• Alaska—The Changing Giant Speaks Out
    Awake!—1975 | September 22

    • Largest Private Construction Project in History

      Plans are under way to transport two million barrels of crude oil per day. It could take upward of twenty years to extract the oil now located. Can you imagine spending more than six billion dollars to complete the project for moving oil through a pipe forty-eight inches in diameter, almost eight hundred miles long? No wonder they call it the biggest construction project in the history of private enterprise. I am somewhat nervous about the whole thing, for, in spite of my size, I have a very tender surface. I need to be treated delicately, due to a permafrost condition over much of my body.

      Oil pushes out of the ground at a temperature of 145 to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Since about three fourths of the distance from Prudhoe Bay in the north to the Valdez terminal in the south is over permafrost (frozen subsoil, subject to thawing and sinking), you can realize that keeping the pipeline from twisting and breaking is an immense challenge. If the pipe is buried, the heat will melt the permafrost, causing slides. If it is built on stilts, a barrier above ground will be created that will block the thousands of caribou and other migrating animals.

      Think of what might result if oil spills out due to a broken pipe. I have been assured, however, that ecologists and scientists will work together to protect my wildlife, riverbeds and tundra. But whether this agreement will be lived up to I will have to wait and see.

      Such an intricate piping system would also require a service road. Already work crews have completed this major engineering task​—the construction of a 360-mile “haul road,” which involved moving about eighty million cubic yards of gravel.

      Can you picture a city 800 miles long, and about 50 feet wide? Well, that is what the project amounts to, with about 17,000 workers assigned to twenty-nine construction camps scattered across my abdomen. Not a formal city, of course, but an organized society of individuals gathered for a common purpose.

      Not only will the road service the oil pipeline, but plans are under way to transport daily three to four billion cubic feet of natural gas from Prudhoe Bay to market. There are proved reserves of twenty-six trillion cubic feet of gas that I have available for your use, on a come-and-get-it basis. That project, which is also a gigantic undertaking, is still under study, and if it materializes, that will be another story.

      So you can see that, as man begins to exploit my treasures, my population and popularity have grown immensely. I seem to have more friends than ever before. My physical changes are not the only thing, however, for there are emotional stresses that are bound to leave their marks.

      Effects in a “Boomtown”

      Imagine how you would react if you suddenly had more guests in your home than you planned for! Your main concern would be that you had sufficient provisions to accommodate everyone satisfactorily. Well, that is how I felt when I saw so many construction workers and their families converging on Fairbanks.

      Fairbanks is at the midway point of the pipeline corridor, an ideal spot to stage the construction project, but not an ideal spot for living conditions, in view of the overload on the schools, the roads, the need for housing, and the extra demand for energy. Officials estimate that more than 10,000 newcomers have arrived since April of 1974. I can remember when this town was a cozy, calm, quiet place in which nearly everyone knew the others. Things changed very little from year to year. Now I can hardly believe the difference. Rents have skyrocketed. A two-bedroom apartment was renting for $300 a few months ago. Now it goes for $450. One apartment house reported a waiting list of seventy persons; another, sixty. Traffic is bumper to bumper. Telephones are jammed. People are locking their doors for the first time in years. Anchorage too is experiencing a similar impact, as the cost of living rapidly increases.

      Smaller communities such as Valdez, where the pipeline’s southern terminal is located, have been greatly affected. I remember that about a year ago a thousand residents lived in that fishing village. Now the work on the pipeline will bring an influx of 3,500 workers, a big increase in the population! The community must gear up for police and fire protection, and to handle the transportation and traffic problems, the housing problems for those who bring their families, and the problems created by the overloading of the schools.

      While some residents are unhappy about the changes, others see in the economic boom increased business opportunities and an improved standard of living. “Why do I want the pipeline?” says one housewife. “Well, after nine o’clock where could you go for a cup of coffee here in winter? Nowhere. Could you get a soft ice-cream cone? Heavens, no! No way. Well, maybe now we’ll be able to get a soft ice-cream cone. Already you can get a cup of coffee after nine o’clock.”