The Real ANWR

Since Politically Active Mama liked my previous post on ANWR so much I figured that my very first post here should carry on the discussion. During my research on said post, I found this website to be a great source of information about Area 10-02. The site is the product of Alaskans who would be most adversely effected if drilling at ANWR was going to harm their state. They are the ones responsible for cleanup and all things related to when "it" hits the fan. They are also the ones closest to this "pristine wilderness". They are certainly closer to it than we are here in Utah or anyone in DC has ever come (with very few exceptions). This is what they have to say about ANWR as a whole (all 19.6 million acres of it) and the 2000 acre section of Area 10-02.

Most people don't really understand where the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is located and the relatively tiny amount of space within ANWR, (the Coastal Plain), that's been set aside for potential oil and gas development.

ANWR lies in the top northeast corner of Alaska. The entire refuge lies north of the Arctic Circle and 1,300 miles south of the North Pole. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was originally formed on Dec. 6, 1960 with an original size of 8.9 million acres. In 1980 and 1983 ANWR was added to for a current size of 19.6 million acres comprising of three distinct legal areas of use within its borders. Despite its name ANWR is NOT entirely “refuge”. The southern part of ANWR taking 9.16 million acres is classified as officially “Refuge”. The central 8 million acres of ANWR is classified as “Wilderness”. The uses and definitions of these terms was legally stated in the Wilderness Act of 1964 (16 U.S.C. 1131-1136, 78 Stat. 890 -- Public Law 88-577).

Lastly at the top of ANWR, there is a special area of 1.5 million acres on the Arctic Coastal Plain called the “10-02” Area. The 10-02 Area takes its name from the section of the Congressional bill, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), that expanded ANWR in 1980. In Section 10-02 Congress set aside 1.5 million acres of the Arctic Coastal Plain specifically for “oil and gas exploration”. This 10-02 Area is classified legally neither as “refuge” nor as “wilderness”, rather defined and separated by Congress for oil and gas exploration due to its well-known geological evidence of potential large hydrocarbon deposits. The 10-02 area, is bordered on the north by the Beaufort Sea, on the east by ANWR “wilderness” area and the U.S. Canadian border, and on the west by the Canning River and ANWR outer border. It is completely flat and barren with no trees, hills, or mountains. Nine months of the year is covered with snow and ice and practically void of life. Three of those months are in total 24 hour darkness. In the 6 weeks of summer the coastal plain is dotted with thousands of lakes and is covered by boggy tundra on permafrost (permanently frozen ground).

Emphasis and link mine. They also get to the heart of the fallacy that the opponents of drilling in Area 10-02 keep propagating - that we are drilling in protected lands.

To say or suggest then that “the Refuge” (meaning ANWR’s entire area) would be opened for oil and gas exploration is completely false. The Congressional definitions of “refuge” and “wilderness”, which comprises over 92% of the ANWR area, forbids any development of any kind.

Utah (in the comments to Politically Active Mama's post) posts a link to Truth or Fiction that talks about the email that Rapid Response wrote about in his post. It talks about the truth and the political commentary in the email. What needs to be noted though is that there are not falsehoods in the email about Area 10-02. That is important. For once we start having a truthful discussion on the nature of Area 10-02, the people will start seeing that drilling here is not what the Democrats and their environmentalist supporters say it is. We are not proposing drilling in environmentally sensitive or protected areas. This land was set aside by the environmentalist hero Jimmy Carter specifically for drilling for oil - something that is already happening there TODAY.