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Cook Inletkeeper
Energy Campaign
BACKGROUND
Alaska’s Cook Inlet is a
microcosm of the fossil-fuel industry, and provides an excellent
platform to address the root causes of climate change and other
impacts from oil, gas and coal development. For example, Cook
Inlet includes onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling, over
1,000 miles of oil/gas pipelines, tankers, a large capacity
petroleum refinery, a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export plant,
a major petrochemical (fertilizer) facility, and a new
Gas-to-Liquids refining facility. Cook Inlet is also the only
waterbody in the nation where offshore oil and gas operators may
legally dump their toxic wastes directly into coastal fisheries,
and it’s the only major port in North America that lacks tug
escorts for laden oil and liquefied natural gas tankers, despite
the region’s notorious tides, ice and navigational conditions.
In addition to oil and gas,
Outside investors announced plans in 2006 to develop Cook
Inlet’s massive Beluga coal fields as part of the Chuitna Coal
Project. This project would strip up to a billion tons of coal
from an area 45 miles west of Anchorage that supports incredible
fish and wildlife resources. Aside from the direct effects on
salmon, moose and bear habitat, the combustion of Beluga coal
will generate enormous amounts of greenhouse gases and add
mercury to the atmosphere, where it can fall-out into Alaskan
fish and the people who consume them. As a result, today in
Cook Inlet, we face a fork in the road: we can move backwards to
coal and oil and gas development – with all their
well-documented problems – or we can embrace a future that
includes clean, renewable power and long term, sustainable jobs.
The choice is ours, but our children will live with our
decision.
INLETKEEPER STRATEGIES
Cook Inletkeeper’s Energy
Campaign envisions a
cleaner and more accountable energy industry in Cook Inlet which
minimizes impacts to habitat, wildlife, water quality and human
health, and which recognizes corporate and government
responsibilities to local communities and resources.
Inletkeeper works to ensure Cook Inlet’s energy industry meets
or exceeds state and national labor and environmental standards,
and reflects the unique conditions of Cook Inlet. Inletkeeper’s
goals are to:
1) eliminate toxic discharges
from the fossil fuel industry and reduce the emission of
greenhouse gases;
2) stop or alter oil and gas
lease sales and proposals for expanded fossil-fuel development
to protect sensitive wetlands, water quality and important
fisheries;
3) secure tug escorts and/or
assists for single hull tankers and barges, and ensure the best
possible performance for fossil fuel facility operators;
4) promote sustainable jobs and
renewable energy through tidal power and other alternatives.
Inletkeeper’s targeted energy
strategies include aggressive legal, scientific and technical
advocacy, effective citizen education and organizing, persuasive
media outreach, and thoughtful pro-worker, pro-community
messages.
FUTURE WORK
Because
these environmental issues are occurring in the middle of
Alaska’s most populated region – where hundreds of thousands of
Alaskans work and recreate each year - Cook Inlet offers the
best opportunity to highlight problems - and recommend solutions
- for some of the thorniest issues surrounding hydrocarbon
development, global climate change, and fish and wildlife
conservation. While Cook Inletkeeper will continue to focus on
the direct effects of oil and gas activities on fish, people and
wildlife (i.e. toxic discharges, seismic noise, pipeline spills,
etc), it will increasingly combine its oil and gas advocacy work
with its salmon habitat protection work toward addressing the
most immediate impacts and root causes of climate change in
Alaska.
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