To the editor: Quit wasting state money on this private road for international mining companies. It would be one thing if this road was actually helping people that live along this route — but it does not.
Not one single village is connected to this road. And you yourselves have told the villages they will have to pay for any connections. So you will happily find funding for the building of a private road for international mining companies, but you have the gall to tell the local villages that they will have to find their own funding to connect them to this road.
That is the height of arrogance, which you seem to be full of.
How does this road help the people living along this route? Without road connections to their villages, how will this road lower fuel, food and other supply prices.
All this road does is provide, for free, at public expense, a road through our Last Frontier, that will bring in more drugs and venereal diseases, jobs for outsiders, destroy our rivers and streams, and disrupt caribou migrations.
It will have huge impacts on subsistence resources and the ability of locals to continue their lifestyles.
It will not lower prices of anything. In fact it will increase prices of everything, because of the increased demand from the people that move in, from elsewhere, to have these high paying jobs.
The idea that roads like this help the local people is repulsive. You know better and so does the state Legislature. Once a road is built to a local village it means the death of that village.
We have seen this happen time and again. It just makes it easier for folks to move to Fairbanks or Anchorage.
AIDEA should drop the idea of studying this road any more. You have already wasted enough money on no this private road for international mining companies.
