There has been a covert war of “plausible deniability” against the private sector to quash opposition to selling oil leases in lower Cook Inlet. This state allowed the destruction of a billion dollar a year renewable resource in favor of a non-renewable resource. Alaska is an owner state. We Alaskans who earn the original dollar are tired of being ripped off and forced into poverty.
Forty years from 1960 to 2000 this state allowed two oil tankers a day to each dump ten-million gallons of ballast water taken from Los Angeles, Honolulu, Anacortes, Japanese and Korean boat harbors. Oil tankers have to take on ballast water to run in the open ocean otherwise they will flip over. The contaminated water they brought to Alaska contained trillions of bacteria, algae and nematodes (little worms) that eat the inside out of the shrimp and crab eggs. You got to do the math to understand how this is possible. Sixty-five billion gallons of contaminated tanker ballast water each year for thirty years plus drill tailings from 200 oil wells, plus oil from military vessels and cruise ships destroyed a billion dollar a year shrimp and crab resource. The state statute fine for dumping ballast water was $500.
I was born in Seldovia and fished king crab twenty-five years. We lost everything due to State greed. We were forced to move onto our salmon fish sites in Tuxedni Bay. Our children suffered because we were destitute.
The fishery is supposed to be a renewable resource but when you got a state intent on raking in billions from the sale of oil leases the private sector hasn’t got a chance. They wanted to make Cook Inlet look like the Gulf of Mexico with oil rigs all down Shelikoff Strait. The State never sold many oil leases in lower Cook Inlet because there is little oil there. This terrible crime and violation of the state constitution was for nothing. It was a common culture dominance borrowed from the federal government’s cold war covert-operations of social engineering and mind control. Because there is no state income tax, we, the people, mean nothing to them.
From 1960 to 1980 we had a 7.5 to 10 million pound king crab quota in lower Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay. We also had a 14-million pound king crab quota around Kodiak Island. We used to catch the Cook Inlet quota in three or four weeks starting August 10 to the first week in September. Add those two quotas together and you get 25 million-plus pounds. At $10 a pound what would be $250 million. Add an additional $250 million for the loss of the shrimp, Dungeness and snow crab fisheries and you get $500 million dollars a year annual seafood harvest. The processors and retailers would have received another $500 million dollars for the value-added product. That totals a billion dollars a year lost to the villages of Kodiak Island, Homer and Seldovia. Thousands of fish processors lost their jobs and had to relocate. Hundreds of fishermen including me lost our boats and gear totaling over a billion dollars. It was not only a constitutional violation it was a betrayal of public trust and a crime.
