[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 41 (Thursday, March 17, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1840-S1841]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Ms. MURKOWSKI (for herself and Mr. Begich):
  S. 628. A bill to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to convey a 
railroad right of way between North Pole, Alaska, and Delta Junction, 
Alaska, to the Alaska Railroad Corporation; to the Committee on Energy 
and Natural Resources.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation 
that really has been 97 years in the making, legislation to authorize 
the land conveyances needed to permit the Alaska Railroad to be 
extended another 80 miles southeastward.
  On March 12, 1914, Congress originally approved the Alaska Railroad 
Organic Act that authorized the construction of up to 1,000 miles of 
mainline track in Alaska, an effort to tie coastal Alaska with the 
Interior of my State. During the past century 470 miles of mainline 
track has been built tying Seward, Whittier and Anchorage located on 
either Prince William Sound or Cook Inlet with Fairbanks and Eielson 
Air Force base that is located just south of Fairbanks in the Interior 
of Alaska. Since 1923 when the current mainline track was finished 
being installed, there has been a dream by many to extend the railroad 
further, perhaps all the way to the Canadian border 270 miles away so 
the railroad could eventually be tied into North America's trans-
continental rail network.
  Today, joined by my colleague, Senator Mark Begich of Alaska, I 
introduce legislation to only authorize the land conveyances from the 
Federal Government to permit the railroad to reach Delta Junction, 
Alaska.
  The reasons for the extension are many.
  One reason is that the Department of Defense has large military 
training areas south of the Tanana River between Fairbanks and Delta 
Junction--some of the best areas for joint Army and Air Force training 
in the nation. Access to the Joint Pacific Area Range Complex, JPARC, 
is currently limited to ice roads in winter, but a railroad extension 
would permit vehicles to travel by low-cost rail to a staging area for 
joint military exercises that could be built immediately south of the 
river, reducing the time and cost of military exercises and permitting 
year-round training to occur more readily.
  Delta Junction, the home of Ft. Greely, is also the site of an anti-
missile defense installation that could also benefit from access to 
rail transportation.
  Rail service to the area also would permit existing agricultural, 
mining and petrochemical industries to obtain supplies, reducing wear 
and tear on the Richardson Highway, currently the only means of access 
to the region. It would improve the economics for several mining 
deposits located along the 80-mile rail extension right of way, and 
should the railroad ever be extended further toward the border, it 
would open more than a dozen other known mineralized areas to potential 
economic development. A railroad would provide safer all-weather 
transportation than highways given Alaska's severe winter weather 
driving conditions.
  Planning for such a rail extension has been underway for a number of 
years. In January 2010 the Surface Transportation Board approved the 
Environmental Impact Statement for the

[[Page S1841]]

rail extension. That means that a route already has been identified. 
This means that the estimate that this extension will require only 
roughly 950 acres of land to be purchased/conveyed to the railroad is a 
firm requirement based on an approved rail route and corridor.
  The bill I introduce requires the railroad to pay the full appraised 
value for the land--an appraisal performed by an appraiser mutually 
acceptable to the Secretary of the Interior and the railroad--unless 
the government accepts railroad replacement property in lieu of cash 
payment. It requires the railroad to pay all surveying costs of the 
land transfer--surveying the largest likely cost of any land conveyance 
by the Federal Government. The bill models the transfer on the 1982 
legislation that conveyed the railroad from Federal ownership to the 
State-based Alaska Railroad Corp., since there are now nearly 30 years 
of precedent and practice that should make the land conveyance issues 
involved in a rail extension clearer and easier to resolve.
  This bill since it allows the secretary only to clear a right of way 
corridor does not impact the lone controversy that I am aware of 
involving the extension. That is the exact location of a bridge needed 
for the rail line to cross the Tanana River near Salcha. It is 
certainly my hope that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers early this 
spring will follow the route approved in January 2010 and locate the 
bridge near Salcha, where it was cleared to go by the Surface 
Transportation Board after a four-year environmental review of the 
project. But whether the Corps approves the route, or whether EPA 
presses its concerns about the bridge, the bill will still be needed to 
authorize the right-of-way corridor over whatever final route wins 
approval.
  For a host of reasons, it makes sense for the Alaska Railroad to be 
permitted to advance this extension, the first major extension of the 
railroad's track bed in Alaska since lines were run to Whittier during 
World War II in 1943. My hope is that this bill will receive a 
thoughtful review by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee 
and be approved by Congress during the 112th Congress.
                                 ______