AIDEA board authorizes binding Ambler road agreements and an estimated $86 million more

The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority's board has authorized its executive director to negotiate and sign binding agreements on the Ambler Access Project and to transfer an estimated $86 million more from the authority's revolving fund or other sources. The authority comes from an amendment to the board's Ambler road resolution, taken up at a meeting that began Wednesday, Nov. 4, after a closed-door executive session on the project. The original resolution, adopted Sept. 26, 2025, authorized only a non-binding memorandum of understanding with landowners and others along the route.

The resolution describes the Ambler Road as a proposed controlled-access industrial road. AIDEA has described it as a 211-mile private industrial road connecting the Ambler Mining District to the Dalton Highway.

Under the amendment, the authority's chief financial officer, at the executive director's request, would also move the unspent balance of money approved under earlier Ambler resolutions. The new money is estimated to cover "necessary costs of Agreements and project related costs to advance the project." The executive director is also directed to amend AIDEA's bylaws as needed for final agreements. The resolution sets no deadline for those agreements.

The resolution says the preferred route crosses federal land and land owned by the State of Alaska, NANA Regional Corporation, Doyon Limited and the Northwest Arctic Borough. It calls the road "the only economic and feasible access route" for nearly 600,000 acres of state mining claims. NANA's board removed the corporation from the project in May 2024, and AIDEA said then it would pursue a route north of NANA land.

The new money adds to up to $53 million for preconstruction work, with half to come from Ambler Metals, and $50 million in additional funding the board approved Oct. 22, 2025. At the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference in Anchorage on May 19, Executive Director Randy Ruaro described the road's purpose: "To free up access to minerals that would otherwise not be developed. They'd be stranded."

Minutes of the board's Sept. 22 meeting in Kotzebue record residents and tribal members opposing the road over caribou and subsistence, and state that the Native Village of Kotzebue Council formally opposes it. The Kobuk Tribal Council adopted a resolution in March 2025 supporting the project. Council President Henry Horner Sr. said it would provide local jobs as the Red Dog Mine winds down and help stabilize living costs. Larry Westlake, co-chair of the project's Subsistence Advisory Committee, said it mattered for lowering elders' food and fuel costs.

Seven conservation groups have appealed in Alaska Superior Court the Department of Natural Resources' September reapproval of the road easement. The department first granted the easement in April 2025 and withdrew it after an Alaska Supreme Court ruling.

The state Board of Game votes Nov. 20 on closing a strip along the road to hunting and trapping. AIDEA's board next meets Dec. 4 in Anchorage.