A bridge to nowhere

Salon ^ | 09 August 2005 | Rebecca Clarren

[Lorianne]

Alaska's Gravina Island (population less than 50) will soon be connected to the megalopolis of Ketchikan (pop. 8,000) by a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate and higher than the Brooklyn Bridge. Alaska residents can thank Rep. Don Young, who just brought home $941 million worth of bacon.

A mess of thorny devil's club and salmonberries, along with an old chicken coop, surrounds the 40-year-old cabin where Mike Sallee grew up and still lives part time on southeast Alaska's Gravina Island. Sallee's cabin is the very definition of remote. Deer routinely visit his front porch, and black bears and wolves live in the woods out back. The 20-mile-long island, home to fewer than 50 people, has no stores, no restaurants and no paved roads. An airport on the island hosts fewer than 10 commercial flights a day.

Yet due to funds in a new transportation bill, which President Bush is scheduled to sign Wednesday, Sallee and his neighbors may soon receive a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and 80 feet taller than the Brooklyn Bridge. With a $223 million check from the federal government, the bridge will connect Gravina to the bustling Alaskan metropolis of Ketchikan, pop. 8,000.

[RightWhale]

What is the problem? Project is not interstate?

[freedumb2003]

Move the town.

[RightWhale]

others could really use this money

Alaska has been frozen as far as development since its purchase. Now, here's the deal: if Alaska is not to be allowed to develop ANWR or most of the other resources of the state, and if Alaska is also not to be supported by Federal money, why should Alaska desire to remain in the Union?

[Bernard]

An airport on the island hosts fewer than 10 commercial flights a day

That's interesting - is that the same as zero? If so, why didn't the article say Zero?

Less than 50 people population on the island, and yet there is commercial air traffic to and from the island. What's the rest of the story?

[RightWhale]

Ketchikan is something like 95% developed. Anchorage similarly. If they are to continue to grow, they need some kind of bridge access to adjacent land.

[Hank Rearden]

Thanks, Republicans!

So, how's that "limited government" thingie you've been promising us for decades coming along . . . . hmmmmmm?

GOP '08: "We promise we won't piss away another 14 years. Really. Trust us!"

[CaptainRob]

The airport is located across the channel from the city of Ketchikan because commercial air traffic requires flat land and unobstructed approaches and takeoffs. The site was the most suitable and accessible at the time it was built. For more airport facts and history... http://www.borough.ketchikan.ak.us/airport/airport_history.htm

[CaptainRob]

Ketchikan is located on Revilla (short for Revillagigedo)Island. The island is 1,134 square miles. The road system dead ends both directions north and south, 15 miles one way and 17 miles the other. With a fraction (1/10th) of the money spent on the bridge the 2 dead end roads could be extended and ultimately connected together thus providing more land for development, recreation, logging, and tourism. Ketchikan can expand its city and borough limits all along the road system. Why not continue the existing road system and finally connect Loring and Neets Bay and open up the private, state and federal lands there? Oh yeah, Gov Murkowski's family's 33 acres with the gold mine claim isn't on Revilla, it's on Gravina Island!!!

To some the city would seem 95% full.....it really has alot more room to grow on its own island with significantly less cost! Check the map...Revilla is huge compared to Gravina! http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=address&country=CA&popflag=0&latitude=&longitude=&name=&phone=&level=&addtohistory=&cat=&address=&city=Ketchikan&state=ak&zipcode=

Same issues face development of both projects, acquisition and development of federal and state lands. I believe KTN and the taxpayers across the country would get more for the dollars spent by progress on Revilla Island now, and the bridge much later when politicians come up with better plans and a clearer vision of the infrastructure and community development on Gravina Island.

[RightWhale]

open up the private, state and federal lands there

One of the problems in Alaska is that, outside of the Native Corporations, less than 1% of the land is in private ownership. The Native Corporation land sits as an overlay on gov't land, on existing Boroughs, so ownership is moot. Alaska looks large, but for practical purposes it is not a large state.

[bigsigh]

For 941 mill those folks can leave 15 minutes earlier for the airport.

[CaptainRob]

State and Federal lands CAN be negotiated creatively and in ways to be developed for purposes to serve the public. A properly designed proposition to the USFS that includes logging concessions and building roads for future access to timber sales in exchange for road access to private property in Moser Bay, Loring, and up to Neets Bay, thereby opening up private and state lands currently only accessible by boat. Continuing the road would give the Fed's and the public, access to Orchard Lake watershed, arguably the most valuable piece of timbered real estate on Revilla, both to the Forest Service to log it but also to the public for recreation. Your argument assumes that Federal Land can NEVER be developed to benefit the private domain. Look at Prince of Wales Island! 95% Federal lands with communities connected by....logging roads...now widened, paved and used by the public! POW is now a thriving Island community with a healthy tourism and recreation economy in the summer. I believe in the possibilities under the right circumstances and negotiations could make access to land development on Revilla a reality....and fiscally responsible.

Gravina Island has the same issue! Fed's own most of it, State Mental Health Trust most of the rest with a bit of Native land, and less than 10% of the rest is property in the private domain and is located mostly along the shoreline...accessed by boat now anyway.

The truth is....it's right across the "street" or channel as it were, and palpable temptation to develop it. I understand the concept, I just don't agree with how the idea is being sold. It lacks vision, hard plans for community development, and a sensible cost/reward analysis.

[Paul C. Jesup]

This story get posted here once every two months and I am getting tried of it's hateful preaching. What the story sums up is that liberals are against any taxpayer funded projects that helps rural areas/small towns. Liberals believe that only major urbans areas should recieve taxpayer funds.

This isn't a welfare project, it is a bridge that will connect a town to it's airport, thus bring in and create more business for that town.

In other words, this project will pay for itself in new tax revenue within ten to fifthteen years.

It's not a wasteful welfare/pork check, it's an investment.

[cynicom]

Misleading and a tad disingenuous. I doubt many here can even find the place on a map, that does not stop them from knowing everything.

[clee1]

Problem???

It is a large multimillion dollar bridge that serves a community of about 450 people. There is adequate ferry servce providing that passage now. Building that bridge would put about 100 people out of work.

The only reason the feds (all of us) are paying for it is that Sen. Stevens twisted some arms to get it included in the budget.

Pork Barrel projects, of any type or location, are a disgrace to the Nation. They are fraught with corruption in the form of backroom deals and political favors.

[RightWhale]

Mental Health lands seem to be stuck neither here nor there. RS2477 roads were brought forward again by Sen Stevens, but the Feds don't act. The Feds complain that the State doesn't do anything with the approved lands so the Feds must continue to manage them even they are supposed to be transferred to the State. It is a funding issue as far as the State is concerned; there was a surplus last year for a change but hardly enough to do development projects after university deferred maintenance. Once again Fairbanks comes out on the short end. The ANWR coastal plain should be transferred to the State and the oil produced to benefit the State, but the Feds won't consider that. If we continue to look at small successes we will continue to overlook the big developments that could be done. Fairbanks needs major reconstruction: move the railyard to south Fairbanks, move the International Airport to the Tanana flats by North Pole, build the railroad to Canada, open the entire north slope to development. In truth, Fairbanks is not concerned with the problems of Ketchikan's suffocation, nor with Anchorage's short cut to vast lands while most state and DOT funding goes elsewhere than to Fairbanks. ANWR and the bridge to nowhere are symptoms of a lack of desire by eastern commerce to develop Alaska, and that they have it both ways, to cut off possible internal development and not fund development themselves, will continue to cut off Alaska's sympathies for problems elsewhere.

[RightWhale]

Link the continued freeze of Alaska's resources and the carping about spending any Fed funds. They add up to strangling the baby in the cradle. Either let Alaska develop its resources, or pay for the development. Pick one.

[clee1]

Alaska currently pays about $1500 to each citizen per year from its oil revenues.

Alaska has the resources to pay it's own way.

Don't even get me started on the Feds rape of Alaska, from oil to land.

[RightWhale]

If you refer to the PFD you are incorrect.

[SolidRedState]

In today's dollars, what do you suppose the cost to build the transcontinental railroad? Talk about a bridge to nowhere.

What was the cost of building public utilities (phone, electricity, etc.) to sparsely populated rural areas?

Why should Alaskans be denied benefits of infrastructure building to aid their economy and living conditions?

Sounds like sour grapes by someone who wished they had gotten that "pork" instead.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Baloney. No one is preventing AK from building this bridge if they desire it. We just don't think all the rest of us should pay for it when the state is sitting on pools of money that it pays each resident every year. Kinda like a millionaire demanding food stamps.