Efforts to get authorized a medevac road between the Aleutians fishing community of King Cove and the all-weather airport at Cold Bay are picking up steam again.
Alaska’s congressional delegation has introduced new legislation in the Senate and House, and Alaska Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, D-Dillingham, has introduced House Joint Resolution 6, to express the Legislature’s support for federal bills that would provide a ground evacuation route for medical emergencies needed when inclement weather prohibits use of aircraft or boats to get patients from King Cove to Cold Bay for flights to Anchorage, 625 miles to the northeast.
King Cove is the home of Peter Pan Seafood’s year-round processing facility.
“Big storms that sometimes last for days can make King Cove’s airport unusable for months out of every year,” Edgmon said in his latest constituent newsletter. “This can lead to serious problems when someone needs to reach Cold Bay for a medevac to Anchorage
“Too many lives have been lost over the years because ailing King Cove residents couldn’t reach Cold Bay for flights to Anchorage medical facilities. The solution is simple: a single-land road crossing only about a dozen miles of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge,” Edgmon said.
The road is opposed by several environmental groups, including the Wilderness Society. In a statement released Jan. 11 by Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska regional director of The Wilderness Society, labeled new legislation by Murkowski and Sullivan “just another example of the assault on America’s public lands.”
“A report from the Arm Corps of Engineers in 2015 established that there are three modes of transportation that offer a viable alternative to a road and that one of them – an ice-capable marine vessel – would be at least 99.2 percent effective for medical evacuations,” she said. “By refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer, Senator Murkowski and Senator Sullivan are simply prolonging King Cove’s wait for improved emergency transportation.”
Legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate by Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sulllivan, both R-Alaska, plus companion legislation in the House by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, would authorize the road. “A life-saving road remains the best and only real option to help the people of King Cove,” Murkowski said. “People have died without it.”
Several environmental organizations have opposed the road because part of it would go through the wildlife refuge, saying it would pose potential adverse effects on eel grass habitat important to certain waterfowl species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service actually promotes on its website, https://www.fws.gov/refuges/profiles/recEdMore.cfm?ID=74520,
opportunities for sport hunting of waterfowl in the refuge and several companies advertise on the Internet their availability to take hunters from Cold Bay into the refuge, on websites complete with photos of hunters and dead waterfowl.
King Cove residents have been working for over 30 years to get a road corridor linking their city to the Cold Bay Airport 25 miles away.
In 2009, Congress and President Obama approved the road and a land swap of 61,000 acres from the state and the King Cove Corp. in exchange for a 206-acre, single land gravel road corridor. The deal was halted when Interior Secretary Sally Jewell rejected the land exchange on Dec. 23, 2013.
