GDELTAlaska
Goldstein: 2.9Tone: 1.8
by the Alaska DOT
Construction continues on first segment of King Cove to Cold Bay road following federal appeals court decision.
Construction is continuing on the first 2.8 miles of the King Cove to Cold Bay road after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this week (Sept. 18th, 2026) denied a motion to halt the work.
The segment is being built on land owned by King Cove Corporation. It is the first portion of a proposed 18.9-mile, single-lane gravel road that would connect King Cove to the all-weather airport at Cold Bay, a connection the community has sought for more than three decades.
“Our job is to turn this shared commitment into progress on the ground,” said Alaska DOT&PF Commissioner Ryan Anderson. “We’re working as one team with our community, Alaska Native corporation and federal partners to build this road safely and put local residents to work. Seeing King Cove residents gain new skills and help build their own community’s connection is an important part of that progress.”
Local hiring has been a priority on this project, with more than 20 King Cove residents having completed safety training and earning DOT&PF certificates, and five community members earning their commercial driver’s licenses.
The Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration recently approved an amendment to Alaska’s Statewide Transportation Improvement Program that includes funding for the King Cove to Cold Bay Road.
“Our local airport is inaccessible due to weather conditions for roughly 120 days each year, making dependable travel for emergencies, medical care, and other essential needs difficult or impossible,” said King Cove Mayor, Warren Wilson. “The King Cove to Cold Bay Road will provide King Cove residents with a connection to the all-weather airport at Cold Bay and the reliable air service that comes with it. Seeing work begin on this road is an important milestone for the people who call King Cove home.”
The project is being delivered in partnership with King Cove Corporation and The Aleut Corporation, both landowners in the corridor, and with the support of the King Cove Tribe, the City of King Cove and the Aleutians East Borough, which have advocated for this connection for decades.
Project information, history, documents and updates are available at dot.alaska.gov/sereg/projects/king-cove-cold-bay.
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Goldstein: 3.4Tone: -1.1
Since I celebrated National Public Lands Day last year at this time with an op-ed in this paper, a great deal has been done to savage our Public Lands by the retributive, megalomaniacal minds who presently rule the land. At the time, I, like most other Americans, were not fully aware of the terms of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) that he signed into law on July 4, 2025. Now I am, and it’s not pretty. In fact, it is ominously ugly for those of us who love our Public Lands. Our guard was down while we focused too much attention on Utah U.S. Senator Mike Lee’s proposal to add an amendment to the OBBB proposing to privatize 3 million acres of our Public Lands. We fought against that amendment, and won, without being aware of MAGAs bigger prize of more than 200 million acres which their Reconciliation bill (a process that skips the steps that normal Public Lands bills have to clear) mandated be allotted for industrial development.
Without going into more detail about the politics of this terrible bill, here are some of the disgraceful provisions this Act authorizes:
It mandates oil and gas lease sales across the Lower 48 states and northern Alaska (including the iconic coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge!) every quarter of the year, and the BLM and other Public Land agencies have no discretion to decline a sale, defer a parcel, or apply protective stipulations;
If during the mandated lease sales, industry doesn’t lease enough acreage, substitute sales must be held;
Royalty rates from any of these leases have been slashed so deep that taxpayers stand to lose up to 20 billion dollars in royalties;
Mandatory lease sales on the iconic coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge;
Mandatory lease sales of 20 million acres on the NPR across the entire Arctic coastal plain in northern Alaska;
Mandatory approval of the Ambler Road, 210 miles of which cross wilderness, including National Wilderness lands in the Gates of the Arctic National Park, to extract copper and other minerals from an open pit mine near the small village of Kobuk on the Kobuk River, and do this in spite of opposition by Alaska villages there;
A mandated 25 percent increase in timber harvests in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, one of the world’s last great temperate rainforests, qualifying it as hugely important for climate change mitigation because of the amount of carbon stored in the trees. And this mandate, in spite of there being no market for the timber;
Amendments to the Mining Act of 1872, making it easier than ever for private interests to obtain vested property rights in our public lands;
A shorter time period allowed for judicial review, if Public Lands non-profit organizations challenge any of the above in court;
Total gutting of bonding requirements, allowing extractive corporations to walk away laughing, and requiring taxpayers like you and me to pick up the tab for cleanup (amounting to probably a trillion dollars or more);
Since this is an Act of Congress, none of these provisions can be overturned by even the Supreme Court. They are all on auto-pilot unless and until a future Congress passes another law revoking the OBBB, including approval by both houses of Congress and a friendly President signing it into law.
This is the largest Public Lands grab by extractive corporations and their corrupt and greedy political enablers that has ever occurred in the history of the United States, even worse than in the so-called Gilded Age towards the end of the 19th century.
So, what can we do about it?
The same coalition that stopped Utah Senator Mike Lee still exists, and those same hunters, climbers, anglers, tribal nations, and families that hike and camp and recreate in so many different ways, could be what it takes to encourage the organization of a nationwide movement to motivate citizens to elect leaders to overturn this despicable action by the present MAGA-dominated government that I consider to be not only un-American but treacherously unpatriotic.
Together we can do this. And we must!
Frank Keim
Fairbanks, Alaska
Note: The source for the details of this essay has been the six-part podcast series, On Common Ground, produced by Bill Hedden and John Leshy. Bill Hedden is an advocate for Public Lands who has spent 50 years defending them. John Leshy is one our foremost scholars and experts on Public Lands law and history. He is a former Solicitor of the Dept. of the Interior, and wrote the book, On Common Ground, upon which this podcast series is based.
A message to AFN Delegates and members
Dear AFN Delegate and/or Member,
We are writing to inform you that AFN has received resolutions to endorse Mary Sattler Peltola for the U.S. Senate, Senator Dan Sullivan for the U.S. Senate, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins for Alaska Governor, and Representative Nick Begich for the U.S. Congress at the upcoming 2026 Annual AFN Convention.
Under AFN’s bylaws, we must notify our members before considering the endorsement of any statewide candidate. The AFN Board of Directors has been informed and will review this resolution during its meeting on September 25. AFN delegates will consider resolutions at the 2026 Annual AFN Convention on October 24 at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage, AK.
We welcome your comments on this matter; please send them to [email protected]. We will share your feedback with the AFN Board. If you prefer to contact your region’s representative on the AFN Board directly, you can find the list of representatives at the AFN website.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Alaska Federation of Natives
Anchorage, AK
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