Anchorage Daily News

An acquaintance, a recently retired civil engineer, remarked about how long it has been -- decades in fact -- since Alaskans had the vision and courage to take on major infrastructure projects, the kind that can transform our state or regional economy.

Not that the ideas weren't there and aren't there now. But the state's leaders, perhaps preoccupied with worries about oil revenue and budgets, seem to lack the courage to back them. We shouldn't blame them.

Alaskans have been in a funk for the last quarter century, at least in contrast to their optimism and confidence in years just after statehood in 1959.

We were financially strapped in those years, and that makes the courage and vision of our early state leaders, in taking on major infrastructure initiatives, all the more remarkable.

Creating the state ferry system is one of these. As a new state, Alaska was almost broke. We had little industry and our small cities had crushing local tax burdens. Yet Alaskans agreed, in a statewide bond issue, to pay for three state ferries to link isolated coastal communities with roads to allow their economies to survive and grow.

By voting for the bonds in a statewide election, Alaskans in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Nome showed their willingness to pay taxes to build infrastructure for a different part of the state, mainly Southeast. Alaskans today seem bogged down in regional rivalries.

Then-Gov. Bill Egan and legislative leaders at the time deserve credit, but the deciding factor was confidence in our future that Alaskans who voted for the bonds demonstrated. Then we took on another major regional project, the Parks Highway construction to provide a more direct road link to the Interior. Federal funds paid for a big chunk, but the state paid a share and this wasn't easy because in those pre-oil days Alaska's finances were thin.

We've seen infrastructure projects since, but they were private initiatives like the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the Red Dog Mine road and port, linked to resource development, although also economy-transforming. (The state did play a role in building the road and port for Red Dog.)

Also worth noting is construction of hydroelectric projects to provide power in Southeast, Kodiak and Valdez. These came in the mid-1980s, however, when Alaska's new oil wealth made the decision to build them easier.

THE NEXT BIG PROJECT

Since then there's really been nothing. We have built out our local infrastructure, roads, utilities, water and sewer systems and airports, making adroit use of federal funds. But we've shown a remarkable lack of imagination and vision. This coincided with the downturn in oil prices in the mid-1980s that sharpened the state's economic recession. Maybe that took the wind out of us, and we've never recovered our confidence.

It now seems we wait for someone else to do something economy-transforming. I'm speaking, of course, about the gas pipeline.

Alaskans think the pipeline will solve our uncertainties, relieving us from tackling a state budget that depends on oil production, which is declining. A gas pipeline would certainly be an economic stimulus, but Alaskans have an outsized view of its other benefits. It would not be the revenue cash cow that will relieve us of dependence on oil.

Now many Alaskans worry the giant project might be delayed because of major oil shale discoveries in the Lower 48, our intended market. We're left with the uncomfortable truth that we might have to do some things for ourselves.

PIPELINE NAYSAYING

There certainly are transforming infrastructure ideas on the table.

A 30-mile extension of the Alaska Railroad to the Mat-Su Borough's Port Mackenzie, the long-talked-of bridge across Knik Arm, or an electric Intertie to connect Southeastern's hydro projects with the British Columbia (and continental) power grid are examples. Give credit to the local people promoting these, but I sense a reluctance on the part of our state leaders to embrace them.

The biggest do-it-ourselves idea on the table is building a "bullet line" from the North Slope. A lot of good planning is being done on ways to get North Slope gas to Southcentral Alaska through such a pipeline as a contingency if the big line doesn't go.

We still need to do some things, of course. The bullet line, or a spur line to Southcentral off a main pipeline, needs big industrial buyers of gas to share the financial burden. We consumers can't afford to pay for them ourselves. I applaud the planning but we're doing enough to help get industrial customers that would use gas, like a gas-to-liquids plant, to make the costs of getting North Slope gas affordable.

In the Capitol hallways in Juneau I hear surprising skepticism about the bullet line and even the spur line. Have we become a state of nay-sayers, too quick to criticize? I worry we have.

This isn't just about decisions on building things, either. We all know we face a convergence of problems, from declining oil production, worries about running out of gas in Southcentral and uncertainty over the gas pipeline. We need leadership in Juneau to help steer these uncertain waters, and Alaskans have to give them support.

The confidence and vision Alaskans had in the 1960s and 1970s seem a long, long time ago.

Tim Bradner writes for an Alaska economic reporting service. He also consults for private clients and writes for business publications. His opinion column appears every fourth Sunday.

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