Opponents of Alaskan statehood
in the 1950s feared a state would continue to be a subsidized ward
of the federal government. Supporters argued that once it was a
state, Alaska would make its own decisions, attract new business
and become less dependent on the federal government.
Statehood may have come to Alaska in 1959, but the 49th state
continues to be subsidized by Uncle Sam. Its principal businesses
are still located in Seattle and Portland, not Anchorage or Juneau.
Alaska Airlines, one of the backbones of Alaska’s
transportation system, is headquartered in Seattle. The Alaska
Northwest Publishing Co., a major publisher of books on Alaska, is
headquartered in Portland.
Now we have Alaska Republican
Rep. Don Young’s $223 million “bridge to nowhere” as a prime
example of the federal subsidies still sought by the 671,000 souls
who rattle around in a state twice the size of Texas.
Young’s bridge is just one of 120 “special projects” for
Alaska in the $286 billion transportation bill recently passed by
Congress. Alaska’s “special projects” total $1 billion
– the third largest appropriation in the nation behind
California and Illinois.
Oh, did I mention that Sen. Ted
Stevens, R-Alaska, chairs the powerful Senate Appropriations
Committee? Those “conservative” Alaskans know how to bring home the
bacon.
Alaska has been on the federal dole since 1867,
when William Seward persuaded Congress to appropriate $7.2 million
to buy the territory from the Russians. Called “Seward’s
Folly” at the time, Alaska has repaid that sum many times over in
natural resources alone. But the sparsely populated state is huge.
Just providing basic necessities is expensive, and the
infrastructure to support human settlement would not exist without
financial help from the federal government.
Which brings
us to Don Young’s infamous $223 million bridge. It’s
not really a bridge to nowhere. It will span the Tongass Narrows
from Revillagigedo Island, where the town of Ketchikan is located,
to neighboring Gravina Island. There aren’t many flat spots
in mountainous southeast Alaska, but Gravina Island is one of the
few. Decapitated by scouring glaciers and further flattened by D-9
Cats, Gravina Island is the home of Ketchikan’s small, but
busy, international airport.
The folks in Ketchikan get
to and from their airport the way most Southeast Alaskans get
around from island to island — by ferry. Buses from hotels
drive onto the ferry, cross the narrows in less than seven minutes
and are driven to the terminal. Locals simply park in Ketchikan,
walk onto the ferry, cross the narrows and walk to the airport
terminal.
Young wants to build a bridge so people can
drive right to the airport terminal without waiting for a ferry.
Sounds easy, right? But this is Alaska. Nothing is simple.
The Tongass Narrows is the main route along the Inside
Passage from Seattle to Juneau. Any bridge built directly adjacent
to the airport and high enough to allow shipping to pass underneath
will rise hundreds of feet in the air — right next to an
airport runway where dark, rainy, wind-swept or fog-shrouded
instrument landings are the rule rather than the exception,
especially in Alaska’s long winter. Such a bridge would be a
prescription for a terrible disaster.
So Alaska
Department of Transportation officials moved the whole project six
miles south of town. It’s well away from the airport approach
path, but the roundabout trip by vehicle over the proposed bridge
will now take about as much time as the ferry trip.
So
why build this $223 million bridge if the ferries are adequate and
no time is saved? This is Alaska! Gravina Island is rare, valuable
flat land. While ferries may be adequate for airport passengers,
only a bridge will create the automobile access necessary to
develop the rest of the island as a commercial area.
There isn’t enough capital in Alaska — public or
private — to finance what Alaskans want to do in their state.
Like many of the people in the American West, they simply demand
that Uncle Sam serve as their banker instead.
For
Westerners, this is nothing new. From the construction of the
transcontinental railroad after the Civil War and the below-cost
timber sales on the national forests after World War II to spur
housing, to the Bureau of Reclamation dams in the Southwest and the
Corps of Engineers power dams in the Northwest, the economic
development of the West has been financed by the federal treasury,
not Wall Street.
In Alaska, large public investments must
precede private investment. This is fervently believed by people
who think of themselves as rugged individualists, defenders of free
enterprise and opponents of entitlements — for everyone but
themselves.
Russell Sadler is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). He is a writer in Eugene,
Oregon.
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