Biden Admin Reverses Course, Cancels Life-Saving Road in Rural Alaska

March 15, 2023

If you live in King Cove, Alaska, you hope that bad weather isn’t happening if you’re having a medical emergency.  If that’s occurring, you can’t drive to the nearest airport to get to life-saving transport to Anchorage.  You must take a boat to Cold Bay, whose airport can handle jet traffic.  That ride can be treacherous, and many times, the sick can’t travel safely that way, either.

There has been a decades-long fight to allow a road to be built between the two communities, because a short portion of it would cross the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.  During the Trump presidency, the federal government, State of Alaska and local Native organizations worked out a land exchange that allowed for a one-lane road to be built between the towns.

But yesterday, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland laid waste to those plans, and put the residents of King Cove back where they’ve been: in danger.

According to a statement released Tuesday, the Interior Department determined that the land exchange authorized under the Trump administration contained several procedural flaws and did not take into account “potential effects on subsistence uses and habitat.”

So, once again, the Biden administration has chosen to protect wildlife over human life, and ignored the pleas of King Cove’s residents to have a safe passageway to life-saving medical flights. Conservation over common sense and plants over people.  Sounds like Team Biden has a problem with its priorities.