A gravel road leads out of King Cove, a small fishing town near the tip of the Alaska Peninsula. The road passes a small airport and goes on for another 18 miles before ending at the shore of Cold Bay, a large inlet on the south side of the Alaska Peninsula.
King Cove’s mayor, Warren Wilson, helped build the road about 12 years ago. For now, it ends at a defunct hovercraft landing. You can see the city of Cold Bay from the landing, seven miles across the water.
“It’s just a skip and a hop,” he said. “That’s where we’d connect this last 11 miles of road.”
Those 11 miles are what it would take to connect the communities’ roads to each other. That would make it possible for King Cove residents to reach Cold Bay’s all-weather airport by land. Often, flying out of King Cove is impossible due to the weather.
For decades, King Cove’s roughly 800 residents have called for such a road — a link they say could save lives in emergencies. Neither city has a hospital, so residents rely on medical evacuations to reach Anchorage for urgent medical care.
The Biden administration last week endorsed the proposal, recommending a land exchange with King Cove’s Native corporation so the road can be built. But that road would go through a federally protected wilderness area. While residents argue it’s a matter of life and death, environmental advocates say the road could threaten vital wildlife habitat — and set a dangerous precedent.
Twenty deaths since 1980
A draft environmental impact statement, released last week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of the Interior, supports a land exchange between the federal government and King Cove’s Native corporation to allow construction of a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The administration’s endorsement does not actually approve the exchange, but it sets the stage for President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, which is expected to take up the issue in 2025. Trump supported a similar land swap in 2019 but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the case after the feds pulled out of the agreement.
“We’ve been advocating for this road just to make travel possible,” Wilson said. “We’re stuck now. It’s not good for the community to be unable to travel for medical care, not to mention medevacs. That’s what hurts the most.”
Cold Bay’s all-weather airport, built by the military during World War II, has the fifth-longest runway in the state, capable of instrument landings. Flights there are only grounded about 10 days a year. On average, King Cove’s gravel airstrip is too socked in for flights to land more than 100 days a year.
Since 1980, at least 18 people have died in King Cove while waiting for medical transportation, according to Murkowski’s office.
‘Wilderness areas are all threatened’
Environmental groups have opposed the King Cove road for decades, arguing that a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge would threaten critical habitat including Izembek Lagoon, one of the largest eelgrass beds on earth. It hosts hundreds of thousands of birds, like the Pacific black brant, a species of goose whose entire population relies on the refuge.
Brook Brisson, an attorney with Trustees for Alaska, an Anchorage-based environmental organization that went to court to stop the Trump-legacy land exchange, said the group is already taking steps to oppose the exchange.
“I am literally, today, actively reviewing the draft statement,” Brisson said. “I’m going to be working with our clients and our partners to raise concerns about the protection of those subsistence food resources and about the conservation lands and identifying legal concerns with the program, and we will be submitting comments on the draft statement in the coming month.”
While the group says Izembek is important, their larger concern is the precedent it could set.
“Wilderness areas are all threatened by a land exchange for a road in Izembek” Brisson said. “There is a precedential concern here.”
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who has long championed the road, thinks it can be built while still protecting the environment. In a Wednesday statement, she praised Biden’s support for the exchange, saying it was the only way to “truly protect the people of King Cove.”
Brisson recognizes King Cove’s challenges but hopes the community will find another solution to cross the bay.
“We have heard the concerns from the community of King Cove, and we understand them. We support transportation solutions, and we think there are viable marine options that have been studied and funded so that the people in King Cove can get the access to the health care and the emergency services that they need,” Brisson said.
At the hovercraft landing site, a yellow road sign, pocked with bullet holes, says “END.” The hovercraft stopped running in 2013, when King Cove officials concluded that the weather was too rough to operate it consistently.
“It only took a couple years to figure out it wasn’t going to work,” Wilson said.
They’ve tried other solutions, like plane charters and ferries, but Wilson said all of those solutions failed due to high costs and the region’s relentless weather. The municipality, Native corporation, and tribal government are all steadfast that a road is the only viable option.
“We’re stopped from going across a refuge because of an environmentalist crowd that has a lot of money, and they could stop a project like this. But in America, you’re supposed to be able to save lives,” Wilson said. “It’s for the safety and well-being of the public traveling for emergencies and medical travel.”
“Too many deaths have happened trying to transit out of King Cove,” Wilson added. “Enough is enough.”
Despite the opposition, the Biden administration’s decision marks a major step forward for King Cove’s decades-long push. A public comment period for the exchange opened Nov. 15 and lasts until Dec. 30. People who wish to comment on the proposed land exchange can do so on the Fish and Wildlife Service’s website.
