[IPSM] drilling in Alaska - note from my bro who lives there

[Sharon Lax]

 The lease sales
for drilling are in an area of the North Slope called
the National
Petroleum Reserve--Alaska (NPR-A) not in the Arctic
National Wildlife
Refuge (ANWR). NPR-A is not as narrow an area of flat
space between
mountains and coast, so interfering with caribou
calving is not an
issue. What is an issue there is that, while the
Clinton administration
began the process for selling leases there, they had
retained
protections for areas in and around Tekeshpuk
lake--one of the largest
wetlands in AK and, perhaps, in the nation--and
critical habitat for
tens of thousands of migratory birds and whatnot.
These protections
were, believe it or not, put in place by Reagan's
notorious Interior
secretary, James Watt (if you remember, a rape and
pillage development
fruitcake if ever there were one). BLM, under
direction from this
administration, has removed those protections, for the
most part. There
are, of course, lawsuits aplenty brought by
environmental and hunting
advocate groups. The courts do tend to slap hands if
the environmental
assessment process was, in fact, haphazard and
incompetent. I hear from
around that this certainly was, so there's still
plenty of hope that
those protections will have to be reinstated before
anything happens.

______________________________________________________________________ 
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca