According to documents obtained by POLITICO and Type Investigations, and interviews with several current and former Interior employees, the Bureau of Land Management Alaska’s state director, who was hired in 2019 and previously worked for GOP Representative Don Young, downplayed the significance of subsistence hunting and fishing during the Ambler environmental review and pushed career employees to modify their findings that showed the potential for widespread environmental damage. Instead, he urged them to stress the project’s potential benefits to the economy and public health. One Interior Department employee who worked on the environmental impact statement said that as a result of the state director’s involvement, environmental safeguards in the final document were significantly watered down.
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“We know and they know they violated our rights,” Simon said. “But right now, for whatever reason, they’re not addressing this lawsuit.”
PJ Simon, President of the Tanana Chiefs Conference
During peak production, according to the Bureau of Land Management, there would be approximately 168 truck trips a day. “With nearly 50 years of industrial truck traffic planned on the Ambler Road and with transport of fuel, chemicals, and ore concentrate year round and often in the dark,” the bureau wrote in its environmental impact statement, “it appears likely spills would occur despite precautions.”
Adam Fererman, POLITICO
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2021/how-joe-bidens-green-climate-agenda-threatens-the-alaskan-wilderness/