King Cove Road
makes progress

A BILL TO GIVE the village of King Cove road access to Cold Bay Airport achieved a major milestone this week when Congressman Don Young pushed it through the House Natural Resources Committee.

The bill would add 61,000 acres to the nation's wildlife refuge system in exchange for allowing the state to construct a one-lane gravel road across seven miles of the Izembek Refuge to allow completion of a 25-mile road between King Cove and Cold Bay.

The King Cove Corp. would transfer 18,000 acres of its land to refuges and the state would . . .

(cont'd from front page) designate Kinzaroff Lagoon near Cold Bay as state game refuge land. Construction of the road would be funded by the state of Alaska.

Though committee approval was an important step, the measure faces long odds on the House floor, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her close associate, Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat and Alaska nemesis, are tied tightly to environmentalists, who oppose the measure. Pelosi and Miller could make sure the bill never reaches the floor.

Despite the huge addition to the refuge system under the bill — the 61,000 acres would include more than 45,000 acres designated as wilderness — the greens don't want a road going anywhere near Izembek Lagoon, a resting place for huge flocks of brant geese and other birds during migrations.

Environmental impact studies don't show any significant threat to the birds from a road, so we suspect the impact will be more on the sensibilities of the few greens who visit there, and in the minds of those who don't. But they are adamantly opposed and will probably get their way as long as Pelosi and MIller are in charge.

The road would provide ready access for the 800 residents of King Cove to the huge regional airport at Cold Bay, third-largest in the state, and replace the alternatives of aircraft and a hovercraft, which the borough there says it cannot afford to operate. The hovercraft costs nearly $1 million a year. The road would be an important link in a medevac system bringing patients from the village to Anchorage for treatment.

Until common sense returns to Congress, if it ever does, we can  only celebrate small victories like the King Cove-Cold Bay road bill making important progress by passing the House Resources Committee.