[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 122 (Thursday, July 31, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5303-S5304]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                WAINWRIGHT DEW LINE LAND ACQUISITION ACT

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I have introduced legislation to 
authorize the Federal Government to dispose of a piece of property on 
Alaska's North Slope that it no longer needs or wants but is of great 
importance to the Inupiat residents of the North Slope.
  Specifically, I am introducing a companion bill to legislation that 
has also

[[Page S5304]]

been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by my friend and 
fellow Alaskan, Congressman Don Young. This legislation would enable 
the Olgoonik Native Village Corp. of Wainwright, AK to purchase at fair 
market value the 1,518-acre Wainwright Short Range Radar Site, SRRS, 
located in northern Alaska.
  Originally deployed as the location for a Distant Early-Warning, DEW, 
Line radar station in northern Alaska, President Harry Truman withdrew 
the site for use as a military radar station during the Cold War in 
1952. That station expanded in 1957 to enable the Air Force to track 
aircraft or rockets entering U.S. air space from the polar region. The 
station at Wainwright actually had a rather short lifespan, as its 
radars were replaced by more powerful systems in other locations 
starting in 1963.
  In the years since then, the buildings and a fuel tank farm near an 
airstrip at the site--located several miles southeast of the village of 
Wainwright on Wainwright Inlet--have been abandoned by the U.S. Air 
Force. In 1974, the site was given to the Federal Bureau of Land 
Management, BLM, to manage. In 1976, the lands, then located in the 
Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4, were formally transferred from the Air 
Force to Department of the Interior's control when the area was renamed 
as part of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. While the site over 
the years was used by the National Weather Service as a short range 
radar site, the land is no longer in Federal use and has undergone 
environmental cleanup and restoration efforts. Those efforts began in 
1998 and were completed in August 2013, with final testing and removal 
of contaminated soils expected to be finished by the end of summer 
2014.
  Management of the lands around the site has changed significantly 
with time. With passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 
1971, the Wainwright Native Village Corporation, Olgoonik, received 
title to the surface estate of about 175,000 acres surrounding the 
village. The subsurface of the lands were owned by the Arctic Slope 
Regional Corp., ASRC, part of the nearly 5 million acres that ASRC 
received from the lands claims settlement for the benefit of its nearly 
8,000 Native shareholders who live in Arctic Alaska.
  Olgoonik Corp., which has a variety of subcompanies, won the Air 
Force contract through its Specialty Contractors subsidiary, to 
demolish, clean up, and remediate the DEW Line site. Its development 
corporation has also acquired a lease on 27.5 acres of the site to 
allow its use for economic activities of benefit to the villagers. The 
company is now seeking to pay fair market value to buy the entire site, 
which would allow use of the existing fuel tank farm near the site's 
6,000-foot runway. The site could well be used in the future to support 
activities in the Arctic Ocean, a northern port becoming an issue of 
great interest in Alaska given the reduction in the Arctic ice pack and 
concerns about greater maritime transit of the Northwest Passage.
  Normally, legislation would not be needed to permit the sale of a 
surplus tract because BLM could use its existing authority to surplus 
the site and dispose of it. However, in passage of the National 
Petroleum Reserve-Alaska Act, NPR-A, in 1976 Congress included a 
provision that does not permit the BLM to dispose of property inside 
the NPR-A without congressional approval. Thus, legislation in this 
case is needed simply to permit disposition of the surplus tract.
  Under my legislation, Olgoonik will be allowed to purchase the site 
but only after the corporation pays for a required land survey and pays 
for an appraisal, based on fair market value for the property. I should 
add that this legislation is only being introduced after talks among 
the village and regional Native corporations, the city of Wainwright, 
and the Wainwright Traditional--tribal--Council resulted in signed 
resolutions of support for Olgoonik's acquisition of the site. All 
Native entities supported the legislation during a formal BLM tribal 
consultation effort that occurred on June 23, 2014, reaffirming a 
November 2013 resolution that supported the legislation and land sale/
purchase. All parties agreed to support the land acquisition after 
careful consideration of the environmental issues involved with future 
management of the tract.
  Clearly, the legislation is best for the BLM as it will relieve the 
agency of the cumbersome effort to manage the isolated parcel, which is 
located far away from other BLM land holdings inside NPR-A. It is best 
for the environment as the agreement among the corporation, city, and 
tribe will guarantee that no activities occur on the land that are not 
acceptable to village residents--the land's need for subsistence 
hunting being best protected by ownership by the Native Corporation. 
And the land sale will be best for the citizens of Wainwright and the 
entire North Slope as it will guarantee that any development activities 
will be controlled by residents of the village and not outside 
interests.
  This is the best outcome for all concerned, and I hope this 
legislation will be given swift consideration and passage by Congress.

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