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thinking that we can do much more than to ameliorate some of the more serious effects. We are not going to be able to prevent most of them. We are not going to be able to halt most of them, and we are going to irreversibly change the area. And I don't regard that as a negative message. I think that it is wise to face the decision squarely. And it is a complicated social decision. You have to weigh and balance the costs and benefits.

I think the fundamental problem is that we assume that oil is a more important and more valuable resource than the other environmental resources of the coastal plain. And in our view that is not correct.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Fisher?

Mr. FISHER. I might add this. In addition to a much more thorough assessment of the environmental pros and cons, I think there ought also to be a pointed and very careful assessment of alternative sources of oil supply whether in the positive sense of finding the oil elsewhere or improving the conservation programs one way or another and save the equivalent amount in that way. And it seems to me that ought to precede any leasing program. Indeed, these findings might bear heavily on the restrictions and so on that conceivably could go into a leasing program.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your testimony. Again, my apologies for being absent during part of it. But I have read part of your statements, and I assure you I will have them all read carefully before we go to markup on this. Thank you very much for your attendance.

Finally, we are pleased to welcome our next panel: Celia Hunter from Fairbanks, Alaska; Debbie S. Miller also from Fairbanks; and David Brower from Berkeley, California. I guess Ms. Hunter would lead off unless you have any alternative.

STATEMENT OF CELIA M. HUNTER, FAIRBANKS, AK

Ms. HUNTER. That's fine.

My name is Celia Hunter. I am from Fairbanks, Alaska. I have lived in Alaska for 40 years.

I have been associated with the environmental movement in Alaska since the beginning of the first statewide Alaska conservation group, which was the Alaska Conservation Society, of which I was one of the founders and the executive secretary for the first 12 years of its life. The Alaska Conservation Society was founded because of the issue of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The plan to make a refuge in this northeast corner of Alaska has a historical significance that goes back certainly to immediately after World War II. The first people who were involved in setting this area aside or in the research which led to its delineation were Dr. Frank Fraser Darling of England, who is a noted ecologist in England; Lowell Sumner who was a biologist associated with the National Park Service; and George Collins, who was a planner for the National Park Service. These men did a lot of research in the area-on-the-ground research-during the period around 1949 to 1950. And as a result of that, they had determined that this area

represented one of best areas for preservation on the whole arctic coast.

Many people have followed them in studying that, and among them are Olaus and Marty Murie who were in the Sheenjak River valley in 1956 on a reconnaissance, a biological reconnaissance, from which Olaus, who was then the head of the Wilderness Society, eventually drew the boundaries for the original Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which was prior to the ANILCA legislation which expanded it considerably.

The wilderness values in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are enormous. And they center on the coastal plain. It is as impossible to remove the coastal plain from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as it would be to take out the central valley of Denali National Park, the road corridor, and then say that you would have made no effect on the value of Denali National Park. In both cases these areas, while they may not be the most scenic in the park or in the refuge, are of inestimable value in wildlife habitat, and it is quite impossible to eliminate them without serious effects on the wildlife in the region.

I think that the importance of the coastal plain in this respect may not have been brought out to the members of your committee when you decided to go for oil development because I think that there has been a lot of gagging, shall we say, of the people within some of the agencies of government, both State and Federal, in terms of making a decision first and then seeking to find justification for it later.

I think one of the things that is evidence of this came out in a paper of a staff meeting that Robert Gilmore, who was then the regional director of the Fish and Wildlife service in Alaska, where he is stating that if it is true that oil and gas development on the Arctic Refuge is going to decrease the caribou populations 20 to 40 percent, let's face it. In that case development would be unacceptable, and there would not have been a recommendation for development.

The question of how much the caribou population will decrease if their calving grounds are disturbed and if their entire habitat-I have seen the animals of the porcupine caribou herd as far west as the Canning River. So, they obviously use that entire area from time to time. This was in the middle of the summer.

And I think that we have to recognize that we need the facts on the other values in this refuge if we are going to make a good decision about whether it should be developed or not. And I am afraid that the facts that are needed are not being brought out in part because the top level officials have decided in their own minds that this is going forward and, therefore, they don't want any interference with that decision.

I would also echo the uselessness of stipulations and permits in the case of protecting the land. I have one paper here which is very brief. It is talking about the gravel deposits that were taken out in the situation of the Kaktovik KIC well which is very close to the town of Kaktovik, and where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel who went up there to study both the gravel storage sites and the gravel pit determined that numerous violations of stipulations had occurred and that much of the activity was without permit.

I am afraid that there is a great gap between what you get on paper and what you actually have the bulldozer drivers observing. And I have seen this happen all the way along. And certainly it was true in the construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline. It has been true in the work in Prudhoe Bay, and I think it would be equally true-it has been true in the one well that has been drilled so far on the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

I think when the statement is made that this panel and the previous panel are probably going to be a totally black and white-or try to make a black and white situation out of this, I do not favor any oil development on the coastal plain. I favor total wilderness. And I think I am as justified in seeking total wilderness as the oil company personnel who came out yesterday and declared point blank that they are in favor of 100 percent leasing of the entire 1002 area. They were not willing to compromise in any way, shape or manner. And I think to say that this is perfectly all right on the one side and to object to those of us who favor the wilderness option over development on the other side is giving a very onesided effect to the argument.

I think that until I had seen Prudhoe Bay this last summer-I have lived in Alaska a long time, and I have been up and down the pipeline haul roads. And I was a member of the Federal-State Land Use Planning Commission. But at that time Prudhoe Bay was just going. And I was utterly amazed at how much development has occurred in 15 years because that is literally the amount of time that the oil companies have had to develop Prudhoe Bay. And that complex is mind-boggling. It extends for at least 50 miles along the arctic coast there in the central part of the north slope. It extends in a depth of at least 20 to 30 miles.

And when you realize that this kind of development would be transposed almost literally onto the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, you realize that there is no opportunity for mitigating the effects. You will have a Prudhoe Bay. And while you may say that it won't occur all at once, and various statements have been made that it is going to be phased-in development effort and that sort of thing, the infrastructure that goes with oil exploration and development, the use of gravel to make pads for roads, pipelines and that sort of thing, the use of water, 15 million gallons of water to drill one well, mean that there is going to be significant impacts no matter how slowly they go ahead. And there is no evidence that there will be any lack of speed in going ahead to get out oil if oil exists there.

And I just simply cannot see the value. I think there is a value in the wilderness, a value in that of total ecosystem to the United States, to the whole world, which has not been recognized in this legislation. And I think the decision needs to back up and look at whether or not this should be developed, rather than saying if it is developed, what are we going to do about it.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Hunter follows:]

STATEMENT FOR HEARING BEFORE THE SENATE ENERGY COMMITTEE

WASHINGTON, D.C. OCT. 15, 1987

Prepared by Celia M. Hunter, 1819 Muskox Trail, Fairbanks, Ak

99709. speaking for herself.

My name is Celia M. Hunter, and my home is Fairbanks, Alaska, where I have lived since arriving there forty years ago, on Jan. 1, 1947. Like most Alaskans, I just came up to look around, and wound up becoming a part of the country.

I came to Alaska as a pilot, ferrying a war surplus airplane up the Alaska Highway from Seattle to Fairbanks during December, 1946. During World War II, I served as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), in the Ferrying Division of the Air Transport Command. However, in wartime, the WASP had not been permitted to fly into Alaska via the Northwest Staging Route, so another ex-WASP and I jumped at the opportunity to fly this route, even in the dead of winter.

Over the years, I have seen enormous changes take place in Alaska. When we landed in Fairbanks, it was a town of only 5,000 residents, and was the jumping off place for the whole northern part of Alaska. Only the Steese Highway, terminating at the Yukon River at Circle, extended north of town. The Alcan Highway had been completed a short five years earlier, and had just opened to civilian traffic.

The Alaskan bush country was much the same as it had been when white people first came. Native villages were very small, and most of the inhabitants still followed a subsistence way of life, hunting, fishing, picking berries and building with wood found nearby.

My early impressions in flying over the wilderness north and west of Fairbanks was one of awe at the vastness of this seemingly untouched land. It was easy to imagine that nothing could really change this country, even though I was familiar with the extensive scarring of the landscape around Fairbanks caused by the mining dredges in their quest for gold.

There were few people in Alaska who thought of themselves as conservationists in the late 40s and early 50s, and no organized

conservation movement.

The only areas which had been given permanent

protection by Congress were Mt. McKinley National Park, and the two National

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It is worth remarking that as early as 1950, certain far-sighted individuals were risking their necks flying about the Arctic Coastal plain and the Brooks Range in the northeast corner of Alaska, thinking about how best to preserve a generous portion of this unique mountain and tundra ecosystem for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.

These men: George Collins, a National Park Service planner, Lowell Sumner, a biologist, and Dr. Frank Fraser Darling, an outstanding English ecologist with extensive experience in the Scottish Highlands, made up this team. Dr. Darling was impressed with the similarities between northern Alaska and the Highlands of Scotland, because he saw in them the richness and variety of flora and fauna typical of the Scottish mountains before they were overrun with domesticated sheep.

Olaus Murie, a wildlife biologist who had done extensive work on caribou in the early 1920s, and his wife, Mardy, who had grown up in Fairbanks from 1909 through the early 20s, followed the initial exploration work and spent the summer of 1956 doing a reconnaissance in the upper Sheenjek River valley with several young biologists from the U. of Alaska.

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