on behalf of the commission says that we will be there. We are not going away. We, and again, I can’t say this enough, is that when it comes to Arctic matters, involve us in the decision making process. The results should benefit all.