Northwest Alaska Native leaders push for Ambler road in Washington, D.C.

Alaska Native community and tribal representatives were in Washington, D.C. this week to push for U.S. Interior Department approval of the Ambler Access Project, a 211-mile industrial access road built to an area in Northwest Alaska where major copper discoveries are being explored.

The road would be built from the Dalton Highway west to the Ambler Mining District east of Kotzebue.

Tribes and village leaders near the route of the road opposed it earlier but are now in support. Conservation groups continue to oppose road.

“This project will reduce the high cost of living by providing an opportunity for access to cheaper fuel and other goods, which currently have to be flown in.This is crucial as rural Alaska has both a high unemployment rate and extremely high cost of living where a gallon of gas can cost $15.00, and housing is in short supply,” said Wilmer Beetus, Chief and Mayor of Hughes, an Interior village near the road route.

“The Ambler Access Project is an opportunity to create high-paying jobs within the region so that our tribal members and their families can remain in their communities,” he said in a statement.

Representatives of Allakaket and Huslia, two other Interior villages, were on the trip as well as leaders from Shungnak, in the upper Kobuk River region near where mines could be developed.

NANA Regional Corp. board members from other communities in northwest Alaska were along as well, along with officials from Ambler Metals, the mining company managing the exploration and possible development of mineral prospects in the region.

The group is urging the Interior Department to follow through with a commitment made earlier to complete a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement by December, 2023.

Conservation groups and some Alaska Native groups had filed lawsuits against a Final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision done by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, an Interior department agency, under the Trump administration.

After President Biden took office the BLM decided to review the Record of Decision and earlier EIS and found certain deficiencies.

Those can be resolved with limited changes in a new supplemental EIS but the Interior department is also under pressure to do a total rewrite of the EIS, which can set the road schedule back two years or more.

The road is being planned by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state development finance corporation, which would also own the road.

No construction will happen until Ambler Metals completes its explorstion of copper prospect and a mine is built. Tolls paid to AIDEA for trucks carrying ore to the Dalton Highway and then to Fairbanks would repay the state development authority for its investment in the road.

Alaska Native leaders also met with National Economic Council represenatives to express support for a timely process for approving the road, especially considering the broad economic and national security significance of accessing minerals in the Ambler region.

Copper is a strategic metal for the U.S. as well as cobalt, which is also found in the area.

A subsistence lifestyle is a vital aspect of our lives connecting Alaska Native people, families, and communities with the land, animals, and fish, said Naasri Fred Sun, President of the Shungnak Tribe.

The Ambler Access Project will responsibly co-exist with the subsistence needs of families and communities in the region, he said.

“Our Tribe has a vision for the future of our community to promote our self-determination and Iñupiaq way of life. This is why our meetings in Washington this week were so important.”

Ramzi Fawaz, President and CEO of Ambler Metals, the company managing the exploration, said, “Nobody is more familiar with the challenges rural Alaskan communities face than the community leaders who traveled to D.C. this week,” said

Ambler Metals is a 50-50 partnership of South32, a major Australian mining company, and Trilogy Metals, a Vancouver, B.C. “junior” minerals exploration company.

The partnership was formed in 2017 through a 3-year exploration option agreement and Ambler Metals was formally established in early 2020.

It included a partnership with NANA Regional Corporation for the exploration and advancing projects in the Ambler Mining District.

“It was clear from our meetings with lawmakers that there is strong backing from the Alaska federal delegation. It was also clear how important it is for Tribes and Alaska Native corporations to be at the table when important discussions about the future of their homelands are occurring,” Fawaz said.