Salmon initiative adds obstacles to development

Correction: An earlier version of this column incorrectly said Daily News columnist Charles Wohlforth is an attorney. He is not.

I read Charles Wohlforth's recent column regarding the upcoming salmon initiative with some bewilderment. Permit decisions today are made by bureaucrats in safe, insulated and classified positions. In today's regulatory climate, it is much easier to say no to an applicant than it is to produce the findings of fact and write a permit approval. I give tremendous respect and credit to those in regulatory agencies who look cooperatively at a project proposal, and instead of saying "What's wrong with this project?" say, "How can we make this work?"

The U.S. court system holds that a person is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt and by a preponderance of the evidence. The threshold to prove guilt is pretty high, and necessarily so, to prevent abuses of justice. It's usually easy to make a case for reasonable doubt, whether the facts presented are real or conjecture. It's also one of the reasons, contrary to what you might hear from Senate Bill 91 detractors, there are so many criminals walking the streets today.

Permitting resource projects in Alaska is much more difficult than Mr. Wohlforth might lead you to believe. It's not like permitting an espresso stand on a vacant lot in Anchorage (which is also a lot more difficult than it needs to be). Permitting resource projects in Alaska is a completely different experience. The burden of proof is on the applicant to show the project meets all regulatory requirements – guilty until proven otherwise. Those, whose apparent purpose in life is to oppose most development in Alaska, have an endless opportunity to present conjecture and hypothetical disaster situations in an effort to create the fear, uncertainty and doubt about a project in the minds of the public.

During my nearly 40 years in the Alaska construction industry, I have been involved in the construction of numerous projects, mostly in rural Alaska. These range from fuel tank farms, power plants, roads, airports, boardwalks and schools. All these projects necessary for rural residents to maintain their traditional rural lifestyle.

I can state unequivocally, under the proposed requirements of the salmon initiative, every one of these projects would have taken much more time and been made more difficult to permit and therefore more expensive to construct. Some projects would have been impossible to permit. I also believe none of the proposed delays and additional levels of scrutiny, process and cost would have added anything to the projects, except additional delays and cost. No value would be added to Alaskans or the salmon resource, just value to lawyers and those organizations whose business it is to oppose just about everything in Alaska.

It's accurate to say that the statutes protecting Alaska's salmon resources have been unchanged since they were created shortly after statehood. Those laws may be unchanged, but since statehood, there have been many, many layers of additional federal, state and local laws that encompass multiple layers of reviews, protections and accountability on top of the original Title 16 laws. It's also accurate to say that since the state took over control of our fisheries from the federal government at statehood, our fisheries have flourished.

It used to be that the biggest challenge we had in developing Alaska's economy was getting the money. Today, the biggest challenge we have is getting permission. Contrary to what Mr. Wohlforth would have you believe, the salmon initiative will make it more difficult and more expensive to get that permission.

Jim St. George is the president of Associated General Contractors of Alaska. He is founder of STG Incorporated, an Anchorage-based construction management and services company specializing in heavy industrial construction projects in rural Alaska.

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