Today, Eric Forrer and I filed suit against DNR (the Alaska Department of Natural Resources) over the 20,000 acre giveaway just across the Little Su River from Meadow Lakes. The Little Su is less than a mile from my house, but the planned giveaway to AIDEA (the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority) is so brazenly unconstitutional that Alaskans from every part of the state, and from all across the political spectrum, should stand against it.
If you thought the idea of giving away 20,000 acres of state land to build a very large data center was a bad idea, the current plan is fundamentally worse.
There are 47 days left in the Dunleavy Administration—only 47 days to dole out whatever political favors the current administration has promised or feels it owes its friends and supporters. We have seen how commonplace it has become for a president to issue thousands of presidential pardons in the last few days before leaving office. We cannot put an end to politicians doing political favors, but we have to draw the line when an administration proposes to gift 20,000 acres of state land to persons unknown.
My father has worked in data center management for the last twenty-five years, traveling to Singapore, the UK, Sweden, and all across the United States. DNR’s plan to facilitate a large data center in the Mat-Su has him scratching his head. How is the Mat-Su an attractive site for a data center spanning tens of thousands of acres? Obviously, he has nothing against data centers in general, but why here?
The proposed land to be given away is huge: 19,950 acres of state land stretching from the Nancy Lake area almost to the intersection of Schrock and Church in Wasilla. Older Alaskans will remember that this is some of the very state land that was set aside for a new state capital after Alaskans voted multiple times to move the capital away from Juneau.
In total, the plan would give away more than 31 square miles of state land to AIDEA. The state’s plan offers few details on why such a large area is needed and when and how it will be developed. It may never be developed.
After applying for the land months ago, and talking up the idea of building a data center, in September, AIDEA announced that a data center project had not actually been planned or approved. If the 20,000 acres isn’t going to be used for a data center, what will it be used for? In short, we don’t know. Who will ultimately own the land after it is transferred from state control? We don’t know. What will they be permitted to do with the land once they own it? We don’t know. Will the public continue to have access to what is currently their land? We don’t know!
In other words, what the Dunleavy administration is saying is “just trust us…we don’t want to share the details right now, but this could be really amazing.” Of course, once the land leaves state control, there’s effectively no way of putting the genie back in the bottle.
This is why the Alaska Constitution carefully restricts how state land like this can be transferred. The portions of the Constitution we highlighted in the lawsuit are: Article 1, Section 7; Article 8, Sections 2, 9, 10 and 17; and Article 9, Sections 6 and 7.
State law (AS 38.05.810(g)) requires DNR, in most cases like this, to place restrictions on what the land may be used for. Under the current plan, those restrictions have been entirely waived. Once ownership is transferred to AIDEA, it can move forward with a large data center, or it can scrap those plans and proceed to build a new HAARP, or a landfill.
How does that square with Art. VIII, Sec. 2 of the Constitution, which requires that state land and waters be utilized, developed, and conserved for the maximum benefit of the people of Alaska? The Alaska Constitution provides for public land to be leased. The state could have proposed a lease. It decided it wanted to transfer full ownership of the land to AIDEA. Why?
Art. VIII, Sec. 10 prohibits state land from being given away without adherence to the “safeguards of the public interest as prescribed by law”. Section 10 also explicitly requires public notice. The public submitted over 2,000 comments in response to the public notice announcement from DNR, but how can the state satisfy the requirement for public notice if the notice itself boils down to another version of “just trust us.”
The state is attempting to quickly grant the land to AIDEA using a noncompetitive process reserved for “Public and Charitable Use”. Even if AIDEA builds a data center exactly as some have described, how does a data center fall into either category? It is not at all clear that it will.
The politics of this project are as clear as the plan itself is opaque. The current administration has put this transfer on the fast track. The governor has less than two months left in office. He wants it to happen now. Many Republican legislators have lined up behind it, not because it is a good idea, but because the governor wants it.
My legislator here in Meadow Lakes dutifully announced: “After meeting with AIDEA earlier this week and now receiving this follow up letter, I am feeling much more hopeful about the future of responsible development in the Mat Su and the opportunity to build a positive partnership with AIDEA.” In the letter, AIDEA acknowledged that they have not yet taken the time to understand how the public currently uses the 20,000 acres they have already requested ownership of.
On Monday, the Senate Resources Committee will be holding a hearing on the proposed land transfer by DNR. The committee voted unanimously to legally require the DNR commissioner to participate in the hearing after his attendance was initially blocked by the governor’s office.
It may be that the Dunleavy administration has an amazing plan for how these 20,000 acres will be used. It may be that this transfer has nothing to do with political favors and everything to do with what is best for Alaska’s future. However, if that is the case, the state appears to be going out of its way to ignore the current constitutional process we have for handling a decision like this, and replace it instead with a wink and a nod and a “just trust us”.
That may be good enough for some legislators, but if it is not quickly reversed it will create an absolutely terrible precedent for the future, one which will undoubtedly be abused by future administrations. It must be stopped now. That is why I have filed this lawsuit.
The fact that such an incomplete proposal like this was even put forward for public comment is a wake-up call to how unsuccessful our current laws (and legislators) have been in discouraging these kinds of plans from being pursued.
I call upon each of our Mat-Su legislators to insist that the current administration adhere to the Alaska Constitution and state law, both of which require legal safeguards to ensure that any transfer of state land is not just in the political interest of the current administration, but is in the public interest of Alaskans as a whole.
Please see my formal submission to DNR opposing the transfer.
Please sign our petition opposing the transfer and share it.
This transfer is also opposed by:
The Alaska Outdoor Council
(Read Their Letter of Opposition)
The Alaska Snowmachine Alliance
(Read Their Letter of Opposition)
The Meadow Lakes Community Council
(Read Their Letter of Opposition)
The Alaska Outdoor Access Alliance
(Read Their Letter of Opposition)
…and many other Alaskans!
