Challenge of the North Slope

It is a harsh but strangely lovely land, home mainly to the grizzly, polar bear, wolverine, caribou, fox, Dall sheep and countless geese and ducks. Mushy and mosquito-plagued in summer, the North Slope area of Alaska is so cold in winter that metals become brittle and men work at a fraction of their normal efficiency. Yet, during the past year, a 140-mile-wide strip of this inhospitable country bordering the Beaufort Sea was the scene of frantic activity as more than a dozen big oil companies conducted seismic tests and drilled exploratory holes in preparation for Alaska's "Great Oil Rush."

"Alaska will never be the same again," Governor Keith Miller declared jubilantly after last week's bidding for oil-drilling rights enriched his state's coffers by $900 million (see BUSINESS). Conservationists, for reasons of their own, fear that he may be right. In their understandable haste to obtain geological data before the bidding began, some of the oil companies scarred the tundra with seismic ditches that look from above like giant graffiti and littered it with garbage and empty barrels. Once full-scale exploitation of oil begins, the effects on the North Slope could become disastrous.

Spongy Tundra. The Arctic, unlike land in temperate climates, does not easily recover from man-made disruptions. Because of the cold, orange peels do not decay for months. Twenty-five-year-old bulldozer tracks are still plainly visible on the tundra today, testimony to the slowness of the land's ability to heal itself. But the basic problem is that most of the Arctic lies on a hard foundation of permafrost--ever-frozen ground that prevents drainage. In the brief summer months, a thin cover of tundra soil thaws a foot deep. But if the ground is gouged by heavy equipment, the permafrost is exposed. When it thaws, it turns into a small rivulet that continues to erode its banks, growing ever larger over the years. The permafrost also makes waste disposal difficult. In their North Slope operations to date, oil companies have bulldozed shallow lagoons into which they have dumped garbage and sewage. If they continue this practice, increasing amounts of wastes will seep through the spongy tundra and contaminate the whole water table.

Moreover, to build roads, camps or airstrips, a gravel foundation must be laid over the tundra. But scooping thousands of cubic yards of gravel out of the nearby hills will cause devastating new erosion. An alternate solution--getting the gravel from river bottoms --poses yet another problem. The future of migratory fish like salmon, which lay their eggs in stream bottoms, will be endangered. In short, the fabulous oil strike might turn the tundra into a nightmarish wasteland.

This grim possibility could be avoided. Some of the oil companies, even before leasing their rights, went to costly lengths to respect the land. Instead of using trucks to transport equipment, for example, Atlantic Richfield Co. lifted rigs over the fragile country with giant Sikorsky Skycrane helicopters. For its part, the Federal Government says it will enforce water-quality standards in the area. Because it owns vast amounts of the North Slope as yet unopened to oil exploration, the Government is in a position to insist upon whatever guidelines it can devise to control development and minimize damage to the Arctic ecology.

Environmental Safeguards. Last spring, Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel, who as Governor of Alaska promoted the oil boom on state-owned land, set up a special Arctic Task Force to draft those guidelines. Headed by Under Secretary Russell Train, the Task Force is also protecting the rights of Alaskan Indians who own some of the land. Its first act has been to delay the construction of a 773-mile-long trans-Alaska pipeline until the best route can be chosen from the oilfields south to the port of Valdez. The pipeline itself, the Task Force insists, must have such built-in environmental safeguards as pollution-detection devices and plenty of shut-off valves all along its route.

The very thought of oil spillage causes ecologists to shudder. Scientists have long known that in the freezing Arctic, oil does not break down or dissipate biologically. Instead, it would remain for years, perhaps forever, as a menace to wildlife. Construction and operation of the pipeline can be monitored. But it will be more difficult to control the supertankers that might follow the sea route through the Northwest Passage now being tested by the 115,000-ton tanker Manhattan (TIME, Sept. 5). If one foundered in the Arctic Ocean, it would spill many times the amount of oil lost in the memorable Torrey Canyon disaster, thereby endangering literally millions of seabirds, fish and littoral animals.

Despite the Department of Interior's efforts to slow down the pace of industrialization on the North Slope, some conservationists think that the oil companies are moving too fast. Says Dr. Edgar Wayburn, vice president of the Sierra Club: "Our fundamental knowledge of the area is, in fact, scanty. We know we are taking a chance when we upset the fragile ecological balance. But we don't know the full significance of the upset. We know we are initiating a long chain of circumstances, but we have no idea where they may lead."

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