Village Representatives Speak on Energy Challenges
Representatives from Alaskan communities cause village representatives to speak out in Juneau.
Hoping to save on heating oil, some villagers in the Koyukuk River community of Alatna are driving snowmachines eight or nine miles out of town this winter for firewood, said acting tribal administrator Amelia Edwards.
The village sits along the Arctic Circle, just west of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Gasoline, flown to a nearby village and hauled behind snowmachines across the frozen river, costs $7 a gallon, she said. "Most people need the gas to haul wood and hunt. But some people can't afford that. ... they go without," Edwards said.
While heating oil and gasoline prices in rural Alaska have dropped since hitting staggering highs in the summer of 2008, costs remain more than 30 percent higher than in 2005, according to a recent survey by the state Division of Community and Regional Affairs.
