WASILLA -- Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan hammered federal officials over national wetland protections they say hamper development in Alaska during a rare Senate oversight hearing in Wasilla Monday.
Murkowski and Sullivan peppered a federal panel with questions about Clean Water Act wetlands mitigation rules that sometimes require payment or that land be set aside to make up for loss of wetlands. They also critiqued a Bureau of Land Management process underway to establish new "areas of critical environmental concern" for protection.
While wetlands in the Lower 48 have decreased by half in the last 200 years, Alaska has lost just one-tenth of 1 percent, Murkowski said, adding that 43 percent of the state is categorized as wetland.
"Yet despite this strong record, our state is still pigeonholed into the same regulations that limit fill of wetland in drier climates like Arizona or more heavily populated regions like California or New York," she said.
She pointed to projects she said were delayed or made more costly by wetlands mitigation, including a housing project on Prince of Wales Island, placer mines in the Fortymile area and North Slope oil and gas projects.
The tone of Monday's hearing convened by the Alaska Republicans at the Menard Memorial Sports Center was no surprise, given its mission: "to examine the chilling effect of increased federal mitigation requirements and regulations on economic development on federal, state, and private lands," according to a press release.
More unusual was the joint session between two different bodies: the influential Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chaired by Murkowski and the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Fisheries, Water and Wildlife chaired by Sullivan. Also unusual was the decidedly non-D.C. venue, a conference room in the sports center built under former Gov. Sarah Palin.
The government panel that bore the brunt of the senators' questioning was made up of officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and BLM.
A regulator from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the hearing explained that just under 6 percent of the Clean Water Act-permitted projects in Alaska during the last fiscal year required wetlands mitigation, though the percentage is likely greater on the North Slope due to the topography and large acreage of projects. Federal managers say they are trying to balance Alaska's unique challenges with a national goal to sustain no net loss of wetlands, which provide flood control, filter pollution and shelter birds and wildlife.
"If an area is particularly valuable ecologically and under threat of destruction or degradation, then preserving that area … preserves those important functions and services to the environment and the human population using it," said Mary Anne Thiesing, regional wetlands coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency.
Both senators contended Monday that provisions of the Clean Water Act may run afoul of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act provisions that set aside land for village corporations to develop for the benefit of shareholders. They seek exemptions from the Clean Water Act for Native corporations on Native lands.
Joe Nukapigak, Kuukpik Corp. vice president, testified that the corporation applied for a Corps of Engineers permit to build a 5.8-mile spur from Nuiqsut to an industrial road for access to jobs at the Alpine oil field and to subsistence lands. The Corps asked for nearly 300 acres to be set aside to make up for the 51 acres taken up by the road; the negotiated amount later dropped to 127 acres.
"That's kind of a contradiction of what ANCSA was supposed to do," Nukapigak said of the "lost" land.
Sullivan criticized what he called "arbitrary and even punitive" mitigation policies enacted with little state involvement despite the state's status as a co-regulator. He and Murkowski accused federal officials of changing mitigation policies without specific statutory authority to do so.
The Clean Water Act contains the authority for the mitigation programs through regulations developed by the executive branch, according to David Hobbie, the Corps' regulatory chief in Alaska. Hobbie in an interview Tuesday pointed to a 2013 mitigation agreement signed by several state agencies as proof of state involvement.
The Corps has met with state and federal agencies as well as the Alaska Oil and Gas Association and Cook Inlet Region Inc. in an effort to improve communication and collaboration among agency partners and the public, he testified Monday.
More than 100 people attended the hearing, including Mat-Su legislators Sen. Bill Stoltze, Reps. Wes Keller, Shelley Hughes and Lynn Gattis, and former Sen. Scott Ogan.
Along with EPA, BLM, the Corps of Engineers and the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, the senators also heard from a list of invited witnesses, most representing resource interests: representatives from Kuukpik and Olgoonik Corp., a village corporation headquartered in Wainwright; the Alaska Miners Association; and Great Northwest Inc. construction company in Fairbanks. They also heard from Great Land Trust, a nonprofit that facilitates wetland mitigation through conservation, mostly in Anchorage and the Mat-Su.
Murkowski said after the hearing that she has no immediate legislation pending on mitigation. U.S. Rep. Don Young has introduced legislation to establish a new mitigation option -- preservation leases -- for states, tribes and Native corporations. The leases would revert to landowners once wetlands affected by a project were rehabilitated.
Murkowski said she's still waiting for action on a state analysis of Young's proposal before proceeding with legislation, but so far the state has taken no position.