In narrow harbors, such as Valdez, these sea waves are particularly disastrous in that they generate waves that shoal in the confined waters and focus energy onshore; sending wash hundreds of feet above tidal range. These are associated with earthquakes, when the partly-full holding tanks and tankers at the terminus are vulnerable to rupture. No amount of protective berms around those tanks will prevent the oil from floating off on a sea wave surge. It is not true that these risks are shared by the Canadian route. The Canadian routes from Alaska fully circumvent these high risk hazards. The Alaskan seismic risks will result in delay for construction because we cannot map all of these faults as we go along. As we detect these in the excavation put proposed for the pipeline, then it is necessary reengineer for that particular site. Now, I would like to move to stream hazard. Secretary Morton was again given completely false information upon which to base his information that the stream-crossing hazards are equal or greater for the Canadian route. Quite the opposite is true. It is true that a Mackenzie pipeline route would cross more water courses, but those are generally different kinds of water courses than are crossed along the Alaskan route. First, the so-called 12 major rivers that must be crossed in Canada are not at all similar to those in Alaska. It is true that they are large rivers in terms of flood discharge volumes, but it does not follow that they are large in width. These large rivers would most certainly be treated just as they are in Alaska, with an elevated suspended pipeline. It is not at all implausible that a full elevated suspended pipeline would be constructed throughout the Canadian reach of the northern portion of the pipeline since that may be the least costly in terms of money and environmental damage and requires the least right-of-way. Barry Donnellan, 1972, an evaluation of the basic soil mechanics decisions on the trans-Alaska pipeline project, paper presented to the 139th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C., December 1972. These large rivers would be almost impossible to tunnel beneath and would create risks as absurd as some of those proposed for stream crossings in Alaska. R. R. Curry, 1972, Comments to the Honorable Rogers C. B. Morton on the Environmental Impact Statement for the trans-Alaska Pipeline, 109 p. in Technical Comments, v. 1, Compiled by the Wilderness Society, et al., May 1972. The Alaskan streams of intermediate and small size are generally wide and gravel-filled and flow on beds that become mobilized for many times the river's mean depths during floods. The critical Canadian rivers, on the other hand, flow on or near bedrock in narrow channels. Problems associated with burial of pipes in Alaskan streams are extreme and have not been adequately dealt with in the work of the Department of the Interior, with the exception of one USGS, paper not used in preparation of the impact statement: Emmett, W. W., 1972 Hydraulic Geometry of Some Alaskan Streams South of the Yukon River, Open File Report, Water Res. Div., Alaska. Data presented by Emmett suggest that burial depths proposed for the Alaskan stream crossings are sometimes inadequate to accom modate the mobile river beds to be expected and that serious problems exist with many Alaskan crossings. In Canada, however, the generally greater distance between the pipeline route and high mountains means that fewer larger rivers will drain the majority of the regional runoff to the regional runoff to the major Mackenzie watercourse. This means that the bulk of the tributary discharges can be crossed subaerially with advantage and that hazard is thus considerably reduced. The greater distance to the mountains and the very different nature of the glacial history of parts of the Canadian route, also accounts for the lesser depths of gravels encountered in many of the Canadian small streams. Thus, large rivers in Canada present no more hazard than they do in Alaska, the Yukon, except that in Alaska the seismic risk to suspend crossings is greater than in Canada. On the intermediate river risks are about comparable if pipe is to be buried, and on smaller rivers Canada affords safer crossings for the general case. Hazard to crossings for suspended pipelines for large rivers are very much less than to intermediate and small rivers with wide fluctuations in flow volumes and attempted pipe burial. In Alaska, in addition, there is the compound problem of glacier dam bursts to be contended with along the sections of the route passing near and through the Alaskan range. This is not encountered along any of the Canadian route either in Alaska or Canada. These dam bursts occasioned when lakes imponded behind glaciers force their way outward suddenly, adding many times the expected discharges to small drainage channels with much scour and sediment movement. These occur in the highest seismic and landslide risk parts of the southern Alaskan route only. While the Secretary is again technically correct when he states in this congressional letter of April 4 that the Canadian pipeline would cross nearly twice as great a length of area underlain by permafrost, based on very inadequate data from Alaska and Canada, he has been seriously misled if he believes that the Canadian permafrost will create greater hazard. Depending upon the actual route chosen from Prudhoe Bay to the Mackenzie corridor, permafrost hazard may be equal or considerably less with the Canadian route. This is because the flanks of the Brooks Range are underlain by drier permafrost than the Arctic Coastal Plain or interior Alaska permafrost areas. These upland dry permafrost areas post some hazard to concentrations of runoff but do not pose the thaw-instability problems that are by now well understood for the Alaskan route. The offshore alternative doubtless has some permafrost formed during the lower glacial-age sea level stands, but this does not probably extend to depths below 100 to 200 feet and such depths are found within several miles of shore along most of the route, particularly toward Canada. Thus, there is a potential route with very little permafrost. The Mackenzie River Valley itself has less permafrost than might be expected by comparison to Alaska since it is the locus of a north flowing river carrying huge quantities of heat northward and thawing its near-shore areas. Careful location of the route along this corridor could minimize total length of high ground-ice permafrost for the Canadian route to make equal or less hazard than the shorter Alaskan route. With the present inland route I estimate that the trans-Canada route is 360 to 400 miles versus 300 miles for Alaska. Another major permafrost consideration is that associated with haulage and service roads. All of the Alaskan pipeline must be built and serviced from roadways, which themselves constitute a serious threat to permafrost stability and thus to the pipeline. With the Mackenzie Valley river corridor available for shipping pipe and service vehicles along a major portion of the route, new major roads paralleling the pipe need not be built. This is a benefit rather than a detriment. With a suspended pipeline, particularly carrying both gas and oil pipes, no roads need be built at all in permafrost areas, even to carry pipe from barge to construction sites. Long-term environmental damage will probably be greater in Alaska from roads than from the pipeline itself. Certainly the effects upon game, vegetation, and permafrost will be greater associated with the roads and vehicle travel over them and the thawing, road construction, and greater gravel volumes required in Alaska, not Canada as Morton was informed, will do greater damage to stream habitat and fisheries away from the immediate pipeline and road rights-of-way due to thermal erosion, stream course changes, particularly in Alaska where the pipeline route parallels many rivers rather than crossing them at right angles as in Canada, and necessity of hydraulic reequilibration after gravel removals. Roadways cannot be reclaimed in the Arctic in lengths of times necessary to protect prema frost thaw effects, as has been amply demonstrated by Interior investigators, R. Sigafoos, for instance, and many others. Now, I have been able to present today material on the marine leg and the environmental hazards of it. We will request submission of Dr. Richard Warner's statement at a later date. The value of fisheries in Prince William Sound are on the order of $52 million. There are great monetary risks as well as the more simply quantified monetary risks. For instances, new studies in the Atlantic have shown there are long persistent toxic fractions released into the sea from petroleum and those Alaskan oils carry particularly large volumes of these more volitile toxic fractions. We also have learned from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the extent of petroleum pollution is greater than previously known in the ocean. Perhaps Congress or the Coast Guard could provide some of this information. In summary, the major terrestrial advantages of the Canadian versus the Alaskan route are lesser Canadian seismic hazard by on the order of 100 times; lesser hazard associated with most probably-mode stream crossings; and route possibilities requiring less gravel, less stream destruction, less high-ground-ice permafrost crossing, and fewer miles of permanent roads. Coupled with the clear short-term and long-term economic advantages of the Canadian route assuming international cooperation, total absence of the marine leg and associated severe hazards to Canada and to a lesser extent the United States, and the security advantages of the inland route, there seems little reason to continue Alaskan pipeline proposals except as a favor to energy company interests who would stand to make the greatest short-term profit from the Alaskan route. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Curry follows:] COMPARISON OF THE TERRESTRIAL IMPACTS OF THE TRANS-CANADA Testimony prepared for the U.S. Senate Committee May 2, 1973, Washington, D.C. Robert R. Curry, Associate Professor of Environmental Geology I am Robert Curry, an Associate Professor of Environmental Geology at the University of Montana. I hold advanced degrees in plant ecology and geology with a Ph.D in geology and geophysics from the University of California at Berkeley. Beginning in February, 1969, I have been deeply involved with the scientific analysis of problems associated with Arctic Alaskan petroleum development. In the early spring of 1969, while employed as a professor at the University of California, I was engaged by the Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, to conduct a reconnaissance survey of the then-pending Alaska pipeline proposal and to help to formulate policy guidelines that might be used by the Department of Interior to assure minimization of environmental impacts for the Alaskan petroleum development. I was then serving as a scientific advisor to the U.S. Senate Public Works Committee on matters of environmental effects of offshore petroleum development prompted by the Santa Barbara oil spill and was advising the President's science advisory staff on the same matter. Since I held a research hydrologist position with the Geological Survey and was employed part-time by them and since I had lived in Alaska and studied arctic landscape processes there while employed by the University of Alaska, I was asked to begin work for Interior in April of 1969 on route selection criteria for determining environmental impact of the various petroleum transshipment and roadway schemes then being proposed and effected by petroleum companies and the pipeline consortium. This work included overflight and ground-visits to the Hickle-Highway and the surveyed Trans-Alaska pipeline route, and preparation of an advisory report. |