This screenshot from a January 2022 Matanuska-Susitna Borough document shows the route of the proposed West Susitna Access Road. (Mat-Su Borough screenshot)
This time of year on the Talachulitna River, my wife Sarah and I might see, or talk to, no one but each other for four months.
We’ve worked hard to create jobs and build the life we want, as do the dozens, if not hundreds, of other outdoors-based businesses in the West Susitna region. A recent study shows that Alaska’s outdoor economy is the fastest-growing in the nation. Outdoor recreation contributed 4.6% to our economy in 2023, adding $3.1 billion to Alaska’s economy and creating 6% of Alaska’s jobs. What’s more, outdoors-related salaries climbed 17.6%, for an average of $72,811.
The importance of the outdoors to Alaska, and Alaska’s economy, has always been clear to us in the West Susitna region. My wife Sarah and I live and work here on the Talachulitna River because we love the outdoors, and we make a living from it. There is no better place for that on the planet than Alaska.
That’s why it’s completely incomprehensible to me that the state government is pushing a taxpayer-funded, multi-hundred-million-dollar, 100-mile industrial subsidy for foreign corporations that would destroy my hard work and that of many others: the West Susitna Industrial Access Road.
What’s more, this industrial road would damage much of what makes Alaska, Alaska: the clear, cold waters of the Talachulitna River and the vibrant rainbows it’s famous for. The Iditarod Trail. The chance to get out in a boat, a plane, a snowmachine, or on foot, by bike or by ski or snowshoe, into a wild place. This mostly private industrial road would cross 182 water bodies, providing fish passage only in some of those. Two of those water bodies are the Susitna River and the Talachulitna River. Though it would be paid for with taxpayer dollars, most of the road would be private. The state, however, is attempting a sleight of hand and is pitching the first 20 miles of this 100-mile road as a “separate” project with an expensive, 2,000-foot-plus bridge leading to a boat launch on the far side of the Susitna River.
Most of the project is being pushed by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA, which has a long, well-known history of wasting public money on private projects that are more likely to fail than succeed, costing Alaska $10 billion in lost revenue through its poor decisions over the years.
Most recently, though the public corporation is sitting on $1.4 billion, $600 million of which is in cash, Gov. Mike Dunleavy included a $2.5 million appropriation to AIDEA for this damaging industrial road — in addition to the $8.5 million he’s already given them.
The $1.4 billion is state money. It can be used for anything. Education. PFDs. Law enforcement. Snow plows. Yet the governor wants to take $2.5 million from dire Alaska needs to prop up this business-killing project.
In the West Susitna, people are self-made. I know of other lodge owners who have built their own places by hand, milling their own logs. Of cabin owners who do the same. The West Susitna, like many regions in Alaska, is facing troubles — declining salmon runs, king and coho salmon closed to fishing this year, and declining moose populations.
At a recent meeting on the road, I asked the people presenting for the state, “Can you show me any place in the world where putting a road into it has enhanced the fish and wildlife?”
They didn’t want to answer me.
Are we going to use our state resources for things Alaska actually needs, like schools, snow plows, and PFDs? Are we going to try to save the fish and the wildlife in the West Susitna and Southcentral Alaska, which we know are in decline? Or are we going to do the one thing we know is the worst thing we could do — and waste $600 million taxpayer dollars killing some of Southcentral Alaska’s remaining intact salmon habitat and sustainable, existing businesses owned by hardworking Alaskans?
If I were sitting in the Legislature right now, I think the choice would be pretty clear to me.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.