Jimmy Carter steps into a big fight over a small road
By Alaskan standards, the gravel road that an isolated community near the Aleutian Islands wants to build to connect to an airport is not a huge project. But because it would be cut through a federal wildlife refuge, the road has been a simmering source of contention since it was first proposed decades ago.
Now the dispute is boiling over. And none other than former President Jimmy Carter, 97, has weighed in.
Residents of King Cove and political leaders in the state, who argue that the road is needed to ensure that villagers can get emergency medical care, see the potential for a long-sought victory in a recent federal appeals court ruling that upheld a Trump-era land deal that would allow the project to move forward.
Conservation groups, who say the project is less about health care and more about transporting salmon and workers for the large cannery in King Cove, fear that more is at risk than just the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, 300,000 acres of unique habitat for migratory waterfowl, bears and other animals.
They say the ruling guts a landmark federal law that protected the refuge and 100 million more acres of public lands across the state and that, if it is allowed to stand, future secretaries of the interior could carve up those lands practically at will. And they are disappointed in the Biden White House, which defended the previous administration's land deal in court.
Enter the 39th president of the United States, a Democrat who left office 41 years ago.
In a rare legal filing by a former president, Carter this month supported an appeal by conservation groups to have a larger panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rehear the case. He wrote that the earlier ruling by a three-judge panel “is not only deeply mistaken, it's dangerous.” The panel voted, 2-1, to uphold the land deal, with two Trump-appointed judges in favor.
In the legal brief, Carter noted that he had been many things in his life — among them farmer, Sunday school teacher and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize — but that he was not a lawyer.
Yet he has expertise and a vested interest in the matter. As president, he pushed for and signed the law in question, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, known as Anilca, in 1980.
In response to questions from The New York Times, Carter wrote that the law “may be the most significant domestic achievement of my political life.”
“Our great nation has never before or since preserved so much of America's natural and cultural heritage on such a remarkable scale,” he added.
The full road remained the dream. But it would have to run for at least 11 miles through the refuge, an area with delicate wetlands containing some of the world's largest beds of eelgrass, which attract black brants and other migratory geese.
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