[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 11 (Monday, January 28, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S330-S332]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Ms. MURKOWSKI:
S. 157. A bill to provide for certain improvements to the Denali
National Park and Preserve in the State of Alaska, and for other
purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to reintroduce legislation
that represents an important step in the conversion to renewable energy
sources in rural Alaska and towards honoring the first individual to
reach the summit of our Nation's tallest peak, Denali.
Today I introduce the Denali National Park Improvement Act of 2013,
comprised of three important provisions relating to Denali National
Park and Preserve.
The first provision is the Kantishna Hills Renewable Energy Act.
The Kantishna Roadhouse, owned by Doyon Tourism, Inc., is located 100
miles inside Denali National Park and Preserve. The settlement of
Kantishna was founded in 1905 as a mining camp near the juncture of
Eureka and Moose Creeks. Gold in the region brought a flurry of
prospectors in the early days, but as the gold began to run out, so did
interest in mining the Kantishna Hills. The original roadhouse at
Kantishna was built in the early 1900s, serving as a private residence,
a community center, post office, and informal hotel accommodations for
those who visited Kantishna in Denali Park.
The Roadhouse, like many structures within Denali National Park, is
entirely off the grid and generates all of
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its electricity needs with a diesel generator. As a result, all guests
and supplies, including diesel, are trucked through the park to the
Roadhouse over National Park roads. The construction of the micro hydro
project would allow the Roadhouse to cut down their diesel usage by
approximately 50 percent, which would result in a decrease in diesel
truck traffic on the Park Road, improved local air quality, and less
sound pollution in this remote area, as well as reduce disturbance and
vehicle impacts on park wildlife, allowing for an enhanced visitor
experience for tourists within the National Park.
My bill will authorize the National Park Service to exchange roughly
10 acres of National Park land for an equivalent amount of land
currently owned by Doyon Tourism, and would allow the National Park
Service to obtain the highly desired Galena tract of land, located just
off the Park Road in the Kantishna region. Doyon Tourism would obtain
land over which the hydro project would be implemented. In the interim
period, prior to completion of the land exchange, the National Park
Service will issue a permit to allow Doyon Tourism, Inc., to construct
the micro hydro unit.
I want to emphasize how important I believe that this bill is. The
benefit to the citizens of Alaska, especially rural Alaska, of reducing
their dependence on expensive diesel generation through access to
renewable and clean sources of energy is enormous. This type of Micro-
Hydro project within Denali provides an excellent blueprint for others
around the State to follow suit.
The next portion of my bill will allow a natural gas pipeline to be
placed inside Denali National Park. I am reintroducing legislation that
I first offered in 2009 and that passed the Senate, but not the House
of Representatives in the 112 Congress, which will authorize a right-
of-way for construction of an Alaska instate natural gas pipeline to
run along the State's main highway from Fairbanks to Anchorage. This
bill will provide a right-of-way for a natural gas pipeline near the
shoulder of the Parks Highway for the roughly 7 miles that the highway
runs through Denali National Park and Preserve.
I wish to explain why I am introducing the bill now, and why, rather
than being an infringement on Alaska's most famous national park, the
measure is actually the favored route by many in the environmental
community to bring natural gas from the foothills of Alaska's North
Slope to Southcentral and coastal Alaska.
While many in this body have heard about plans for a large-volume
natural gas pipeline to run from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields to the
Lower 48 States, the project for which many in this body voted to
approve a loan guarantee, tax credits and permitting improvements in
2004, there is concern that the big pipeline will not be finished in
time to get gas to Southcentral Alaska, gas that is vital for electric
generation in Fairbanks, Anchorage, the Mat-Su Borough and Kenai
Peninsula. Currently electricity in Alaska's southern Railbelt, as it
is called, is largely generated by burning natural gas that has been
produced since the 1960s from the gas fields in Cook Inlet, south of
Anchorage. But production from Cook Inlet, while the province
theoretically holds far more gas, has been falling for years, currently
by about 10 percent annually. A major fertilizer plant near Kenai, for
example, had to close in 2007 because there was not enough natural gas
being produced to allow it to obtain the raw product it needed for urea
production at a reasonable price.
While there are contract issues and storage concerns involving
getting sufficient gas quantities for Railbelt utilities starting as
early as next year, there are serious concerns about the ability of the
region to produce sufficient gas for electric generation and home
heating for Alaska's most populated area as early as the winter of
2014-15, and especially by the winter of 2015-2016.
To provide a new, reliable natural gas supply, one proposal, is the
so-called ``bullet'' gas pipeline that involves constructing a
relatively small diameter-natural gas line, probably 24-inches in size,
to run from Alaska's North Slope region, past Fairbanks along the Parks
Highway, and terminate near Wasilla, Alaska. This pipeline would tie
into existing transmission systems and would bring about 500 million
cubic feet of gas a day to Southcentral Alaska. This project could be
completed well in advance of when a larger-diameter pipeline might be
in service to deliver 4 to 4.5 billion cubic feet a day to Lower 48
markets or a different project could bring between 3 and 4.5 billion
cubic feet a day to tidewater in Alaska before the gas could be
liquefied for water-borne deliveries. Given the pace of planning for
construction of a larger line project, it is unlikely that a larger
Alaska natural gas pipeline will be able to deliver gas until 2022 or
later 6 or more years too late to aid Southcentral Alaska's growing
need for natural gas.
There are several potentially competing proposals for a small-
diameter, in-state gas pipeline. I have just described the ``bullet''
line proposal along the Parks Highway. A second proposal would run a
similarly sized pipeline along the Richardson and Glenn Highways to the
east, also tying into existing transmission systems near Palmer,
Alaska. There are advantages to both routes, the Parks route delivering
gas to communities along the Parks Highway while perhaps providing
clean natural gas to Denali National Park, while the Richardson/Glenn
project would help provide economic activity to differing towns, such
as Delta and Glennallen to the east. Now there is a third proposal by
Fairbanks Pipeline Co. based on the assumption that routes for either
of the two larger ``bullet'' lines won't be available in time to meet
gas demand. That project would build a ``mini'' 12-inch line from the
North Slope to Fairbanks to supply the Interior with natural gas and
not attempt to provide any gas for use in southern areas of the state.
It is not my desire to prejudge the outcome of which project or route
should be selected, since that decision will be made by Alaska state
regulators and financial markets. It is my desire, however, to
reintroduce legislation that would clear the lone legal impediment to
planning for the Parks Highway route, that being how to get the gas
economically through the mountainous central region of the State past
Denali National Park and Preserve.
According to a 2008 analysis of routing options through this area,
there are three feasible routes for a pipeline through or around the
roughly 10-mile bottleneck of the Nenana River Canyon and Denali
National Park and Preserve. The shortest and most logical route follows
the existing highway through this entire area, 7-miles of which passes
through Denali National Park. This route causes the least environmental
and visual impact due to its location in an existing corridor, and
provides a route that is easily accessible for routine pipeline
maintenance. A second feasible pipeline route diverts from the highway
to stay outside of the national park boundaries on the east, but in so
doing skirts along a steep hillside that dominates a park visitor's
view. A third route proposed in 2009 would travel far to the west
around the national park, increasing costs, and potentially moving
natural gas closer to proposed mineral ventures in southwest Alaska.
Either of the latter two proposals will create a new disturbed corridor
in remote locations, and will cause pipeline operation issues and
reliability challenges due to the remoteness and the ruggedness of the
routes. The route that avoids the park to the east is estimated to cost
twice as much as the route along the highway and through the park. The
western route's cost has been harder to quantify.
Besides being less expensive to construct and operate, the pipeline
along the existing, previously disturbed Parks Highway right-of-way,
could well allow electricity generation for the park facilities at
Denali to come from natural gas. And for the first time reasonably
priced compressed natural gas, CNG, could become available to power
park vehicles, another environmental benefit of the Parks Highway
route. Currently National Park Service permitted diesel tour buses
travel 1 million road miles annually taking visitors into the park.
Converting the buses to operate on CNG can significantly reduce air
emissions in the park. A third benefit is that for the pipe to cross
the Nenana River, not far from the park's entrance, will require a
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new bridge to be built that could carry not just the pipe, but provide
a new pedestrian access/bicycle path for visitors that today need to
walk along the heavily traveled highway rather than on separated,
pedestrian path toward visitors attractions and nearby hotels. In all
probability the installation work will be conducted in the shoulder
seasons to make sure there are no visitor dislocations for tourists
visiting the park.
For those reasons and others, a group of eight environmental groups:
The National Parks and Conservation Association, the Alaska
Conservation Alliance, the Denali Citizens Council, The Wilderness
Society, Cook Inlet Keeper, the Alaska Center for the Environment, the
Wrangell Mountain Center and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance in 2009
generally supported the granting of a gas line right-of-way through
Denali Park, along the existing highway right-of-way.
The granting of a permanent 20-foot easement, and probably a 100-foot
construction easement, is not precedent setting. The National Park
Service already has granted a permit for an installed fiber-optic cable
along the same basic alignment for an Alaska communications company.
Obviously the exact right-of-way will have to be delineated to avoid
the existing cable and to accommodate park goals, such as routing
around a vernal pond viewing area located along the general right-of-
way. Just earlier this year the 112 Congress gave approval for a
similar bill that allows a gas line to pass through Glacier National
Park in Montana.
I am proposing this bill simply to authorize the right-of-way for a
Parks Highway route soon so that the decision on which route is best
for the state and its citizens--if the ``bullet line option is chosen--
can be made based on greater certainty in the cost estimates and the
timing for a project. Removing the uncertainty of permitting and
regulatory delays will at least permit the Parks Highway route to be on
a level playing field with the Richardson and Glenn Highway or other
potential projects. The State of Alaska in 2010 finished a preliminary
study of the project and continues to consider whether to permit and
finance a ``bullet'' line project, compared to other options, including
importing liquefied natural gas or building other renewable energy
project to attempt to meet Southcentral power needs in the future. But
approval of the right-of-way would remove a key unknown and allow the
decision on which project makes the most sense for all Alaskans to be
made without fear that right-of-way acquisition delays could inflate
costs unreasonably.
If the Parks route is chosen and the project proceeds, then the
national park may well benefit from the environmental benefits of
natural gas and compressed natural gas being more readily available for
park activities, cutting air quality concerns, and improving pedestrian
access--depending upon final economic considerations involving the cost
and location for a gas conditioning plant.
In 2009 when this bill was first introduced, it was modified after
initial introduction to meet all concerns voiced by the environmental
community and congressional staff and the National Parks Service. The
version being reintroduced in this joint bill was approved unanimously
by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and added to the
American Clean Energy Leadership Act that passed from the Committee on
June 17, 2009, and again on Dec. 17, 2011. The provision, according to
the Congressional Budget Office, had nominal--less than $5,000 in cost
impacts--when scored.
I truly believe there are no environmental issues with this
legislation. I think anyone who has ever traveled on the Parks Highway
in Alaska through Denali National Park would agree, and I hope it can
be approved by Congress early in the 113 session given the increasing
severity of the need for power generation in the Alaska Railroad in
coming years.
The third and final section of my bill is the Walter Harper Talkeetna
Ranger Station Renaming Act.
The Talkeetna Ranger Station, which is the home of Denali National
Park's mountaineering rangers, sits just about 100 miles south of the
entrance to the park. Of course, the landmark that's most commonly
linked to both the park and the ranger station itself happens to be the
mountain that features a summit which represents the highest point in
North America: Denali. In fact, anybody who intends to attempt a climb
of Mt. McKinley is required to first stop at the Talkeetna Ranger
Station for their permit and mountain orientation.
It is only fitting, then, that we honor the memory of Alaska Native
Walter Harper by forever linking his name with this specific ranger
station. It was Mr. Harper that 100 years ago next year became the
first person to reach the summit of Mt. McKinley.
My bill is a simple one, and it is not likely to gain much notice
outside of Alaska. Within my home state, however, this small gesture
means a great deal. Alaskans, like the people who call any other state
home, are proud of the historical accomplishments of their fellow
Alaskans. Walter Harper was one such Alaskan, and his feat is one that
will always be remembered.
Certainly, officially designating the Talkeetna Ranger Station--the
very building where any hiker today planning to climb Mt. McKinley is
required to first stop--the Walter Harper Talkeetna Ranger Station is a
fitting tribute to the man himself, as well as his spot in our state's
history books.
June 7 of next year, 2013, will mark the 100 year anniversary of Mr.
Harper's historic climb. It would truly be special for Alaska and
Alaskans to have this designation in place by that date.
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