Democrats are planning to mark the one-year anniversary of Trump’s tax bill by introducing bicameral legislation that repeals the provision opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling, the Washington Examiner has learned.
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, a climate change stalwart on the environment committee, is leading the ANWR repeal bill effort in the higher chamber, congressional aides confirm.
Congressional sources explain that Markey is adding the final touches to the legislation and will be making further announcements on the repeal push soon.
The bill would repeal a provision in the GOP tax bill passed last December to open the wildlife refuge in Alaska to lease sales for oil and natural gas drilling.
“ANWR by itself would be a big bill,” Trump said last year. The tax bill reversed a 40-year ban on drilling in the Arctic.
The Senate legislation would be a companion to a bill introduced in the House in May by Democratic Reps. Jared Huffman of California and Raul Grijalva of Arizona. Grijalva could become House Natural Resources Committee chairman next year.
Republican Reps. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania signed on as sponsors to the bill. Fitzpatrick is returning to Congress next year, but Sanford won’t be after losing in his primary in June.
Meanwhile, conservation and indigenous peoples’ groups have been lobbying the House and Senate for the past week to gain as many supporters for the bill as possible.
“We’re asking the [representatives] to do what they can to slow down the process to prevent any development in the Arctic refuge,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, representing the northernmost Indian tribe located in Alaska, who has been lobbying on Capitol Hill all week in the wake of the midterm Democratic House victory.
She was joined by a delegation of groups from Alaska pushing for the repeal legislation or another bill to block the administration’s efforts to begin surveying and drilling in the refuge.
“The Department of Interior is moving at such a fast pace that they are using studies from 1983, they’re not respecting any of our human rights or environmental issues,” said Demientieff. She argues that the administration is trying to rush the studies necessary to begin drilling in the refuge, which is part of her tribe’s sacred lands.
Alaska is experiencing climate change at double the rate of the rest of the world, she said, and more oil drilling would only exacerbate those effects.
“We’re not going to just stand aside and let it happen,” she said.
Another bill that lobbyists say is also being eyed to block Trump’s Arctic drilling law is a measure offered up by Huffman in 2017 that also has three Republican cosponsors: Fitzpatrick, Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey, and David Reichert of Washington state. Reichert and LoBiondo are both retiring.
The bill, the Udall-Eisenhower Arctic Wilderness Act, designates approximately 1.5 million acres of land within Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, which protects federal lands and refuges from development.
The bill, or a version of it, has been put before Congress for decades, said Leah Donahey, legislative affairs director for the Alaska Wilderness League conservation group.
The most likely legislative course is for the 144 signatories on the wilderness bill to join forces on re-introducing the Arctic refuge repeal legislation. Donahey’s group is part of a broad coalition lobbying the Hill in the past week.
Demientieff is also organizing a large demonstration of Native American groups in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 10-11, to protest opening the Arctic refuge.
“An attack on the Arctic refuge is an attack on the Gwich’in Nation,” she told the Washington Examiner. “This is a very serious crisis for us. Our way of life, our food security, and our homelands are being attacked.”
Demientieff said Gwich’in people, in addition to lobbying for legislation, will be pursuing their own agenda to protect their tribal lands from the Trump plan.
That effort takes the form of persuading large investment banks in New York not to fund companies looking to drill in the refuge. They are also holding prayer vigils around the nation to protect the land from drilling.
