Oil Clouds Gather Over Alskan Eden

[chlamor]

Oil clouds gather over Alaskan eden

25-year battle over drilling under remote coastal plain starts to go the industry's way

Julian Borger in Kaktovik
Tuesday March 29, 2005
The Guardian

Standing up on his snowmobile, Bruce Inglangasak, an Inupiat Innuit like most of Kaktovik's 300 residents, traced the mustard-coloured line in the western sky with a gloved hand. "When the wind blows from the west, a yellow-brown smog goes right across the horizon. In the summer, when I go fishing, it burns my eyes."

The oilfields at Prudhoe Bay have not turned out to be the ecological showpieces the Inupiat were promised. More oil was found than expected and the drilling rigs, roads and pipelines now dominate the landscape. There is an average of more than one toxic spill a day; 43,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides are released into the air each year, more than in Washington DC.

"It's not just the air," Mr Inglangasak said. "Every time it rains our fish get it and our whales get it. You can feel the difference when you hold the fish now. The flesh is not as firm as it once was."

Global warming is taking a toll. Extraordinarily, it was mild enough in January for rain to fall, forming a layer of ice over the vegetation that feeds the caribou. The pack ice has retreated so fast in recent summers that dozens, possibly hundreds, of polar bears are stranded on the coastal plain, forcing them to look for winter dens onshore, nearer humans and their oil rigs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,1447227,00.html

[roguevalley]

1. animals finding dens too close to the rigs can get themselves

killed. They did that during Prudhoe and they will here.

[vonSchloegel]

2. Don't you find it Ironic,

that Bruce Inglangasak would be on a snowmobile?

It seems that Adam bit the apple long ago.

[Lindacooks]

3. Well, we're going to be hearing more of this in the years to come.

If the Repukes manage to rape ANWR.

[obxhead]

4. Go see Alaska now before it's gone.

Have yet to go, but I hear it's AWESOME.
Please leave no marks if you go.