AIDEA lets its director sign binding Ambler Road deals and move an estimated $86 million

Alaska's state development authority has moved to put an estimated $86 million more toward the Ambler Road and told its executive director to sign binding deals for the project, weeks before Gov. Mike Dunleavy leaves office.

The 211-mile industrial road would run from the Dalton Highway west to the Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska. The authority calls it the only economic and feasible route to nearly 600,000 acres of state mining claims there. Opponents in the region, including tribal groups, worry about caribou, fish and subsistence, while some villages have passed resolutions supporting it.

Until now, the board of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, known as AIDEA, had let its director sign only a non-binding memorandum with landowners and others along the route. Its new resolution changes that: "The Executive Director shall negotiate terms and sign binding Agreements related to the Ambler Access Project."

It doesn't say who those agreements would be with, what they would commit AIDEA to or when they would be signed. It also directs Executive Director Randy Ruaro to amend AIDEA's bylaws as needed to meet the requirements of final agreements.

The money would come in two pieces. At Ruaro's request, AIDEA's chief financial officer would move whatever is left of money the board approved for the road in earlier resolutions, plus an estimated $86 million from the authority's revolving fund or other sources. The resolution doesn't say how much is left from the earlier approvals.

The board has approved money for the road before. In 2023, it approved up to $53 million for preconstruction work, with Ambler Metals to cover half, and extended that budget in April 2025. In October 2025, it voted unanimously to transfer $50 million from its revolving fund to an Ambler account for permitting, construction and legal costs.

That memorandum, approved by the board in September 2025, is among AIDEA, NANA Regional Corporation, Doyon Limited, the U.S. Interior Department and others. It says it is not binding on the parties. The resolution says the road's preferred route crosses federal and state land and land owned by NANA, Doyon and the Northwest Arctic Borough.

Ambler is the largest of several approvals the board has made this fall. Since late August, it has also approved up to $25 million for drilling and design on the West Susitna road, up to $75 million for a new fiber company and up to $10 million for a stake in a geothermal project on Augustine Island. Dunleavy, who can't run again because of term limits, leaves office in December. The board's five public members serve at the governor's pleasure.

When the board met in Kotzebue on Sept. 22, about 10 people testified against the road or raised concerns about it, according to the minutes. A resolution from the Native Village of Kotzebue opposing it was read into the record. The minutes record no public comment in favor.

Ruaro told the board then that AIDEA has resolutions of support from some communities near the road. "Those communities are saying that they need jobs for their youth and they need people living in the Villages to keep the Village alive," he said. The Kobuk Tribal Council passed one of those resolutions in March 2025.

The road is also being challenged in court. Seven conservation groups appealed in state Superior Court on Sept. 30 to overturn the Department of Natural Resources' September reapproval of the road's easement across state land. Separately, the state Board of Game votes Nov. 20 on closing a strip along the road to hunting and trapping, a closure the memorandum commits its parties to propose.

The board took up the Ambler measure at a meeting that began Wednesday and continued Friday, after a closed-door session that included the road. The resolution doesn't say how the vote went, and the minutes haven't been posted. The board next meets Dec. 4 in Anchorage.