North Slope Assembly backs next step for roads linking three Slope communities

The North Slope Borough Assembly on Tuesday backed moving a proposed road network linking Utqiaġvik, Atqasuk and Wainwright into federal right-of-way applications and environmental review, along with a longer road from Atqasuk through the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska toward the Colville River area.

None of the three communities is connected by road to the others or to the rest of Alaska. In winter, the overland link between the region's villages is a snow trail packed across the tundra, as Alaska News reported in July.

Both roads are part of the Arctic Strategic Transportation and Resources project, or ASTAR, an Alaska Department of Natural Resources initiative with the borough that studied roads, ports and other infrastructure across the North Slope from 2018 to 2020, according to its strategic plan. A 2020 ASTAR study put a gravel road from Utqiaġvik to Wainwright at about 102 miles, with a 23-mile spur to Atqasuk. Another laid out three possible routes, each 137 to 150 miles, between Atqasuk and ConocoPhillips' Willow oil development.

Both routes cross the reserve, the roughly 23-million-acre stretch of the western North Slope that the federal Bureau of Land Management manages. In December, the federal government opened about 18.6 million of its acres to oil and gas leasing, and a March lease sale drew more than $163 million in high bids, as Alaska News reported. President Donald Trump pointed to that sale at his Wasilla rally on Tuesday.

The resolution says environmental review would come before any final route selection, project approval or construction decision. It passed 8-0. Assembly member Frederick Brower abstained, saying he sits on the ASTAR working group for the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope.

Mayor Josiah Patkotak told the assembly that the planning study for the three-community road, which the borough calls the Triangle Community Road, covers most of what federal environmental review requires. The middle section toward the Colville River is further behind, he said.

But he said the two should be paid for together. "This administration wants the middle section done," Patkotak said, adding that it is willing to help pay for it as long as the borough leads, and pointing to Department of Energy loan guarantees. He said the borough doesn't want that money to pay only "for the oil and gas interest" but also "for the interconnectivity of the three communities."

The biggest question, he said, is how to build with loan guarantees, not grants, and still keep "the protections in place as a private road," rather than a public one. One option he raised is a borough enterprise fund working with the tribe or the Native corporations that own the land, "to make sure that the subsistence protections are in place."

Assembly member Avaiyak Burnell of Utqiaġvik, who asked about the project's timeline, said residents had raised concerns about sport hunting and private roads, and how those "could impact us negatively if we don't have the parameters in place."

The borough is sending letters asking the state Department of Transportation to fund the same kind of planning study for the middle section. Patkotak said the borough is aiming for a workshop with state officials in November, ahead of a change in state administration.