http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/287058-arctic-ocean-lease-sales-can-threaten-food-security-of
July 11, 2016, 09:13 am
Arctic Ocean lease sales can threaten food security of Alaska Native
communities
By John Chase
To most Americans, the Arctic Ocean is a remote and unseen place—a place
that exists only in their imaginations. But in my community of Kotzebue,
the Arctic is just outside the front door. The Arctic is our reality. We
depend on a healthy environment to feed our families, and to sustain our
culture and our subsistence way of life. A major oil spill in the Arctic
Ocean would devastate the way of life we’ve known for 10,000 years.
In mid-March, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management proposed
lease sales for oil and gas in the Beaufort Sea in 2020 and the Chukchi
Sea in 2022. The government did this despite the risk of a major oil
spill that would threaten our No. 1 food source: the ocean. The Obama
administration is expected to decide by the end of this year whether to
remove the Arctic Ocean from its offshore leasing plan, or allow the
lease sales to go forward.
The Arctic is unforgiving to those who do not respect it. It gives life
and takes it away.
Shell proved during the 2012 drilling season that the oil industry is
incapable of safely mobilizing and drilling in one of the most remote,
pristine and icy environments on Earth.
In 2015, Shell abandoned its offshore drilling efforts in Alaska “for
the foreseeable future.”
Even with last week’s announcement on Arctic drilling rules, the oil
industry has no proven technology for removing oil even from calmer,
warmer seas, and Alaska’s remote coastline has none of the
infrastructure that would be needed to effectively respond to a major
spill. The nearest U.S. Coast Guard station is hundreds of miles away.
If an oil company experienced a well blowout like the one that caused
the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it would be almost
impossible to contain in the Arctic Ocean. If a blowout happened late in
the summer or early fall, as sea ice was forming, oil could spew into
the Chukchi and Beaufort seas through an entire winter. This would
devastate food security for all of our rural communities.
BOEM showed no respect for the danger that drilling poses for our
communities that depend on the seals, fish, walrus, bowhead whales, and
other sea life that have sustained our people for thousands of years. In
my home, subsistence provides about 80 percent of my family’s
sustenance. I cannot begin to envision a future without our Native foods.
President Obama came to Kotzebue last summer, becoming the first
American president to visit the Arctic. He walked beside the Chukchi Sea
with our city mayor to discuss a $40 million project to protect our
shores from erosion. Shores are eroding from storms that have been made
worse by climate change and the loss of protective sea ice all over the
Arctic.
Alaska’s coastal villages are literally beginning to wash away. They
have been pleading for help for years, and only now is the federal
government considering how to relocate some of them to safer ground, and
how to pay for it.
During his visit, President Obama told us that he knew he didn’t have to
educate us about climate change. “What’s happening here is America’s
wake-up call. It should be the world’s wake-up call,” he said.
So how can his administration decide to not sell oil and gas leases in
the Atlantic Ocean, but propose them for the Arctic Ocean? That decision
makes no sense.
How will we maintain our way of life if a major oil spill kills the sea
that provides for us? We are spiritually connected to the land and sea.
You cannot separate Alaska Native communities with the ocean, which is
where we get the majority of our Native foods.
The federal government should be taking steps to protect the Arctic
Ocean and Alaska’s vulnerable coastal villages. Congress should, for
once, support the president and fight offshore drilling and climate
change to help ensure our survival for the next 10,000 years.
I ask the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to realize that our rural,
coastal communities depend on a healthy ocean for survival and remove
future lease sales in the Arctic Ocean from its five-year plan for
offshore drilling.
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