Alaska Delegation Continues Push for Federal Re-Approval of the Ambler Access Project
Anchorage, Alaska— U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Representative Mary Sattler Peltola (D-Alaska) today sent a letter to Secretary Deb Haaland expressing their disappointment and frustration with the Department of the Interior’s (Department) politicization and continued delay of the Ambler Access Project (AAP), which is needed to facilitate road access to the world-class Ambler Mining District in northwest Alaska.
The delegation’s letter coincides with the closure of the public comment period for the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the AAP, which was necessitated by the Department’s decision last year to seek a voluntary court remand of the permits issued to the project. Despite claiming its supplemental analysis would be complete this year, the Department is already months behind schedule.
“Both Alaska and the nation need the jobs, revenues, and minerals that the AAP would facilitate access to. ANILCA mandates this project’s approval, and BLM’s extensive analysis indicates that it can be responsibly constructed with reasonable protections. Approving the AAP would deliver significant economic and security benefits for Alaska and the U.S. Rejecting the AAP, or approving it in a non-viable manner, would cost us those benefits, prolong our deep dependence on foreign minerals, and magnify the vulnerabilities and atrocities associated with it.”
In their letter, the delegation explained how Congress intended the AAP to receive expeditious approval:
“Instead of lifting [Public Land Orders], however, BLM has left them in place. Instead of the one- to two-year process envisioned and required by ANILCA, the AAP is now in its eighth year of federal permitting. Instead of the analysis prescribed by ANILCA, BLM remains involved and is now voluntarily in the midst of an SEIS. Further, despite your testimony earlier this year…assuring Congress that the SEIS was on track, and the schedule the Interior Department provided to the courts when seeking a voluntary remand, BLM has failed to keep the schedule and has fallen months behind, making it impossible to complete this process by the end of calendar year 2023.”
The delegation criticized the 1,283-page draft SEIS for exceeding the scope of the court’s remand. Despite telling the court that the agency would primarily focus on two specific considerations, BLM has reopened nearly its entire analysis, seeking to magnify the potential environmental impacts of the project while minimizing discussion of its economic benefits.
“We urge BLM to recognize the AAP, which has not yet been constructed, is clearly not responsible for existing fish and wildlife declines. The AAP’s proponents have committed to robust mitigation measures that will help avoid impacts to local resources, and the draft SEIS must recognize that restricted-use haul roads in Alaska can and historically have been carefully constructed and operated to protect the surrounding environment.”
The delegation next pointed to the urgent need for domestic sources of the minerals within the Ambler Mining District, which include copper, cobalt, gallium, and germanium. Projects to develop those minerals will be subject to a separate permitting process, but none will be able to proceed without a private haul road to transport ore to the Dalton Highway.
“While the U.S. has no apparent strategy to ensure a stable domestic supply of these commodities, the Ambler District conveniently contains deposits with all four of them. The Department should thus regard the AAP as strategic infrastructure that can be safely built while simultaneously boosting Alaska’s economy, strengthening our national security, and preventing the energy transition from being abruptly derailed.”
The delegation also knocked BLM for the broader impacts of its interminable permitting process.
“When this administration took office in January 2021, the AAP was fully approved, a right-of-way grant had been issued to the project proponent, and regional stakeholders were able to engage in negotiations on a specific, well-defined project. Three years later, BLM’s permitting process is having a deleterious impact on Alaskans’ ability to understand what this project is, where and how it will be constructed, how it will functionally be operated, and how the environment will be protected through mitigation measures and related protocols.”
The delegation closed its letter by urging BLM to approve a new Record of Decision (ROD) for the AAP in the second quarter of 2024, to select Alternative A as its preferred alternative, and to ensure the project is approved in an economically viable manner.
The delegation’s letter is available here.
The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980 guarantees a right-of-way (ROW) across federal lands to provide access to the Ambler Mining District. Federal permitting for the AAP began in 2015 and included a rigorous environmental review and environmental and economic analysis (EEA). After holding 18 public meetings and considering over 3,000 unique public comments, in July 2020, the Secretaries of the Interior and Transportation signed a ROD selecting the Northern Alignment as the approved route for the road. That same month, after holding 21 public meetings and reviewing over 21,000 public comments, BLM and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) signed a joint ROD choosing Alternative A as the preferred alternative; subsequently BLM and National Park Service issued a 50-year ROW permit for the AAP.
In February 2022, DOI sought a voluntary court remand to conduct an SEIS for the AAP. President Biden held a roundtable on “Securing Critical Minerals for a Future Made in America” on the very same day—failing to recognize that the Ambler Mining District is one of the nation’s best options to produce them, but foreshadowing his administration’s incoherence on this issue.
The court agreed to DOI’s remand request in May 2022, but placed conditions on it to ensure it would move forward expeditiously. In June 2023, Secretary Haaland testified to Congress that permitting would be completed by the end of the year, but just days later, the administration filed a court brief announcing a delay for a new ROD until mid-2024.
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