Anchorage Daily News

WASHINGTON -- Congressional leaders said Monday they have too much to do this week to also tackle a massive public lands bill that designates new wilderness areas throughout the West and includes a provision for the state of Alaska to build an airport access road through a wildlife refuge.

The Senate will pick up the legislation again as soon as Congress returns in January, promised Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. But economic issues, including a possible bailout for the auto industry and a vote on extending unemployment benefits, will dominate this week's lame duck session of Congress, he said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she was "encouraged" that Reid "has committed to take the lands package up when Congress reconvenes next January."

"The generally positive reaction of the conservation community to the package leaves me with cause for optimism," said Murkowski, who worked to limit the commercial uses of the road when the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee considered it this year.

The Alaska portion of the bill authorizes a land swap that gives the state a seven-mile easement through a wildlife refuge. The easement allows the state to complete a 25-mile gravel road that would connect King Cove with Cold Bay. In exchange, the state is expected to transfer more than 61,000 acres to the federal government. Much of that land would go to the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge; part would be designated as wilderness.

For more than a decade, the community of King Cove has sought the road as an option to the hovercraft used now to travel across the bay to reach the airport in Cold Bay. The World War II-era airport is home to the third-longest runway in the state and is open in nearly all weather conditions, unlike the smaller King Cove airport across the bay.

Residents say they need the road to evacuate people with health emergencies.

Conservationists say that it is unprecedented to allow a road through a wildlife refuge and that traffic will disrupt migratory birds in the refuge as well as other wildlife that pass along the narrow isthmus.

Once the Senate passes the bill, which is packed with dozens of land use and parks-related measures for other states, the House is expected to follow suit.

Find Erika Bolstad online at adn.com/contact/ebols tad or call her in Washington, D.C., at 202-383-6104.

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