John Hennessy III,
P.E.
Many communities in rural Alaska are only accessible by air or by barge, making the transport of both people and goods expensive. Jeff Weltzin is the city manager of Tanana, Alaska, which is located 130 miles west of Fairbanks, near the Yukon River. Weltzin says Tanana’s 300 residents were being severely impacted by transportation costs—which was driving up the cost of living.
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As with many major proposals, the numbers don’t quite add up just yet. Walker wanted to make up the deficit by increasing taxes, but this idea was rejected by state lawmakers. Without the additional state funding though, Alaska will have to rely on help from the federal government. By supplying $280 million in state funds on its own, Alaska would receive $1.1 billion in matching funds from federal funding. Critics of the proposal note that Alaska is currently running out of savings, and faces a $2.4 billion deficit.
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Climate change in Alaska is causing widespread environmental change that is damaging critical infrastructure. As climate change continues, infrastructure may become more vulnerable to damage, increasing risks to residents and resulting in large economic impacts.
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In the context of current and anticipated climate change, permafrost temperature has warmed significantly in northern territories and is expected to continue to rise (SNAP 2014). The stability of northern transportation infrastructure may be compromised by changes in permafrost, particularly in areas where the soil contains large amounts of ice. This may lead to negative impacts on economic development, including increasing the complexity and cost of road maintenance and the price of shipping goods in the North.
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With increased traffic expected to exceed the highway’s design capacity in the coming years, the project team was tasked with designing new lanes that will be used for both regular and high-occupancy vehicle traffic, reducing the grade on a steep approach to the northbound Eagle River Bridge, designing new bridges over the Eagle River, and creating new frontage roads.
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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Renewable energy technologies used in Alaska have included small and large hydroelectric facilities, utility-scale and distributed wind generation, geothermal and air heat pumps, and woody biomass for electricity and heating (REAP 2016, CCHRC 2016). In addition to these endemic natural resources, a previously dismissed but pervasive form of renewable energy is also increasingly being analyzed and deployed in Alaska: solar electricity generated from photovoltaic (PV) panels.
Mayor Sullivan was elected to the Anchorage Assembly in 1999 where he served three terms, including serving as Chairman during the 2006-2007 term. He was elected Mayor in 2009 and re-elected to his second and final term in 2012.
“Here we are, a country with pretty extreme debt, at these days $17 trillion and counting, so there’s going to be more and more pressure not to spend money rather than pressure to spend more money…I think our dependency on federal dollars coming in is going to decline, and so we just have to start taking care of our own needs.”
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) launched this assessment to determine the significance of Bristol Bay’s ecological resources and evaluate the potential impacts of large-scale mining on these resources. It uses the well-established methodology of an ecological risk assessment, which is a type of scientific investigation that provides technical information and analyses to foster public understanding and inform future decision making. As a scientific assessment, it does not discuss or recommend policy, legal, or regulatory decisions, nor does it outline or analyze options for future decisions.
“This map shows areas of equal seismic hazard and indicates the minimum peak horizontal ground acceleration value, a measure of the how hard the ground shakes in a given area. The map also shows locations of the 63 US nuclear power plants. The data comes from the US Geological Survey Geological Hazards Team and the US Energy Information Administration.”
-Greenpeace.org
Winter starts early in some places, and Alaska needs to be ready for snow.
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