The First Things First Alaska Foundation is continuing to push for a road to Juneau and says the governor’s administration is scheduled to release a revised environmental impact statement this spring.
Executive Director Denny DeWitt with the foundation says they are urging that the route up east Lynn Canal remain the preferred alternative.
DeWitt: “We can talk about a whole lot of things, including going up the west side and all kinds of others but at the end of the day, a change at this point in time is going to kill the road. It would have a ripple effect in the fact that the planning that’s been done, you go down the list of what’s been done, and you’re starting again from scratch.”
Neil MacKinnon, the foundation’s president, believes the road link out of Alaska’s capital would reduce some of the fiscal pressure on the Alaska Marine Highway.
Mackinnon: “It’ll free the ferries that operating in this end of the route, to operate on the other end so it’ll improve the service, or make it possible to improve the service on the southern end.”
A study by the McDowell Group outlined the economic benefits of the road connection, including a boost to the regional and Juneau economies during the six years that construction is projected to take.