Arctic Map Vanishes, and Oil Area Expands

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October 21, 2005

 

Arctic Map Vanishes, and Oil Area Expands By FELICITY BARRINGER

http://tinyurl.com/acb2u

 

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - Maps matter. They chronicle the struggles of empires and

zoning boards. They chart political compromise. So it was natural for Republican

Congressional aides, doing due diligence for what may be the last battle in the

fight over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to ask for the legally binding

1978 map of the refuge and its coastal plain.

 

It was gone. No map, no copies, no digitized version.

 

The wall-size 1:250,000-scale map delineated the tundra in the biggest national

land-use controversy of the last quarter-century, an area that environmentalists

call America's Serengeti and that oil enthusiasts see as America's Oman.

 

The map had been stored behind a filing cabinet in a locked room in Arlington,

Va. Late in 2002, it was there. In early 2003, it disappeared. There are just a

few reflection-flecked photographs to remember it by.

 

All this may have real consequences. The United States Geological Survey drew up

a new map. On Wednesday, the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee passed a

measure based on the new map that opened to drilling 1.5 million acres of

coastal plain in the refuge.

 

The missing map did not seem to include in the coastal plain tens of thousands

of acres of Native Alaskans' lands. On the new map, those lands were included,

arguably making it easier to open them to energy development.

 

The measure is scheduled to be in the budget reconciliation bill to be voted on

next month.

 

" People have asked me several times, 'Do you think someone took this

intentionally?' " said Doug Vandegraft, the cartographer for the Fish and

Wildlife Service who was the last known person to see the old map. " I hope to

God not. So few people knew about it. I'm able to sleep at night because I don't

think it was maliciously taken. I do think it was thrown out. "

 

Mr. Vandegraft said he had folded the map in half, cushioned within its

foam-board backing, and put it behind the filing cabinet in the locked room for

safekeeping.

 

He said he was distraught when he learned of the loss. In its place in the

original nook, he said, he found a new, folded piece of foam board similar to

the old one - but with no map attached.

 

" I felt sick to my stomach, " he said. " I queried everyone here. I think people

could tell that I was angry about it. "

 

No one admitted knowing what had happened.

 

" It infuriated me, " he said. " It was in no one's way. Why would someone take it

on themselves to say no one needs this?

 

" No one knew where the foam-core boards came from. "

 

The implications of the contours on the new map, at least for the native lands,

are in dispute. Some people argue that the native owners, the Kaktovik Inupiat

Corporation, which controls much of the surface rights to the land, and the

Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, which controls the mineral rights, would be

able to offer energy leases no matter where the lines are drawn, as soon as

Congress opens the plain.

 

The legislative counsel of the Interior Department, Jane M. Lyder, did not go

quite that far, but did say the new map might make the question moot.

 

" It's a very circular kind of thing, " Ms. Lyder said. " Changing the line on the

map makes it a lot easier. "

 

In addition, she said, the inclusion of the native lands within the coastal

plain ensures that they will be covered by the bill's requirement that no more

than 2,000 acres of the plain be used for drilling platforms, airstrips, roads

and other surface disturbances. By including the native lands in the plain, any

work there would count to the 2,000-acre limit, she said.

 

Mr. Vandegraft, the cartographer, said the experience had changed his habits.

 

" Anything I considered historic, we scanned them and took them to the National

Archives, " he said.

 

 

 

 

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" When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have

peace. "

Jimi Hendrix