Land-swap, UA bills die in U.S. House
A land-exchange measure involving property near the Kensington gold mine and Berners Bay died today as Congress adjourned for the year.
The exchange, involving the Juneau-based Native corporation Sealaska, passed the U.S. Senate earlier this week. A separate measure that passed the Senate but not the House would have given the University of Alaska a land grant of up to 750,000 acres.
Both measures were sponsored by U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski, a Republican who is leaving the Senate to become governor of Alaska. While dead for this year, the measures could be reintroduced when Congress reconvenes.
Under the land swap bill, Cape Fox Corp. of Saxman and Sealaska would receive up to 12,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land, including 2,600 acres of land near Berners Bay north of Juneau. In exchange, they would give up mineral rights and already logged forest acreage elsewhere in the region.
Berners Bay, about 40 miles north of downtown Juneau, is heavily used by hunters, hikers, fishermen and kayakers. It's also adjacent to the proposed Kensington gold mine that the Native corporations hope to service once Coeur Alaska, the developer, gets the needed permits.
"We can work with the Coeur Alaska mining people to develop shareholder-related jobs at the mine site and work on peripheral business opportunities like catering and environmental monitoring and remediation," said Rick Harris, Sealaska's vice president of natural resources, after the land-exchange measure passed the Senate.
Harris said Sealaska also would acquire a Tlingit archaeological site through the exchange.
Neither Sealaska nor Cape Fox have plans to log the area, said Harris. Most of the good timber already has been cut and the area is prone to heavy winds that blow down entire stands of trees, he said.
Rick Richins, vice president for Coeur Alaska, said if the land exchange eventually passes, his company plans to develop partnerships with Sealaska and Cape Fox, as it has with other Southeast Native corporations.
Environmental groups feared the corporations would log or close off access to trails, hunting grounds and others spots. Shoren Brown, an organizer with the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, said members of his group continued to send letters to Washington, D.C., this week criticizing the swap.
"We're overjoyed," he said this morning. "This bill was a bad idea from the beginning and Juneau spoke out on it a number of times. ... We hope we don't see it again."
Jerry Ingersoll, the Forest Service's district ranger in Ketchikan., said the exchange would enable the Forest Service to consolidate blocks of land now scattered among different owners, reduce the number of inholdings, and allow the agency to develop public-use trails.
"There is some real value in acquiring those lands even if they're second-growth," Ingersoll said.
But he and agency spokesman Dennis Neill noted the land exchange wasn't the Forest Service's idea.
"This was legislated," Neill said.
Murkowski has said his university land grant bill was drafted because the institution was shortchanged by the federal government when compared with other land-grant colleges. The university received 111,000 acres, less than the university for any state but Delaware.
Murkowski's bill would have given give the university the right to select an additional 250,000 acres of federal land. The bill also would have set up a two-step process through which the university could secure money from oil development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
Murkowski said the bill had been tailored to address objections from environmental groups. To get the first 250,000 acres, the university would have to give up about 10,000 acres of land it already owns within federal parks and refuges.
Also, the university would not be allowed to select any new land in such parks and refuges. It could select land in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska and the Chugach National Forest in Prince William Sound.
In the Tongass, the university would not have been allowed to choose land from roadless areas or old-growth forest stands.