Alaska Offshore Drilling Rally & Meeting, Feb. 21

For the first time in decades, most of Alaska’s coasts could be opened up to oil and gas leasing if the Department of Interior’s draft leasing plan for federal waters goes into effect. This plan would open almost all of Alaska’s waters to drilling and threaten coastal parks like Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Kenai Fjords National Park, and Bering Land Bridge National Preserve on the Bering Strait.

The national parks along Alaska’s coastlines protect unique marine environments, shelter our state and nation’s fisheries, support thousands of jobs and help bring billions of dollars into our economy. They attract millions of tourists to Alaska, protect subsistence food sources, and preserve important cultural resources, like the over 5,000 years of history of the Inupiat Eskimos at Cape Krusenstern National Monument’s 100+ beach ridges.

It’s not too late to speak out against this plan. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is accepting comments on this draft leasing plan at a public meeting in Anchorage on February 21.

Join NPCA in person to remind BOEM that the waters, wildlife, local economies and traditional way of life of our coastal national parks are too valuable to be endangered by offshore drilling. We will meet inside Williwaw @ 5:45pm (look for our NPCA logo/sign) and will walk over to the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center for the open-house format public meeting. If 5:45 doesn’t work for you, the meeting itself will be an open-house format from 6:00 to 10:00 and members of the public are welcome to drop in at any time during those hours.

Please contact Erica Carroll at (907) 444-1137 or ecarroll@npca.org if you have any questions.

Learn more about the meeting here. This is the only public meeting about the National OCS program scheduled in Alaska. If you cannot attend in person, make sure to submit comments online.