Northwest Arctic Borough is the home-rule borough government that governs 11 Inupiaq villages in northwestern Alaska, including its seat, Kotzebue. It coordinates local search-and-rescue and flood recovery, and is home to the Red Dog Mine, one of the world's largest zinc mines.
Photo by Western Arctic National Parklands (NPS), via Flickr · Photo source · CC BY 2.0
nwabor.org ↗Kotzebue, AK 99752, USA
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Cape Blossom Road near Kotzebue is closed while crews install a temporary bridge
The road leading to a temporary bridge on Cape Blossom Road, outside Kotzebue, is closed while crews install the bridge, the Northwest Arctic Borough said Thursday. It's the latest closure on a road the state is building to lower freight costs for the region.
"Due to the presence of heavy machinery and construction equipment, we ask that all residents stay off the roadway and avoid the construction area during this time for everyone's safety," the borough said in its notice. It didn't say when the road would reopen.
The road has been closed at the old KEA gate since October for the second stage of construction. The state's 511 listing, last updated Nov. 6, still shows it closed there, with no end date.
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Photo by Western Arctic National Parklands (NPS), via Flickr · Photo source · CC BY 2.0
nwabor.org ↗Kotzebue, AK 99752, USA
The Northwest Arctic Borough is the home-rule borough government for northwestern Alaska, with its seat in Kotzebue. It takes in Inupiaq villages along Kotzebue Sound and the Kobuk and Noatak rivers, among them Kivalina, Noatak, Kiana and Ambler. The Red Dog Mine, one of the world's largest zinc mines, lies within it.
The borough handles regional services such as search and rescue, emergency shelter and recovery after coastal storms and flooding. Energy is a constant concern, since the villages run on imported fuel at high prices, and the borough plans projects such as battery storage to cut that use.
Its residents include shareholders of NANA Regional Corporation, and the region shares a state House district with the North Slope. Its affairs connect it to the Coast Guard in the waters off Kotzebue, to the Chukchi Campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and to state-owned airports and school sites.