Wednesday, 5 August 2009
Alaska's Airports: Going Nowhere or Stimulating Expansion
Just got done watching a short video about all the money Alaska got for 7-8 airports to be built or expanded in out-lying areas of the Alaskan wilderness. Each of these airports received between 10 and 15 million US taxpayer dollars to be used to expand and modernize.
I'm all for this, but the location of some of these airports is questionable as to their providing sufficient benefit to Alaskans as a whole. This can be looked at in several ways.
Alaska is simply huge. And its tough terrain. No doubt about it you have to be a pretty tough survivalist to make it in most of Alaska. So having these airports does a few things, it allows people to easily get into and out of the vast tough interiors and hard to reach exteriors of Alaska to more populated locations. It could also be used to expand these areas, either for settlement or to develop resort areas in what is unquestionably one of the most beautiful, albeit pretty cold, areas of the world. Where else can one see the largest mountain in the world, active volcanoes, and the various and pretty cool flora and fauna.
Michael Grabell wrote an extensive article about the reasons for some of the airports chosen for the stimulus bonanza and given what he wrote the decisions make sense except the one in Ouzinkie. The village of Ouzinkie is one of the remotest outposts in the United States -- home to a mere 165 people on an island off another island off the coast of Alaska. There are no stores, no gas stations and no stoplights.
Yet the Ouzinkie village will soon be home to a new $15 million airport paid for by taxpayers under the federal stimulus package. Not much bang for the buck there, and the video I linked to above made the point that the contractors building the airport didn't even hire any of the people that live there to help in the airports construction effort.
Unlike the Bridge to Nowhere, I think these airport expansions will in the long run help Alaska, but the monies need to keep flowing to those areas so that people will settle and/or resorts are developed. Just building an airport doesn't mean people will fly there.
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