The Equality Act offers a national solution by strengthening and expanding the nation’s civil rights laws to ensure clear, consistent, and comprehensive nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. The legislation prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in the areas of employment, housing, credit, jury service, and federally funded programs, such as those for health and education, as well as public accommodations. In addition to adding protections for LGBTQ people, the bill advances fair treatment by filling gaps in nondiscrimination protections in public accommodations and by protecting against sex discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs—provisions that also benefit women, people of color, and foreign-born individuals.

To illustrate the positive impacts and expanded scale of protections of the Equality Act, CAP has created 28 state fact sheets that provide adult population estimates of LGBTQ people, women, communities of color, and foreign-born individuals who are currently covered by neither critical state-level nondiscrimination protections nor federal-level nondiscrimination protections and who would thus gain new civil rights with the passage of the Equality Act. These states have been selected because they lack explicit statewide laws protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination on the basis of SOGI in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Note that employment nondiscrimination protections have been excluded from this analysis because the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County explicitly extends Title VII protections based on SOGI. Finally, because the Equality Act expands the scope of public accommodations locations where people are protected from discrimination on the basis of religion—which includes people who are not affiliated with a religion—all residents of a state would benefit.

The state fact sheets are available below:

• Alabama
• Alaska
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• Florida
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Michigan
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Montana
• Nebraska
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Ohio
• Oklahoma
• Pennsylvania
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• West Virginia
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

Caroline Medina is a policy analyst for the LGBTQ Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress. Lindsay Mahowald is a research assistant with the LGBTQ Research and Communications Project at the Center. Sharita Gruberg is the vice president for the LGBTQ Research and Communications Project at the Center.

The post Millions Will Gain Nondiscrimination Protections Under the Equality Act appeared first on Center for American Progress.

In the event the Trump administration is able to overcome four significant legal challenges from states and Indigenous and environmental groups to hold the lease sale, the question quickly becomes whether anyone will show up to bid. For oil and gas companies, the list of cons is growing long. Before the coronavirus pandemic, the significant financial, engineering, and regulatory hurdles already made exploration and development in the refuge a serious gamble for industry, complete with a far-from-certain payoff, costly litigation, and a rapidly warming Arctic with melting permafrost that threatens infrastructure.

These factors are compounded by:

• A new financial paradigm in which nearly all major U.S. banks have stated they will not back oil and gas activities in the Arctic Refuge, citing climate change and Indigenous rights
• A coronavirus-induced oil glut that has cost oil companies billions, raising questions about what entity would have the financial wherewithal to take on such a risky and expensive endeavor at this time
• The prospect of a new administration that would have myriad paths to quash oil development in the Arctic Refuge. The Biden campaign has made clear that, if elected, the new administration would seek to permanently protect the refuge.

One challenge, however, has been largely overlooked to date: the refuge’s shortage of available fresh water, particularly in the winter. Oil drilling in the Arctic would require an extraordinary amount of water, from building ice roads and ice pads, to well stimulation and production, to supplying workers’ base camps. The Trump administration’s workaround banks on oil companies’ ability to build a massive seawater treatment plant on the coast of the Arctic Refuge.

Building a seawater treatment facility in a remote national wildlife refuge, however, is a costly and legally dubious proposition. The authors’ review shows that gaining access to water would likely require companies to make at least $1 billion in capital investments and clear about a dozen permitting hurdles. Furthermore, these permitting hurdles would offer a new administration additional legal and regulatory leverage to block development from going forward.

Demand: Oil and gas exploration and development require a lot of water

The Trump administration’s final environmental impact statement for an oil and gas leasing program in the refuge avoids providing a clear picture of how much water will be required for energy development. Rather, it punts the issue by suggesting that “additional NEPA analysis at the site-specific level would assess water needs and measures to address water supply issues.”

Regardless, estimates about water use scattered throughout the administration’s environmental review quickly add up. Projections include:

• Ice roads would require 1 million to 1.5 million gallons of water per mile per year
• Ice pads would require up to 5 million gallons of water per year
• Worker camps would require 3,000 to 6,000 gallons of water per day
• Drilling would require 420,000 to 8 million gallons of water per well—with more than 400 wells proposed
• Oil production of 50,000 barrels of oil per day—a rate that could span decades—would require approximately 2 million gallons of water per day

Water is a nonnegotiable ingredient for oil exploration and production activities. Without consistent and reliable access to water each year—on the magnitude of hundreds of millions of gallons per year—the proposed oil and gas program in the Arctic Refuge simply doesn’t work.

Supply: The refuge doesn’t have a lot of water to spare

The oil and gas industry’s water needs are at direct odds with the Arctic Refuge’s ability to conserve water quantity and fish and wildlife populations —two of its congressionally mandated purposes.

Unlike other areas on Alaska’s North Slope, free-flowing water is limited in the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain. There is a paucity of deep lakes; most of the ponds and lakes are shallow and freeze to the bottom during the winter. A study of 119 of the largest lakes in the refuge found only 1.1 billion gallons of water by the end of the winter season. With the Trump administration limiting oil and gas operators’ winter water withdrawals to 15 percent to 30 percent of unfrozen water, there’s just not enough to go around.

The coastal plain has several large rivers; however, these, too, typically freeze over from October to June. Significantly, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has filed more than 150 instream flow reservation water right applications in the refuge. The applications protect fish and wildlife species by keeping water in the rivers and mean that the FWS would have seniority over any other applications for water use. In other words, what little water is not frozen in the winter is already spoken for.

Oil and gas operators may be able to pull some water from aquifers, but the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s environmental review suggests that “while these shallow groundwater zones do exist, they are typically very small.”

Overall, the data on water in the refuge are woefully inadequate; most assumptions are based on limited, nearly 30-year-old studies. Moreover, climate change is undoubtedly altering the refuge’s water resources. This dynamic environment not only means additional stress on the fish and wildlife that rely on freshwater resources, but it also means that the oil and gas industry will have very little information or precedent to inform their bet.

The Hail Mary: A costly and risky seawater treatment plant

The administration has acknowledged the likely gap between oil industry demand and available surface water, noting that “sources may not be sufficient to meet water needs.” In its environmental review, therefore, the administration analyzes the impacts of a seawater treatment plant along the refuge’s coast. The review considers a facility with a 15-acre footprint and a 30-mile road and pipeline that connects to an anchor field development site.

However, there are two major hurdles to building a seawater treatment plant on the coast of the Arctic Refuge: cost and permitting.

First, CAP estimates that building a massive facility on Alaska’s North Slope would cost oil companies at least $1 billion, based on comparable facilities built in Alaska and the Lower 48. The true cost of building this seawater treatment facility could well be greater, given the high costs and engineering challenges associated with building and maintaining anything in a remote and rapidly changing Arctic environment.

Second, seawater treatment plants are energy-intensive operations that have a negative impact on their immediate environment. The facilities produce heavy emissions and can harm fish populations that become entrained by the intake device. The plants typically pump the brine byproduct back into the ocean, where it can alter ecosystems by warming temperatures, decreasing oxygen levels, increasing salinity, and introducing other contaminants and chemicals.

CAP estimates that, in order to build a seawater treatment plant, oil and gas companies would need to obtain about a dozen permits and approvals from different state and federal authorities to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act, among other environmental protection laws.

Significantly, federal agencies could use their authority and discretion to deny approval of necessary permits, which can effectively block oil projects from moving forward. Similar permits or approvals have stalled other proposed projects in Alaska, from mining in Bristol Bay, to exploratory drilling in the Beaufort Sea, to seismic acquisition in the Arctic Refuge.

Conclusion

Oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge will exacerbate climate change; violate the human rights of the Gwich’in people; and threaten polar bears, caribou, migratory birds, and other wildlife populations. The mounting legal challenges may be enough to stop the Trump administration’s lease sale. If not, the moral, regulatory, and financial obstacles associated with oil drilling in the refuge—access to fresh water among them—should stop any serious energy company from participating.

Kate Kelly is the director of public lands at the Center for American Progress. Sally Hardin is the interim director for the Energy and Environment War Room at American Progress. Jenny Rowland-Shea is a senior policy analyst for public lands at American Progress.

The authors would like to thank Tricia Woodcome for her contributions to this column.

The post Blocking Access to Scarce Water Supply Can Stop Oil Companies From Drilling the Arctic Refuge appeared first on Center for American Progress.

The census is incredibly important to states such as Alaska. Each year, census figures help direct enormous amounts of federal funding. An analysis of 55 census-directed programs found that in fiscal year 2016, Alaska received $3.2 billion in funding based on census results.¹ That includes:²

• $550 million for highway planning and construction
• $175 million for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
• $37 million in special education grants
• $35 million for school lunches
• $17 million for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program
• $5.8 million in grants to prevent and treat substance abuse

Moreover, census data have been used to allocate resources from the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) and will almost certainly be used to allocate future federal funds to combat COVID-19. The state of Alaska was expected to receive an estimated $1.25 billion in CRF funds.³

All of this money depends on an accurate census. Last April, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Census Bureau released a joint statement saying that an extended deadline for data collection was necessary to protect public health and to “[e]nsure a complete and accurate count of all communities.”⁴ But recently, the administration reversed its course and announced that it now intends to cut short the collection of census data despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.⁵

As of August 4, the response rate of the census stood at only 62.9 percent; the response rate in Alaska is significantly lower, at 49.4 percent.⁶ That means that unless the deadline for the census is extended, Alaska stands to lose millions of dollars in federal funding every year until the 2030 census is complete.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only negative consequence of an inaccurate census. Census figures determine congressional apportionment—how many seats each state receives in the U.S. House of Representatives. Companies also rely on census data to help locate customers and to guide major business decisions, such as where to invest and create new jobs.⁷

In other words, an incomplete census is bad for democracy, bad for business, and bad for Alaska. Political leaders should act swiftly to ensure that the Census Bureau has the time it needs—the time the administration previously requested—to conduct a full, fair, and accurate census. Most importantly, that means that the deadlines for delivering apportionment counts and redistricting data should be extended four months to April 30, 2021 and July 30, 2021, respectively; and secondly, that data collection should be allowed to continue until October 31 instead of September 30.

Alex Tausanovitch is the director of Campaign Finance and Electoral Reform at the Center for American Progress.

Endnotes

The post How an Incomplete Census Hurts Alaskans appeared first on Center for American Progress.

In 2019, Alaska experienced a wildfire season with 720 fires, making it among the biggest fire seasons on record for the state. The damages of the season led to losses of at least $300 million.

Impacts of climate change

Extreme weather

• In 2019, Alaska experienced a near-historic wildfire season with 720 fires burning nearly 5 million acres, the highest number of acres burned of any state for the year. The cost of fighting the 2019 summer wildfires in Alaska is estimated to have exceeded $300 million.
• The 2019 wildfire conditions were fueled by Alaska’s record-breaking heat and dry conditions throughout the summer months.
• Today, Alaska’s wildfire season is about 40 percent longer than it was in the 1950s.
• By 2050, Alaska’s 100-year coastal floodplain is projected to expand by more than 15,000 square miles. Coastal flooding could disproportionately affect Alaska Natives who comprise the majority of residents in the state’s remote coastal villages, some of which are already being forced to alter their ways of life or even relocate their communities.

Temperature

• July 2019 was Alaska’s hottest month in recorded history.
• Over the past 60 years, Alaska has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the United States, with average temperatures increasing by nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit. By 2050, temperatures are expected to increase an additional 2 to 4 degrees.

Impacts of the Trump administration’s anti-environmental policies

Climate

• The Trump administration is attempting to gut climate considerations from major infrastructure projects by eliminating the “cumulative impact” requirement of the National Environmental Policy Act. This is concerning because Alaska’s economy relies heavily on its tourism and outdoor recreation industries, both of which are highly dependent on climate and weather conditions.
  • Tourism: In 2017, Alaska’s visitor industry accounted for 43,300 jobs and generated an economic impact of $4.5 billion.
  • Outdoor recreation: The outdoor recreation industry in Alaska generates 72,000 direct jobs and more than $7 billion in consumer spending.

Air quality

• Mercury emissions in Alaska decreased by nearly 32 percent from 2011 to 2017, yet the Trump administration just undermined limits on the amount of mercury and other toxic emissions that are allowed from power plants.

Public lands

• In an effort to fulfill its “energy dominance” agenda, the Trump administration is working to essentially liquidate public lands in Alaska, auctioning off rights to drill in areas that serve as essential wildlife habitats as well as subsistence hunting areas for Alaska Native communities.
  • The administration has proposed eliminating protections from the2 million acres of the largest temperate old-growth forest, Tongass National Forest, and has prepared to auction off drilling rights in the 1.6 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Both actions would have disastrous impacts for climate change, potentially turning carbon sinks into sources of carbon.
  • The Izembek National Wildlife Refuge is at risk of losing 417,500 acres due to the administration’s proposal to facilitate the construction of a road through the wilderness area.
• In total, the Trump administration has proposed to open 3 million acres of land for transfer and leasing sales in Alaska. This degradation of Alaska’s natural amenities endangers local economies, such as fishing and outdoor recreation, as well as fuels the climate crisis by selling carbon sinks to industrial interests.

To read the personal stories of Americans affected by climate change and the impacts of the Trump administration’s anti-environmental policies in your state, visit OurEnvironment.org.

The post The Impacts of Climate Change and the Trump Administration’s Anti-Environmental Agenda in Alaska appeared first on Center for American Progress.

Since taking office in 2017, the Trump administration has had Alaska’s wild places in its crosshairs. This winter, the administration will attempt to auction off the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, which would have extensive impacts on a pristine ecosystem and the Alaska Native communities that depend on its resources for subsistence. And in the coming weeks, the Trump administration is likely to remove protections for roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest—a step that would open more than 9 million acres of the world’s largest old-growth temperate rainforest to potential logging.

But the environmental impacts of these decisions are not confined solely to the wildlife, waters, and communities in and around these two places. If and when the Trump administration moves forward with its attacks on the Arctic Refuge and the Tongass National Forest, these actions will result in a significant increase in the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions—potentially up to 6.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent overall.* That increase is equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 1.4 billion passenger vehicles*; there were 1.1 billion of these vehicles globally in 2015. These impacts will amplify the effects of climate change around the world, including elsewhere in Alaska—a state that is already experiencing severe impacts due to a changing climate. “It’s impacting subsistence,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) at a March Senate panel on climate change. “It’s impacting food security. It’s certainly impacting our economy with our fisheries.” Indeed, Alaska is warming faster than any other state in the country. The Trump administration’s actions—which would detonate a so-called carbon bomb in Alaska—are directly at odds with the critical need to address the climate crisis.

Unnecessary drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

In December 2017, a provision tucked into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act opened the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling for the first time in its history. Since then, the Trump administration has ignored continued warnings of the escalating climate crisis, instead rushing headlong to drill the refuge while ignoring public opinion and suppressing science, even as signs point to there being little oil in the refuge. In September 2019, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for drilling in the Arctic Refuge, which is one of the last procedural steps required before the government can conduct a lease sale. The Trump administration’s climate change denial is on full display in the FEIS: In response to a public comment, the BLM wrote that it “does not agree that the proposed development is inconsistent with maintaining a livable planet (i.e., there is not a climate crisis).”

Despite the false claims in the Trump administration’s environmental review and concerns that available data vastly overestimate oil potential in the refuge, the BLM’s own oil production estimates predict a scenario that would be catastrophic for the climate. In the FEIS, the BLM estimated that an average of more than 375,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions would be released each year during extraction alone—more than 26 million tons during the full 70-year period the agency estimates for oil and gas production in the coastal plain. Furthermore, based on the administration’s estimate that oil companies will be able to extract up to 10 billion barrels from the Arctic Refuge over a 70-year period, the downstream combustion of extracted oil and gas would mean another 4.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent released into the atmosphere. (see Figure 1) This is roughly equivalent to two-thirds of U.S. annual emissions in 2017.

Unnecessary logging in the Tongass National Forest, America’s largest natural carbon sink

The temperate rainforests that make up the nearly 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska are some of the most unique forests in the world. The Tongass still has large stands of old-growth forest—9.7 million acres—that have never been logged or significantly altered by development. One-third of this old growth is permanently protected in wilderness areas. Most of the remaining 6.3 million acres are in “roadless areas,” which are protected by a U.S. Forest Service rule that the Trump administration recently proposed to lift for the Tongass. This would make all of the roadless acreage vulnerable to logging and extraction.

The administration’s Tongass Draft Environmental Impact Statement would immediately reclassify 165,000 acres of old growth as “suitable timber land” for logging and place millions more acres at risk of logging over the coming years. These ancient forests make the Tongass a valuable carbon sink—one of the most important ecosystems for storing carbon. One acre of old-growth forest is estimated to store nearly 70 tons of carbon in leaves, trunks, roots, and soil. In addition, each acre of old-growth forest has the capacity, on average, to sequester, or capture from the air, an additional 1,600 pounds of carbon every year.

The administration’s decision to favor logging makes little sense in the Tongass, as the timber industry in Southeast Alaska is dwarfed by fishing and tourism—sectors that thrive in large part because of their reliance on old-growth forests to protect clean water and spawning habitat for salmon and provide natural amenities that draw visitors from around the world. Market forces and local geography have made Tongass timber uncompetitive with wood from other parts of the country; most of the timber harvested in the Tongass is shipped overseas for processing. And local geography means that the money the U.S. Forest Service spends preparing roads for logging projects exceeds the revenue from timber sales. This has become evident even in historic timber towns such as Ketchikan, where former mill sites are being remodeled to accommodate cruise ships and tourism businesses.

In a regional and global context, the decision to subsidize more logging makes no sense at all. Any climate change solution will require healthy natural carbon sinks, especially in places such as the Tongass where forests are especially good at capturing carbon. Even limited expansions of logging have major consequences. Areas where the Tongass has been “managed”—including second-growth forests, selectively logged areas, and areas disturbed by roads and other development—sequester almost 60 percent less carbon per year than intact forests. All in all, the removal of roadless protections threatens a carbon sink that already stores more than 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and sequesters an additional 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually, equivalent to taking 2 million cars off the road each year.* (see Note in Table 1 for an explanation of calculations)

Conclusion

The Trump administration’s decisions to strip protections from the Arctic Refuge and the Tongass National Forest in favor of industry completely ignore climate impacts, which is at odds with the reality that Alaskans face. The effects of shrinking sea ice, coastal erosion, and permafrost loss are apparent in Alaskan communities, even providing sufficient evidence for the Alaska Federation of Natives to recently declare a climate change emergency. Pursuing the goals of industry without regard for climate impacts places Alaska’s communities, fish, wildlife, and overall way of life at risk.

Ryan Richards is a senior policy analyst for Public Lands at the Center for American Progress. 

The author would like to thank Matt Lee-Ashley, Sally Hardin, Meghan Miller, Irene Koo, and Keenan Alexander for their contributions to this column.

* Correction: September 25, 2020: This column has been updated to clarify a unit conversion that affects reported amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and to what they are equivalent.

The post Trump’s Energy Policies Put Alaska in the Climate Crosshairs appeared first on Center for American Progress.

The work to liquidate national public lands is a shortsighted and inadequate response to the state of Alaska’s worsening budget crisis, a result of the state’s overdependence on revenues from oil drilling. As the Alaska Oil and Gas Association notes on its website, “Alaska is the only state in the Union that is so dependent on one industry to fund its government services.”² Since 1977, oil revenues have accounted for an average of 85 percent of the state’s annual budget.

Recently, however, the production and profitability of Alaska oil fields have been in steep decline, causing the state’s collection of oil and gas production taxes to fall from nearly $6.9 billion in 2008 to $806 million in 2018.³ For the past eight years, Alaska’s elected officials have struggled to find the resources to pay for emergency responders, schools, and other basic services for residents.⁴ In fact, the state faced a budget deficit of $2.5 billion going into fiscal year 2019.⁵

This growing budget crisis is presenting Alaska with one of its most consequential choices since voting to become a state in 1958. On the one hand, Alaska can start to solve its budget problems by broadening its funding sources, encouraging economic growth in nonextractive industries, and safeguarding the natural resources that power its $7.3 billion outdoor recreation economy and support the nation’s most valuable fisheries.⁶ Unfortunately, Alaska politicians—led by Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) and the state’s congressional delegation—have opted to pull the state in the opposite direction, doubling down on Alaska’s reliance on extractive industries.

In June 2019, Gov. Dunleavy attempted to cut more than $440 million from the state operating budget while increasing direct payments to state residents and preserving subsidies for the oil industry.⁷ His newest cuts would, among other things, reduce Medicaid benefits for Alaskans, end a study on sexual assault and domestic violence in rural Alaska, and effectively bankrupt the University of Alaska system.⁸

Gov. Dunleavy’s budget proposal has been widely—and rightly—criticized, but the parallel effort to bolster the state’s finances through a massive liquidation of national public lands is moving ahead with little scrutiny.⁹ The Trump administration’s effort represents one of the largest disposals and privatizations of national public lands since the late 19th century, when the U.S. government, under the Homestead Act of 1862, deeded more than 160 million acres of federal lands in the West to private citizens.¹⁰ The public land liquidation currently being pursued in Alaska could result in an area of land that combined is as big as the state of Georgia being privatized, privately developed, or transferred to state or corporate ownership.

Arguments for advancing the nine public land liquidation components identified in this issue brief amount to little more than false promises of financial or budgetary gain for Alaska, its residents, and the U.S. Treasury. In reality, this liquidation effort’s cost to the state and the country is hard to overlook. Any economic gains would be short lived and would result in the exploitation and degradation of Alaska’s natural amenities and the economies that they support, including commercial fishing, outdoor recreation, and tourism, while adding to the climate crisis by selling carbon sinks to oil, mining, timber, and other industrial interests. Moreover, the effort dismisses many dissenting perspectives among Alaska Native communities and delivers its main financial benefits to non-Alaskan and, in some cases, foreign corporations. In its parts and as a whole, the costs and consequences of this public land liquidation effort deserve far more attention and scrutiny.

Tongass National Forest: 9.2 million acres at risk

The Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is the nation’s largest national forest, spanning nearly 17 million acres and encompassing 19 designated wilderness areas.¹¹ Now, at the direct instruction of President Donald Trump, the U.S. Forest Service is working to eliminate protections for 9.2 million acres of the largest remaining temperate old-growth forest in the world in order to allow more timber sales and related infrastructure.¹²

The effort to strip protections in the Tongass is emblematic of the Trump administration’s push for uneconomic extractive industries at the expense of all else. The timber industry accounts for fewer than 1 percent of jobs in Southeast Alaska—just 400—even with the federal government regularly subsidizing timber sales in the Tongass with more than $20 million in taxpayer funds per year.¹³ The move jeopardizes the Tongass’ important habitat for sensitive wildlife—such as brown bears, bald eagles, and salmon—that provides a basis for $2 billion in annual revenue in ecotourism and commercial fishing, as well as 10,000 jobs.¹⁴ Furthermore, the forest is essential to the Alaska biosphere in that it acts as a carbon storehouse—a function that could be significantly affected if 9.2 million acres are opened to alterations and logging.

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: 1.6 million acres at risk

The Trump administration is poised to auction off oil drilling rights in the heart of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge within months.¹⁵ As a result of a provision that U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) slipped into the 2017 tax reform bill that mandated two oil and gas lease sales in the refuge, a network of roads, pipelines, and oil derricks could soon cover the 1.6 million acres of the coastal plain, an area that serves as important habitat to polar bears, caribou, and migratory birds.¹⁶

A Center for American Progress analysis found that not only would drilling in the Arctic Refuge fail to produce anywhere close to the amount of money that the tax provision claims it would but also that the cost to the refuge would be high and potentially irreversible.¹⁷ Transforming the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain into an industrial oil field would be devastating to wildlife and native subsistence users who rely on it for their food and cultural survival.

Canning River land swap: 20,000 acres at risk*

In addition to the planned oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic Refuge, the Trump administration is working to transfer control of 20,000 acres of land within the refuge to the state of Alaska for oil drilling.¹⁸ In dispute is the far northwestern boundary of the Arctic Refuge.¹⁹ Historically, the Department of the Interior (DOI) has maintained that Fish and Wildlife Service management responsibilities extend to the Staines River; however, the state of Alaska argues that the refuge boundary is the Canning River, located several miles to the east.

In 2014, the head of Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources sent a letter to the Interior Department requesting the conveyance of these acres to the state of Alaska, stating in an interview that the acres would be “offer[ed] for oil and gas leasing and development.”²⁰ The state’s appeal is pending review from the Interior Board of Land Appeals.²¹ But in a January 2019 Petroleum News article, a senior DOI official stated that “we are engaged at the highest level with the governor and his staff on the Canning/Staines river boundary issue,” implying that the DOI is actively working to transfer the acreage to the state.²²

2019 lands package: 448,000 acres at risk

Earlier this year, the Senate passed a sweeping, bipartisan legislative lands package containing more than 100 public lands, natural resources, and water bills, including many of specific interest to Alaskans.²³ Among the package’s Alaska-specific provisions is the Alaska Native Vietnam Veterans Land Allotment Act of 2019, sponsored by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and Sen. Murkowski.²⁴ This provision would give an allotment of federal land to Alaska Natives who served in the Vietnam War. While this sounds benevolent, some argue that this need was already fulfilled by legislation in 1971 and 1998; in fact, this is one of the reasons the Bush administration opposed a similar bill in 2002.²⁵ In practice, the provision allows for nearly half a million acres of now-public lands to potentially become privatized, transferred, or sold off for oil and gas extraction.²⁶ There are exceptions for land within national parks, wilderness areas, and the Arctic Refuge; however, the bill requires that, within a year, the interior secretary conduct a study to identify lands within Alaska’s other wildlife refuges that could be carved out for giveaway.²⁷

National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska: 13.35 million acres at risk

The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) comprises 22 million acres of federal land west of the Arctic refuge on Alaska’s North Slope. In 1976, the legislation that transferred this vast area from the U.S. Navy to the DOI mandated that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administer the land for the purposes of oil and gas leasing while protecting any areas “containing any significant subsistence, recreational, fish and wildlife, or historical or scenic value.”²⁸

In 2013, the Obama administration completed the first comprehensive management plan for the NPR-A, which allowed for oil development while expanding science-based protections for 13.35 million acres within the reserve important to wildlife and Alaska Native subsistence needs.²⁹ Oil and gas companies already own leases on more than 1.5 million acres of land within the NPR-A , yet the Trump administration is adamant about making more acres available to industry.³⁰ It is currently rewriting the management plan for the NPR-A and is expected to release a draft plan this year. Depending on what the administration decides, the draft could propose scrapping protections for some or all of the existing “special areas” in favor of giving the oil and gas industry unfettered access to these wild and globally unique public lands.³¹

Pebble Mine: 8,000 acres at risk

Pebble Mine is a proposed open-pit mining project investigating a copper, gold, and molybdenum deposit in the headwaters of Southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay, home to the largest sockeye salmon run in the world.³² The region’s salmon fishery is valued at $1.5 billion annually, provides more than 14,000 jobs each year, and provides sustenance to more than 25 Alaska Native tribes.³³ In 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed to restrict parts of Bristol Bay from being opened to mining, citing the “high ecological and economic value” of the watershed.³⁴

In July 2019, however, the EPA fully revoked its previously proposed withdrawal, essentially greenlighting the mine to go forward with permitting and transferring oversight to EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.³⁵ This reversal came a mere month after President Trump met with Gov. Dunleavy, but many reports say the decision was made just days after their meeting.³⁶ Furthermore, while Gov. Dunleavy remains publicly impartial on the mine, Alaska Public Media reports that he sent a letter on July 30, 2019, to one of the main investors in the Pebble project, stating, “I want to assure you the state will stand by those who invest in Alaska … I am equally committed to removing obstacles that would hinder immediate construction.”³⁷ The permanent footprint of the proposed 20-year mine would affect more than 8,000 acres and directly harm more than 100 miles of streams and rivers.³⁸ In the likely event of a spill, an even larger portion of the 40,000 square mile Bristol Bay watershed—including more than 500 miles of salmon streams—could be polluted by the mine’s toxic tailings.³⁹

Public land orders in Alaska: 1.5 million acres at risk

Public land orders (PLOs) are actions that allow the interior secretary “to make, modify, extend, or revoke land withdrawals”—or areas that have been set aside from development and sale—and to transfer jurisdiction of an area from one department, bureau, or agency to another.⁴⁰

In June 2019, then-Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Joe Balash signed a directive revoking two PLOs, subsequently making more than 1.3 million acres of BLM land eligible to be opened for development or to have ownership transferred to the state of Alaska or Alaska Native corporations.⁴¹ The PLOs that were revoked, 7879 and 7880, covered two withdrawal areas known for their mineral potential, much of which the Obama administration had categorized “as areas of critical environmental concern.”⁴² The move was applauded by Alaska’s congressional delegation, and Gov. Dunleavy said the PLO revocations would “further our mission to make Alaska open for business.”⁴³

There are currently 17 similar land withdrawals across the state that cover roughly 50 million acres in total.⁴⁴ During the signing, Balash made clear that these were just two of many withdrawal revocations that the Department of the Interior had planned, saying it was “going to have a conveyor belt operating.”⁴⁵ In fact, last October, the BLM had already rescinded another PLO, lifting protections for another 229,000 acres.⁴⁶

Izembek National Wildlife Refuge: 417,500 acres at risk

Izembek National Wildlife Refuge is a 417,500 acre wilderness area in the southern Aleutian Islands that is ecologically rich and home to a diverse array of wildlife, such as salmon, caribou, bears, and birds.⁴⁷ Alaska’s congressional delegation has long expressed its desire to build a road that would cut through the wildlife refuge, connecting the communities of King Cove and Cold Bay and facilitating the transport of fish from a cannery to an airport, from which it could be exported.⁴⁸ The construction of the road would set a dangerous precedent nationwide for future development on protected lands.

Now, the Trump administration has joined in this effort. In July 2019, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed a land exchange agreement with King Cove Corp. behind closed doors and without a public process. The agreement outlined legal and policy reasoning for the exchange—a response to the court’s dismissal of an earlier Trump administration land swap attempt in Izembek.⁴⁹ Despite the administration’s claim that the road is needed for health and safety reasons, the new agreement removed language prohibiting the use of the road for commercial purposes.⁵⁰

Bering Sea-Western Interior region: 1.8 million acres at risk

The BLM is in the process of creating a new land use plan for a 13.4 million acre area in western Alaska, south of the Central Yukon watershed and west of Denali National Park and Preserve.⁵¹ This region is one of the most undeveloped parts of the country, providing vital habitat to fish and wildlife. Moreover, it contains areas important to Alaska Natives and local communities dependent on the land for traditional subsistence uses.⁵² Of the multiple proposals laid out in the draft plan, the one preferred by the BLM “would eliminate 1.8 million acres of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern” (ACEC), thereby opening the land to development.⁵³ Additionally, the plan does not propose any new ACECs, even though tribal communities requested that the BLM preserve 7 million acres of “traditional use areas.”⁵⁴

Conclusion

Transferring, selling, or privatizing national public lands has become a third rail for lawmakers across the country. Yet the Trump administration is carrying out one of the most brazen public land liquidation efforts in U.S. history and facing little scrutiny or attention.⁵⁵ In an effort that will further entrench Alaska’s economy in an unsustainable dependence on the extractive industry, more than 28.3 million acres of public lands are at risk, potentially placing in jeopardy precious old-growth forests, Arctic wildlife, and cultural resources for Alaska Natives. At a time when America’s protected areas are more critical than ever in helping fight climate change and natural area loss, the Trump administration is working hand in hand with Alaska’s politicians to exploit public lands in Alaska at the expense of public process, transparency, science, and the long-term health of the state’s economy.

Jenny Rowland-Shea is a senior policy analyst for Public Lands at the Center for American Progress. Sung Chung is a former intern for Public Lands at the Center. Sally Hardin is the deputy director for the Energy and Environment War Room at the Center. Matt Lee-Ashley is a senior fellow and the senior director of Environmental Strategy and Communications at the Center. Kate Kelly is the director of Public Lands at the Center. 

The authors would like to thank Steve Bonitatibus, Meghan Miller, and Rosemary Cornelius for their contributions to this brief.

* Authors’ note: The 20,000 acres is within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s 1.6 million acres, so this brief does not additionally count it toward the combined 28.3 million acre number.

Endnotes

The post A Vast Liquidation of Public Lands Is Underway in Alaska appeared first on Center for American Progress.

The upcoming lease sale will include lands on the coastal plain, surrounding some involved in one of the Arctic Refuge’s biggest mysteries. In April, The New York Times investigated what was found in the mid-1980’s when two oil and gas companies, Chevron and BP, drilled a test well on lands owned by the Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation (KIC) and minerals owned by the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC). The first and only test well drilled in the Arctic Refuge was meant to help the ASRC and the two oil majors determine what oil and gas resources lie beneath the surface. The results of the well, known as the KIC-1 test well, have been kept secret for decades. And according to the Times’ investigation, the well may have been empty.

In light of this controversy, the findings of the Times’ investigation raise important questions. Why have the corporations involved with the test well gone to such extreme lengths—including a lawsuit, a settlement, four methods of physical safe-keeping, and more—to ensure that the well’s data remain a secret? Why is the Trump administration rushing to hold a lease sale in the Arctic Refuge without this key data? And what is the American public missing out on while it’s kept in the dark to the advantage of the fossil fuel industry?

This column explores the history and status of the KIC-1 test well in the Arctic Refuge. It considers the companies involved; how those companies have managed to keep their information secret for so long; and what this says about the balance of power between the public and the oil and gas industry in the United States.

The history of the KIC-1 test well

In 1971, Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Among other things, this act created 12 Alaska Native regional corporations—a 13th was later formed—and deeded each of them ownership of acreage in their respective regions. One of these corporations, the ASRC, gained additional land in 1983, when the DOI engaged it in a controversial land swap. In exchange for the ASRC’s lands within present-day Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, the DOI deeded the ASRC the subsurface rights to 92,000 acres within the contiguous bounds of the Arctic Refuge. To further complicate matters, the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge—where the ASRC’s acreage lies—had a complex status, designated in 1980, that kept it closed to drilling but for an act of Congress.

The 1983 land swap conditions also gave the ASRC the right to drill an exploratory test well in the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge, which at the time was otherwise closed off to development, and allowed it to retain the rights to the well’s data—including the right to keep the data secret from the U.S. government. This last compromise was hard-fought, given that it restricted the government’s knowledge of the Arctic Refuge’s oil and gas potential. Within a year of the exchange, the ASRC leased this acquired land to Chevron and BP; these leases are still active today.

Between 1984 and 1985, more than 20 private oil companies banded together to conduct a survey that yielded what remains the most comprehensive understanding of the oil potential beneath the coastal plain. The survey showed that the coastal plain is split by an underground ridge—the Marsh Creek anticline—that runs southwest to northeast across the plain and, at the time, was thought to hint at the location of possible oil southeast of the anticline. In 1998, the U.S. Geological Survey reprocessed this survey using more modern technology and found that more oil might actually lie northwest of the anticline.

In 1986, Chevron and BP completed the only test well ever drilled in the Arctic Refuge near the village of Kaktovik, Alaska, on the coastal plain at a depth of nearly 3 miles. The test well had a price tag of $40 million.

Alaska state law stipulates that well results for all wells permitted by the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (AOGCC) must be reported and filed with the AOGCC. For wells that include proprietary information—such as the KIC-1 test well—the AOGCC can allow the data to be kept confidential for up to 24 months. It is then released to Alaska Department of Natural Resources (AKDNR). If the AKDNR finds that there is “significant information relating to the valuation of unleased land in the same vicinity”—as was the case with the test well—a company may apply to keep the information confidential “for a reasonable time” after the relevant land is leased or otherwise disposed of.

After completing the test well in 1986, Chevron filed confidential reports of the results with the AOGCC. By statute, the data were set to be released to the AKDNR on May 24, 1988. Curiously, even though most of the land near the KIC-1 test well was unleased and may have qualified for a confidentiality extension, Chevron and BP—at the time Standard Alaska Production Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil that BP later acquired—took a more aggressive approach to protecting their data. On April 21, 1988, the companies filed a lawsuit seeking a permanent injunction against releasing the data to the AKDNR or the public. Their lawsuit argued that Alaska’s data disclosure provisions were unconstitutional, as releasing the data would be a taking of their property. The argument did not hold up in court: In 1991, after a lower court decision in favor of the companies, on appeal, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled against them, tossing out the injunction and citing the technicality that the issue of disclosure was not yet ripe for adjudication. In addition, the court explained that the AKDNR’s knowledge of potential oil and gas promotes the state’s economic welfare and helps the AKDNR strike the “optimum balance between development and preservation.”

After this setback, Chevron, Standard Oil, and the ASRC considered appealing their case to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to keep the results of the test well a secret. Instead, on July 13, 1992, the three companies signed a settlement agreement with the AOGCC and the AKDNR that granted unprecedented confidentiality to the companies in exchange for minimal concessions to the AKDNR. The settlement’s conditions under which the AKDNR can access the results are akin to what one may expect for state secrets at the level of nuclear codes:

• No more than two senior geoscientists at the AKDNR can have knowledge of the KIC-1 well data at a given time, and when a new designee is appointed, the companies have “the opportunity to express their respective opinions” of the individual.
• The AKDNR’s two representatives aren’t permitted to keep notes or other records about any of the KIC-1 well data.
• The AKDNR is not allowed to refer to or confirm or deny anything about the data publicly in their decision-making regarding Alaska state lands.
• If ever the AKDNR needs to reinspect the data on file at the AOGCC, they have to notify the three settlement companies before doing so.

Interest in the well has been rekindled

During discussions over the TCJA in late 2017, public interest in the contents of the KIC-1 test well heated up again. Days before the bill’s passage, an Anchorage Daily News article revealed that the data were exceptionally physically secure: “Today, the information is tightly held at AOGCC in Anchorage, contained within a locked box within a safe in a locked room in the agency’s secured area. Different people know codes for the different locks, so no one can get to the data alone.”

Then, in early 2019, newly elected Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) fired AOGCC Chairman Hollis French after accusing him of disclosing “confidential information to the press regarding the location of, and means of accessing, secured data on the KIC test well.” In other words, a high-ranking state official was fired for discussing the data’s location and access—not the data itself—with a journalist. In his defense, French stated, “[T]his is happening because I have been firmly standing up for the public interest in oil and gas conservation.”

It is worth noting that the Alaska state government, which is in the midst of significant budget crisis, stands to receive 50 percent of all revenue from the mandated lease sales. The governor, therefore, has a vested interest in seeing the sale happen as quickly as possible. Additionally, the Trump administration’s assistant secretary of the interior for lands and minerals management, Joe Balash, served as commissioner of the AKDNR from 2013 to 2014, meaning he likely knew, or managed employees who knew of, the test well’s results.

This long saga begs the question of what the test well revealed. The best clue yet comes from the Times’ investigation, which includes an interview with a now-retired lawyer who worked for Standard Oil of Ohio during BP’s merger and acquisition of the company. He recollected that when he pressed whether BP should be offering more for the acquisition based on the oil and gas potential of their leases in the Arctic Refuge, he was told that “the discovery well was worthless.”

The current positions of Chevron and BP

Oil and gas companies, accustomed to drilling elsewhere along Alaska’s North Slope, have long been looking to gamble by leasing in the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain in the hopes they might strike it rich. Short of hitting pay dirt, companies that bid during an upcoming lease sale for the Arctic Refuge could be speculating for the future, all while padding their books. BP and Chevron, therefore, have an incentive to keep the results of the test well private, even if the well is empty; this gives them an advantage over other oil and gas companies, the U.S. government, and the American public. Importantly, however, companies that lease are also risking reputational damage: Wilderness advocates and those to whom these lands are sacred have highlighted the fact that drilling would irreparably damage the lands.

Since drilling the test well more than three decades ago, BP and Chevron have remained cagey about their interest in oil and gas development in the Arctic Refuge. Chevron ranked as the second-largest oil and gas company in the United States in 2018, with a market value of $239.06 billion. When the DOI released its draft environmental review for a lease sale in the Arctic Refuge, Chevron weighed in with brief comments, arguing for nearly unfettered access to the coastal plain. The company asked specifically that the final DOI proposal “not prejudge hydrocarbon potential or preferred development locations” and instead leave that to a “comprehensive exploration phase.” This is notable, given that Chevron is one of the few entities with access to information from the test well. However, Chevron’s comments do not mention the KIC-1 test well.

BP is currently the fifth-largest oil company in the world—with $303.7 billion in revenue in 2018. The company has a complicated history of oil and gas engagement in northern Alaska. In 2006, BP was responsible for a 267,000-gallon oil spill from one of its pipelines in western Prudhoe Bay—less than 100 miles from the Arctic Refuge—which remains the largest oil spill on Alaska’s North Slope. In 2002, BP dropped out of Arctic Power, a powerful Arctic oil lobbying coalition pushing to open the Arctic Refuge to oil and gas drilling, saying at the time that the Arctic Refuge “has never been a part of BP’s investment portfolio.” It has been speculated that BP may have viewed Arctic Refuge development as a “public relations liability” at the time, given the potential reputational damage of indicating an interest in drilling in what was considered to be one of America’s last great wildernesses.

However, after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, BP changed its tune. Records show that the corporation ramped up its spending on lobbying efforts for “Arctic oil and gas development” and favorably weighed in on the DOI’s initial oil and gas leasing proposal for the Arctic Refuge. Just like Chevron, however, BP made no mention of the KIC-1 test well or its confidential results.

Outside of these brief comments on the DOI’s initial plan, BP and Chevron have stayed largely silent on their intent to drill in the Arctic Refuge. All of this should be considered through the lens that Chevron and BP are two of only a few entities that have any sense of what might lie beneath the Arctic Refuge. In many ways, they are at a distinct competitive advantage not only over other companies who might consider bidding during a lease sale, but also over the federal government and the American public.

Conclusion

By any measure, Chevron, BP, and the ASRC have gone to extreme lengths in order to keep the results of the test well a secret. Some have speculated for years that the well was a dry hole: “I simply refuse to believe that if there is a huge amount of oil it could be kept secret,” said a staffer from the Alaska Conservation Foundation in 2001. In light of this, drilling proponents have more recently argued that the results of one well drilled years ago are not conclusive as to what lies beneath the Arctic Refuge.

Regardless of the well’s results, however, the situation lays bare a problematic power imbalance in which the federal government—which is making critical and consequential decisions about America’s public lands on behalf of taxpayers —has far less information than three private corporations do. Here, as is too often the case, the American public is not on equal footing with the oil and gas industry. Thanks to BP and Chevron’s deep pockets and many lawyers, as well as a state government interested in oil, data remain hidden that should have been made public decades ago in order to help strike a balance between economic development and conservation. Given that the Trump administration has no problem greenlighting a lease sale without access to the test well data, it’s clear that the interests being served are not those of the American public, but those of the fossil fuel industry.

Sally Hardin is a research analyst for the Energy and Environment War Room at the Center for American Progress.

The author would like to thank Meghan K. Miller, Jenny Rowland-Shea, and Kate Kelly for their contributions to this column.

The post The Companies With the Best Kept Secret in the Arctic Refuge appeared first on Center for American Progress.

Now, a new Center for American Progress analysis finds that public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to drilling the refuge. Of the 1 million comments submitted in response to the draft EIS, 99 percent opposed the proposed oil and gas activity.* Many of the public comments raised concerns about the BLM’s lack of vigorous analysis regarding environmental impacts to the “biological heart” of the refuge.

If the Trump administration fails to address the serious deficiencies that have surfaced before and during the public comment period, it could put the planned oil and gas lease sale in legal jeopardy of violating the National Environmental Policy Act.

Ignoring public opinion

The BLM, with the help of an outside contractor, slapped together the draft EIS on oil and gas leasing in just five months and offered the public a mere 30 days to comment on the analysis—30 days fewer than average. The comment period was later extended after constituents and advocacy groups objected to the fact that most of it took place during the partial government shutdown, when BLM resources and personnel were largely unavailable. Despite these obstacles, more than 1 million people still engaged in the comment process.

As mentioned above, CAP found that 99 percent of public comments submitted were against drilling in the refuge, and many also objected to the conclusions of the BLM’s environmental review. Commenters raised concerns about oil and gas development’s impacts to wildlife, including the destruction of polar bear dens and the nesting grounds of more than 200 migratory birds. Comments also took issue with the analysis of drilling’s impacts to the Porcupine caribou, which some Alaska Native people—such as the Gwich’in and Iñupiat—depend on as a critical food and cultural resource. In addition, various comments expressed concerns about the greenhouse gas emissions that would come from the project.

Notably, the Inuvialuit Game Council—a Canadian council representing the Inuvialuit peoples’ wildlife and habitat interests—and several Canadian advisory councils and committees commented that the draft EIS “fails to fulfill the United States’ EIS obligations under both US domestic law and under international law and fails to recognize the transboundary nature of the Arctic Coastal Plain.” The group highlighted the potential impact that a lease sale would have on Canada and criticized the draft EIS for lacking the quantitative data and analyses necessary to consider drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

In addition, the Gwich’in Steering Committee—formed in 1988 to represent the interests of the Gwich’in, including the protection of the Porcupine caribou herd and its habitat—along with 152 advocacy organizations across 33 states, submitted comments in opposition to the BLM’s “deficient” draft EIS.

Both Canadian councils and advocacy organizations explicitly call on the BLM to conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement—an interim step that is sometimes necessary to address deficiencies or major changes in an EIS—to adequately analyze the impact of oil and gas development in the Arctic Refuge.

Failing to address gaping holes in the science

The public has reason to be concerned about shortcomings in the draft EIS. Not only is it clear that it downplays and underestimates the damage that would result from drilling the coastal plain, the government’s own scientists have confirmed the lack of recent—even modern—data and studies in the document.

In March 2019, transparency organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) released a series of leaked FWS memos that include expert assessments from government scientists about missing data critical to understanding the impacts of drilling on wildlife in the Arctic Refuge. According to the documents, prior to the release of the draft EIS, the FWS consulted government actors and scientists from a number of agencies—including the BLM, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, and various Alaska state and Canadian federal and territorial agencies—in order to identify and gather information critical to conducting a comprehensive EIS.

PEER released a total of 18 memos that identify “research gaps,” recommended studies, and data needed to conduct a thorough environmental review. In the memos, the agencies identify at least 20 different studies that should be done in order to meet “near-term regulatory requirements” and inform the BLM on the EIS. These include studies on ensuring compliance with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; researching water flow for transportation planning and water withdrawal permitting; and filling knowledge gaps on polar bear populations.

The memos make clear that much of the science surrounding the refuge is outdated and, in many cases, irrelevant to the current conditions of the coastal plain. For example, the memo on caribou indicates that the government data regarding the impact of oil field development on caribou populations came from studies that were conducted as far back as the 1980s. The memo on polar bears similarly notes that data on the species were last collected in 2010, when there was notable uncertainty regarding the bears’ population numbers. One memo also notes that surveys to gather in-depth subsistence data from Alaska Native populations have not been conducted since 1992, nearly 30 years ago.

The FWS was not the only science-based government agency to express concern over the draft EIS. In public comments, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Region 10 office voiced its doubts, noting that “the analysis does not adequately assess the potential cumulative impacts to air quality and air quality related values from implementing an oil and gas leasing program within the Coastal Plain.” The EPA also included detailed comments to the proposed alternatives listed in the draft EIS, including how the BLM could revisit and revise the original data to be more representative of the drilling’s potential impacts on the environment.

In its formal comments on the draft EIS, the FWS suggested that the BLM must improve its analysis so that it can “withstand the scrutiny of legal sufficiency” or else it will be at risk of losing later in court. Unfortunately, it does not appear that any of these vast data gaps were filled or addressed before the BLM released the draft EIS. The leaked memos add to the mounting questions of how the Trump administration can responsibly make consequential decisions about oil and gas leasing in the refuge without relevant and up-to-date information.

Conclusion

The hallmark of the Trump administration’s rush to drill in the Arctic Refuge is a shoddy draft EIS that fails to meaningfully assess the impacts of oil and gas activity. This environmental review is marked both by leaked memos that lay out missing scientific studies—a roadmap that was subsequently ignored by the BLM—and by an overwhelmingly large and united response from the American public that oil drilling does not belong in the refuge. Unless the draft EIS is overhauled to address its fundamental deficiencies, the oil and gas lease sale that the Trump administration seems so intent to hold this year may not be legally defensible.

Jenny Rowland-Shea is a senior policy analyst for Public Lands at the Center for American Progress. Sung Chung is an intern for Public Lands at the Center.

The authors would like to thank Kate Kelly, Sally Hardin, Aaron Weiss, and Steve Bonitatibus for their contributions to this column.

*Authors’ note: To conduct the public comment analysis, the authors organized the large volume of comments from the BLM’s ePlanning page on the “Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing EIS” into one large database. The CAP database includes the BLM’s downloadable “Index of Online Comment Submissions”—which lists 97,413 individual comments—and the “Index of DEIS Public Comments,” which lists 786 comments. In sum, the database contains more than 1 million comments, with 98,082 individual comments and 979,511 form, petition, and/or verbal comments.

The authors then used a computer tool to pull a random sample of 1,000 comments from the group of individual comments and conducted a textual analysis to determine the number of comments that were in support of, neutral toward, or against the proposed drilling. The authors extrapolated that number to apply a margin of error of +/- 3.08 percent to the full number of individual comments. They then assessed the sentiment—support, neutral, or against—for each form, petition, and verbal submission and combined these findings with the random sample to find that more than 99 percent of comments opposed drilling in the refuge. The random sample; form, petition, and verbal comments; and final calculations can be found here.

The post Trump Administration Is Suppressing Science and Public Opinion to Drill the Arctic Refuge appeared first on Center for American Progress.

A Center for American Progress review of the Interior Department’s environmental analysis finds that it dramatically underestimates and discounts the permanent, irreversible damage that would result from drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Even through the assessment’s rosy lens, it’s clear that drilling would have terrible consequences for the refuge, its wildlife, and the indigenous populations who rely on it for subsistence.

The Trump administration is hurrying this inadequate assessment in an attempt to sell off drilling rights before Congress or a future administration can intervene to block destruction of the Arctic Refuge. Significantly, no new scientific data were collected for the DEIS—though an independent 2018 U.S. Geological Survey report found that there are many data gaps and a significant amount of outdated information on coastal plain resources and the potential impacts of oil and gas development in the refuge.

This column discusses five of the many areas where the rushed assessment fails to capture the full impacts of drilling in the Arctic Refuge: oil spills; destruction of polar bear and caribou habitat; increased carbon pollution; surface disturbance; and water consumption.

Oil spills

Based on historical oil and gas activity on Alaska’s North Slope, the DEIS expects that development would result in up to 1,745 oil spills, including six large spills. Although these are striking numbers, the assessment downplays the risk, stating that the probability of a spill of more than 100,000 gallons is “low” because there were “only” three spills of that magnitude documented from 1985 to 2010.

If one examines oil spill data from across Alaska, however, the prospect of a major spill in the Arctic Refuge seems almost certain. From 1995 to 2005, North Slope oil fields averaged more than 400 oil spills per year. Across Alaska, there were 16 major spills from 2002 to 2016 that released at least 10,000 gallons of oil each into the environment; five of those released more than 100,000 gallons each. Most recently, in April 2017, a BP well in nearby Prudhoe Bay gushed oil and gas for three days before an emergency response team managed to kill the well.

Destruction of polar bear and caribou habitat

According to estimates used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are just 900 Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears left in the world—a stunning 50 percent decline from just 30 years ago. The DEIS tellingly fails to include an estimate of how many polar bears could be killed, injured, or displaced by drilling in the Arctic Refuge, but it does acknowledge that “the potential for injury or mortality could be high when developing new oil and gas projects.”

More than 77 percent of the coastal plain—the area of the refuge under consideration for leasing—serves as critical denning habitat for polar bears, with a concentration of maternal dens in areas the DEIS identifies as having high oil and gas potential. The DEIS suggests that infrared cameras are an “effective means of locating dens” in order to avoid disturbance. Independent polar bear experts note, however, that this method of locating dens is very unreliable and that surveyors could miss up to 50 percent of dens due to poor weather conditions, hilly terrain, snow depth, and failure of industry to apply best practices—errors that could result in deaths of or injuries to polar bears.

The DEIS also suggests that 49 percent of the coastal plain that could be offered for leasing is sensitive calving grounds for porcupine caribou, a herd whose long-term health is inextricably linked to the Arctic Refuge. This statistic, however, vastly undercounts the value of the coastal plain to the caribou, who use virtually 100 percent of the area during calving and post-calving seasons—a statement supported, in part, by the review’s own maps of the herd’s historic movements. 

Even with the downplayed numbers, the assessment does acknowledge that activity that moves the herd away from the coastal plain would be detrimental, citing a study predicting an 8 percent decline in calf survival due to displacement. While the DEIS acknowledges that the potential for disturbance and displacement of caribou could cover up to 633,000 acres—40 percent of the coastal plain—it offers a wholly insufficient solution to mitigate the impact: suspension of “major construction activities”—but not drilling—for a single month of the year. This is particularly problematic given the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2018 Arctic Report Card, which found that overall, Arctic caribou populations have decreased by more than 50 percent in the past 20 years.

Increased carbon pollution

The DEIS significantly underestimates the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would result from drilling the Arctic Refuge. Misleadingly, the analysis only calculates the fractional GHG emissions from the consumption and combustion of oil that would result from the net increase in oil demand that the analysis predicts would result from Arctic Refuge production. As a result, the Trump administration’s analysis suggests that the indirect GHG emissions from combustion and downstream use of the oil would amount to 0.7 million to 5 million metric tons annually.

But if one calculates the total GHG emissions that would result from combustion of all the oil and gas that the DEIS predicts will be extracted from the Arctic Refuge, this number is magnitudes higher. CAP estimates that closer to 62 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent would be released into the atmosphere from the oil that the DEIS predicts will be produced from the Arctic Refuge—equal to the annual emissions of approximately 16 coal-fired power plants or 13 million cars.

Surface disturbance

The Trump administration’s environmental assessment of drilling the Arctic Refuge performs some impressive twists in order to state that disturbance to land from oil and gas activity would be limited to fewer than 2,000 acres, as required by law. The DEIS creatively interprets the legislative language so that elevated pipelines and gravel pit mines do not count as surface disturbance; it also does not count the disturbance from other activities such as seismic exploration or ice road construction. More than 200 miles of elevated pipelines would be constructed in the refuge, but the analysis only considers the posts that touch the ground—a vast undercount of a pipeline’s footprint. Similarly, the analysis arbitrarily discounts the anticipated 325 acres of gravel pits.

Water consumption

The DEIS avoids providing a clear estimate of how much water will be required for energy development, but a CAP analysis of numbers scattered throughout the document finds the potential water consumption of drilling the Arctic Refuge to be staggering—billions of gallons per year—and inconsistent with the continued provision of clean water for fish and wildlife species in the area.

CAP estimates that up to 1.3 billion gallons of water—and perhaps far more—would be needed to drill the oil wells that the DEIS projects would be drilled. The DEIS states that drilling a single well requires 420,000 to 1.9 million gallons of water; all of the DEIS’ development scenarios contain at least 21 production and satellite pads, with approximately 30 wells per pad. Beyond that, the DEIS states that 1 million gallons of water are needed to construct every mile of ice road, and 500,000 gallons of water are needed for every ice pad.

Most striking is the water required once production starts. Using the numbers from the DEIS, CAP calculates that 5.7 billion gallons of water per year would be needed just to support oil production. The DEIS estimates that producing 50,000 barrels of oil would require 2 million gallons of water per day; it also assumes that up to 142 million barrels of oil could be produced each year, on average.

Over the life of oil production on the coastal plain—which the DEIS estimates could extend from 50 years to 100 years—this all quickly adds up to an unthinkable amount of water. Available fresh water in the coastal plain is scarce and growing scarcer, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge, has flagged concerns about the “cumulative impacts of all stages of oil and gas development” on water and, subsequently, the “populations and habitats of fish and wildlife.”

Conclusion

The wild and rugged rivers, plains, and coastline of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have been carved and shaped by millions of years of ice, wind, sun, and geologic change. But the Trump administration is offering just 45 days for the public to comment on the draft environmental review of sacrificing these lands for oil drilling.

In the brief window before February 11, it is vital that the public—including Alaska Natives, scientists, and everyone who values the survival of America’s wildlife—call out the deceptive estimates, wishful thinking, and inadequate analysis that plagues the Trump administration’s environmental review. The flaws in this analysis reaffirm how fundamentally wrong it would be to drill the Arctic Refuge, and they underscore the need for Congress, the courts, or a future administration to stop this heedless rush and protect America’s last great wilderness.

* Authors’ note: Specific page numbers for this column’s references to the Interior Department’s draft environmental impact statement—and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s concerns about available fresh water on the coastal plain—are on file with the authors.

Kate Kelly is the director of Public Lands at the Center for American Progress. Matt Lee-Ashley is a senior fellow and the senior director of Environmental Strategy and Communications at the Center. Jenny Rowland-Shea is a senior policy analyst for Public Lands at the Center. Sally Hardin is a research analyst for the Energy and Environment War Room at the Center.

The post Interior Department Is Cutting Corners and Ignoring Science in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge appeared first on Center for American Progress.

The Arctic Refuge was originally set aside in 1960 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower with the intent of “preserving unique wildlife, wilderness and recreational values.” In 1980, Congress passed legislation, called the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, that expanded the Arctic Refuge and further clarified that the lands are to be managed for four purposes, stated below:

1. To conserve fish and wildlife populations and habitats in their natural diversity
2. To fulfill the international fish and wildlife treaty obligations of the United States
3. To provide the opportunity for continued subsistence uses by local residents
4. To ensure water quality and necessary quantity within the refuge

These four legal purposes for which the Arctic Refuge must be managed require that the area’s wildlife, land, and water resources be protected from harm. But Sen. Murkowski’s Arctic Refuge drilling rider would establish a fifth purpose for the management of the refuge—oil drilling—that, as illustrated in a new analysis by the Center for American Progress and Conservation Science Partners, is intrinsically incompatible with the other four.

A review of state and federal wildlife and subsistence data in Alaska confirms that the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is the “biological heart” of the Arctic Refuge. It is also the area within the refuge that Sen. Murkowski’s rider would auction off for drilling. Transforming the coastal plain into an industrial oil field would be devastating to wildlife and native subsistence users who rely on aspects of the refuge for food, use, or to maintain their culture in the Arctic Refuge and in Alaska. The evidence suggests that the irrelevant provision to drill in the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge should be removed during conference of the tax bill.

Wildlife

An analysis of various U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Land Management, and Alaska Department of Fish and Game data finds that drilling in the Arctic Refuge would be devastating to some of the country’s most unique wildlife.

One-third of all polar bear denning habitat in the United States could be destroyed if the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is sold for oil and gas development. The coastal plain contains 65 percent of the polar bear denning habitat in the Arctic Refuge.

Drilling in the coastal plain could also decimate the habitat of one-third of the migratory birds that come to the Arctic Refuge, including habitat for 73 percent of the yellow-billed loon and 60 percent of the black turnstone. The coastal plain has the highest migratory bird species richness of any part of the Arctic Refuge.

Furthermore, all Porcupine caribou calving habitat in Alaska exists in the Arctic Refuge. The 44 percent of habitat that is located in the coastal plain could be drilled for oil if the provision remains in the tax bill.

One-quarter of anadromous fish streams in the Arctic Refuge also could be put at risk from drilling in the coastal plain.

Leaving the coastal plain intact is essential to honoring the United States’ commitments under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, the Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, and the International Porcupine Caribou Agreement. It is also essential to preserving water quality for fish habitat.

Crucial wildlife habitat

Ninety-seven percent of the most crucial habitats in the Arctic Refuge are located within the area that would be opened for drilling under this bill.

Areas of highest conservation concern for fish and wildlife populations were determined using the Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool, a system developed by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies that ranks important wildlife habitat. The rankings incorporate information on species richness; the occurrence of terrestrial and aquatic species of concern; and freshwater integrity. Rank values range from one to six, with one indicating the most crucial habitats and six indicating the least crucial.

Subsistence uses by indigenous communities in Alaska

Eighteen percent to 41 percent of Kaktovik Inupiat people’s total subsistence uses—including fish, furbearers, caribou, wild fowl, moose, and vegetation areas—in Alaska are located in the coastal plain and would be at risk from drilling. When considering those subsistence uses in the Arctic Refuge alone, 37 percent to 60 percent of those areas are located in the at-risk coastal plain. Kaktovik is the only village located within the Arctic Refuge. It is inhabited primarily by native Alaskan Inupiat and is important as a traditional hunting and fishing location.

Likewise, the Porcupine caribou herd—a species whose habitat in the coastal plain would be harmed by oil drilling—is a staple for the indigenous Gwich’in people. The Gwich’in way of life would be irreparably changed if oil and gas interests open the area to development. The native Gwich’in people have inhabited the Arctic Refuge region of Alaska for generations and rely on the health of its land and wildlife for food, clothing, and cultural survival.

Conclusion

Drilling in the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain would result in the destruction of some of the country’s most critical wildlife and Alaskan native subsistence uses. It is also extremely unpopular. A recent poll from Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication found that 70 percent of American voters oppose drilling in the refuge. The bottom line is that the Arctic Refuge drilling rider would undermine the management purposes of the Arctic Refuge and has no business being included in the final tax bill.

Jenny Rowland is the research and advocacy manager for Public Lands at the Center for American Progress.

The author would like to thank Chester Hawkins, Shanée Simhoni, and Tricia Woodcome for their contributions to this column.

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