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Show Page 6 The Utah ' The Paper That Dares To Take A Stand Independent December 27, 1973 The Dan Sm oot Report Continued from Page 1 in the areas involved. Hence, Alyeska specialists had to find the seeds and fertilizers best suited for fast revegetation in the hostile climate. Alyeska teams conducted a survey of fish in all 350 streams to be the first such scientific study ever made, in many instances crossed to make sure that neither construction activities nor permanent pipeline operations would block migration or disrupt spawning. Specialists studied the habits of the Dali sheep, the bear, the moose, and the two great caribou herds of Alaska. In most areas y where migrating herds normally cross the proposed route, the pipeline would be buried. In the crossing areas where the 48-inpipe had to be above ground, ramps and underpasses were to be provided for the animals. Alyeska set up a simulated pipeline with underpasses and ramps and observed the reaction of the animals, to make sure the installation did not hinder or disturb them. Ornithologists studied the route of the pipeline to make sure that none of the construction or operating activities associated with it would harm birds. Alyeska even moved one of its communication sites after discovering that it might be too close to the nest of a peregrine falcon. Alyeska Pipeline Service Company commissioned the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska to make a biological and for information needed to physical study of the harbor at Valdez avoid any potential pollution problems in the Gulf of Alaska during loading of oil tankers at the pipeline terminal. The extensive ecological research financed by Alyeska has already provided a great deal of previously unavailable information about the Alaskan wilderness, and may well result in an improvement of mans relationship with the Alaskan environment. It was a daring, thrilling, and impressive undertaking in one of the most remote regions of the earth, where nights are long and daylight hours brief for months each year, and the climate is incredibly harsh. On September 11, 1969, the State of Alaska auctioned off to oil companies $900 million worth of oil leases. Alyeska Pipeline Service pipeline Company then applied for permits to construct the 800-mil- e in The lands federal that its the across company planned to lay path. spend a billion dollars, to mobilize some ten thousand workers and assemble a colossal assortment of expensive machinery, and to start the oil flowing in three years. The Radicals Stop It All But the project never got under way. It was blocked in federal courts by activist lawyers representing three small but militant environmental groups, using the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 as their weapon. The first assault on the pipeline, however, had been made earlier in 1969, even before the environmental law was passed. Under the legal tutelage of Ramsey Clark and Arthur Goldberg, and with the support of environmentalists generally, a small group of militant Alaskan natives filed suit to prohibit federal permits for the pipeline. The militants called themselves the Alaska Federation of Natives, and said they spoke for the 53,000 Eskimos, Indians, and Aleuts who constitute Alaskas native population. They laid claim to most of the 365 million acres of Alaska and to all minerals beneath those acres. Ramsey Clark and Arthur Goldberg registered as lobbyists for the militants and testified in support of their claims. With this preposterous claim these radical lawyers blocked in y federal court the granting of pipeline permits until Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. This law gave the 53,000 Alaska natives S462.5 million immediately, plus S500 million to be paid to them from state and federal mineral revenues after production in the Alaskan field begins, plus ownership title to 40 million acres of land. Then the militant natives deserted their supporters, the militant environmentalists. With a guarantee of $500 million in revenue after the oil starts flowing, the natives want it to flow. The radical environmentalists, however, have made it quite clear that they do not want an Alaskan pipeline under any conditions. They do not want oil production in Alaska. Though most of them have never been in Alaska, they refer to it as our last great wilderness. They want to - right-of-wa- ch - right-of-wa- from any kind of use keep it that way a barren wilderness, barred revenue commissioner for by human beings. As Eric E. Wohlforth, to the State of Alaska, puts it: The environmentalists are trying lock up Alaska forever. The Environment Club Act was passed By the time the Alaska Native Claim Settlement needed their (December 14, 1971), the environmentalists no longer erstwhile cohorts, the Alaska Federation of Natives. The environ- mentalists had, and were using, the club they needed: the National Environmental Policy Act signed into law at an elaborate White House ceremony on New Years Day, 1970. On April 13, 1970, six attorneys representing the Wilderness Defense Society, Friends Of The Earth, and the Environmental Fund, Inc., of New York, obtained from U.S. District Court Judge George A. Hart Jr., in Washington, D.C., a preliminary injunction a construction prohibiting the Secretary of the Interior from granting issued on the permit for the Alaska pipeline. The injunction was with ground that the Department of the Interior had not complied environmenthe National Environmental Policy Act by filing an adequate tal-impact statement. It took the Interior Department almost two years to prepare and file such an impact statement. On January 24, 1972, the Annual Report of the Presidents Council of Economic Advisers said: The development of the . . . Alaska oil field and transportation of the oil to the West Coast would save the nation $15 billion to $17 billion during the expected life of the field. In February, 1972, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce characterized the Alaska pipeline as offering perhaps the greatest single opportunity for new cargoes and new jobs that had ever been opened to the American maritime fleet. The Secretary said: A fleet of some 30 new supertankers would be needed to carry North Slope oil from southern Alaska to the West Coast, and constructing them would pump an estimated $ 1 billion through the When the minimized shipbuilding industry into the economy environmental risks are weighed against the great need for the pipeline and its potential benefits, I am certain that it must be 20-ye- ar .... built. On March 20, 1972, the Interior Department released a study, called Final Environmental Statement On The Proe analysis posed Trans Alaska Pipeline , accompanied by a of economic and national security reasons for building the pipeline. Among the national security reasons specified was the need to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil. The impact statement and the analysis concluded that overriding national interests made construction of the Alaskan pipeline desirable, even though some environmental risk was involved. However, regardless of the overriding national interests, the Secretary of the Interior could not issue permits for the pipeline immediately. Under the incredible environmental law, the environmentalists had fortyrfive days to file comments on the impact statement. On May 11, 1972, at the expiration of this period, the Secretary of the Interior announced that he would issue permits for construction of the Alaska pipeline. But, again, he could not issue the permits immediately. Under court orders, he had to wait at least two weeks to give environmentalists time to prepare their legal response. Three months went by while the radical environmentalists prepared, filed, and argued their response. They finally lost in U.S. District Court. On August 17, 1972, Judge George L. Hart lifted his months had blocked permits to injunction, which for twenty-eigh- t construct the Alaska pipeline. One week later, the environmentalists appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. six-volu- three-volum- Further Outrageous Delay Then a startling thing happened. The environmental groups had legal standing to attack the Alaska pipeline only under the National Environmental Policy Act, and only on environmental grounds. All of their legal action in the case was on that basis. Environment had been the sole issue in the case. When the appellate court handed down its decision on February 21, 1973, however, the court did not deal with the environmental issue or with the National Environmental Policy Act under which the case had been brought. The appellate court held that the Secretary of the Interior cannot grant a y across Alaska unless Congress amends the Mineral Lands y Leasing Act of 1920, because this law, the court said, limits grants to narrower widths than that planned for the Alaskan pipeline. On February 27, 1973, the Secretary of the Interior said the administration would ask Congress to amend the Mineral Lands Leasing Act. No such bill was reported in the Senate until July, or in the House until August. The Secretary of the Interior also said he would appeal the appellate court decision. For more than four years, productive activity at Prudhoe Bay was stopped. The oil companies sustained a payroll for about three hundred men who remain in otherwise-desertecamps to guard mountains of pipes and fleets of idle bulldozers, trucks, and other machinery. More than a billion dollars of private capital has been tied up and idled; and the nation has been denied 84 million gallons of oil a day that would have been flowing through the pipeline more than a year ago. It will take at least three years to complete the Alaska pipeline after construction starts. The cost (originally estimated at $1 billion) is now being estimated at more than $2 billion. But militants (environmental and otherwise) are still dedicated to stopping the Alaska pipeline, and will not quit trying. Note a comment on November 13, 1973, by Vernon Bellecourt, field director of the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.), a organization which victimizes rather than represents American Indians. Belle-cou- rt was in Dallas to participate (at one of the citys junior colleges) right-of-wa- right-of-wa- d ist THE DAM FACTOR Everyone knows that Egypt possesses missiles of hitting Tel Aviv, capable and wonders why the Egyptians havent used them. The simple answer is that Israel holds a dissuasion more frightful than the The great Aswan Dam on the upper Nile, which holds back an estimated 164 billion tons of water in the 350-milong Lake Nasser, is only 550 miles from Cairo. Some thirty million Egyptians live in the Nile Valley. If an ordinary bomb were to hit the Aswan H-bo- le with the immense pressure of water behind it, a wave would sweep down the heavily populated valley and pour over Cairo, carrying forty million square yards of concrete and granite along with it. If that monster wall of water was unleashed by Dam 36-fo- ot a nuclear bomb, which Israel is believed to possess, the billions of tons of water that would sweep northward and over Cairo would also be radioactive. The were Egyptians advised that Israels Phantoms, Sky hawks, and Mirages were all capable of hitting the dam, or it could be destroyed by the Jericho missile, and that Israel would not hesitate to hit the dam if Tel Aviv were struck by a single rocket. The Review Of The News Peace mightily with men. with God helps in living peaceably God Himself cannot undo the past, but He can and does give new opportunities. NATIONAL SUICIDE Military Aid to the Soviet Union by Antony C. Sutton You may read this book and think the author "dreamed a dream that could not be." For Antony Sutton, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, proves that there is no such thing as Soviet technology only American and allied technology on Soviet -- soil. Technology that killed American boys m Korea and Vietnam. Bndqcbuilding to Com- munist Russia is nothing new. It started early in 1918. With mountains of documentation Mr Sutton shows that 90 to 95 percent ot Soviet technology since 1918 has come from America and its allies . . . that weve built for, or sold, or traded, or qiven outright to the Communists everything from ")pner wring and motor vehicles to combat tanks, missile equipment and computers . . . that we are today giving equipment to build the world's larqest heavy truck plant (output: luO.WiG ten ton trucks per ypar more than all U.S. manu-taturers produce in a year) . . . that "peaceful trade" is a myth that to the Soviets all goods ire strateqic. All this, to create and maintain an enemy that we . . . annually spend $80 billion to defend aqainst. National Suicide, researched for over ten years, mentions scores of products passed on to the Soviets (down to the desiqn specifications, m some cases). 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