Angoon Airport EIS

ANILCA

When Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (commonly called ANILCA) in 1980, more than 100 million acres of Alaska lands were transferred into federal ownership. Congress recognized that Alaskans, particularly those living in remote areas, depend on utilities and transportation modes that must often extend across great distances. Air travel is many times the only option. To meet the socioeconomic and public safety needs unique to Alaska, Congress included in ANILCA some exceptions in the ways Alaskans can use federal lands. An important use provided for in ANILCA is the placement of transportation and utility systems on lands such as the Admiralty Island National Monument and Kootznoowoo Wilderness Area.

The required steps that must be followed before a transportation system can be placed in a wilderness area in Alaska include the following:

An evaluation of impacts (that is, an EIS)
Public hearings in local Alaska areas and in Washington, D.C.
An independent evaluation of the project by each involved federal agency
Approval of the project application by the President of the United States and Congress

These steps are known as the ANILCA Title XI process.

Title XI of ANILCA is entitled Transportation and Utility Systems in and Across, and Access into, Conservation System Units. Congress created this title of ANILCA to acknowledge the following situations:

A high percentage of land in Alaska is federal public land managed by different federal agencies. Those agencies may approve or disapprove applications for transportation and utility systems in different ways, or they may have no clear-cut procedures for considering such applications.
Much of the public land in Alaska has been given special designations such as wilderness areas, national monuments, and national refuges. Collectively, these areas are referred to in ANILCA as conservation system units.
Much of Alaska’s transportation and utility systems have not yet been developed because of the remote nature of many communities and the relatively young age of Alaska as a state. Section 1105 of Title XI outlines the specific steps and standards for granting approval to develop such projects as airports, roads, ferry terminals, and transmission or communication lines in conservation system units. ANILCA supersedes the Wilderness Act (Public Law 88-577) with regard to allowable uses of designated wilderness in Alaska

Another key use provided for in ANILCA is subsistence, which falls under Title VIII of ANILCA.

ANILCA Title VIII

Title VIII (Subsistence Management and Use) of ANILCA allows for subsistence use on conservation system units as defined below:

"...the customary and traditional uses by rural Alaska residents of wild, renewable resources for direct personal or family consumption as food, shelter, fuel, clothing, tools, or transportation; for the making and selling of handicrafts out of non-edible byproducts of fish and wildlife resources taken for personal or family consumption; for barter, or sharing for personal or family consumption; and for customary trade."(ANILCA Section 803)

Title VIII also has a provision that requires federal agencies to evaluate the impact of a federal action on subsistence. Known as a Section 810 (Subsistence and Land Use Decisions) evaluation, any federal project that affects federal public lands must evaluate the impact of that project on subsistence resources and uses. The project cannot be implemented until the evaluation is completed. Accordingly, the Angoon Airport EIS will evaluate the effects of the proposed airport on subsistence resources and uses.