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This letter to the editor from the Alaska Dispatch News does an excellent job of explaining why Alaskans won’t “get over” the King Cove road.

“No road” argument has wrong priorities

I am getting tired of listening to idiots expound on connecting King Cove to the airport at Cold Bay. I have made many trips to King Cove, many more to Cold Bay.

The issue is, of course, the impact on the migratory waterfowl in the Izembek  Refuge of a road linking Cold Bay with King Cove. There has existed for about 70 years an extensive road system in and about the Izembek Refuge. This began in 1942, when the Cold Bay airport was built, and expanded as the military installation Fort Randall was built.

There are miles  of gravel roads in this area. I know, I have driven on them hunting geese and ptarmigan. In 1945, a massive training program, “Project Hula,” existed at Cold Bay. At any given time, there were at least 1,500 troops on site participating.  In subsequent years there was a small USAF facility at Cold Bay.  The geese didn’t seem to be affected by this level of activity, which was probably a hundredfold over and above what occurs today.

I lost a very good friend in the crash of a Beech KingAir at King Cove a number of years ago. It can be a very dangerous airport due limited visibility, low ceiling and ferocious wind all at the same time.

This “no road” argument has no reasonable basis.  Geese, minimal to no impact; people of King Cove, potentially major impact.

Where are your priorities?

— Mike Koskovich
Wasilla

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Interior Secretary Sally Jewell apparently felt it was appropriate to tell Alaskans to “get over” the idea of building an 11-mile single-lane gravel road from Cold Bay to King Cove to provide emergency transfer when the seas are too rough for boat transfer of residents needing hospitalization.

 

Interior Secretary Jewell wishes Alaskans would “get over’ King Cove road

Anchorage blogger Amanda Coyne picked it up, but almost nobody else did.

Folks, this is highly indicative of the attitude that the Obama Administration has toward the entire country, but most especially if it is rural or owns resources.

We should just “get over” the idea that a functional economy requires things like pipelines and roads, mines and refineries, electricity and home heating. It’s far more important for his administration to pretend to to be considering opening the Arctic Petroleum Reserve to drilling (though they won’t actually do it) and make speeches about solar panels (which are next to useless here in the winter) than it is to consider the people their policies affect.

So could someone please tell me why the administrative state is a good idea? How do you justify the tyranny?

 

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Village sues feds to open road in refuge | Juneau Empire – Alaskas Capital City Online Newspaper.

Good for them! Not that the 9th circuit will recognize the right of people to have access to the outside world, but this speaks to the larger issue of federal overreach and the more of these court cases that make it into the national view, the better.