Alaska Mine Road’s Future Hinges on Obscure National Parks Law

The future of a remote Alaska copper and cobalt trove will turn in part on whether the spirit or the letter of a 1980 federal national parks law matters most in the Interior’s Department’s ability to block access to the potential mines.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee May 8 that the Bureau of Land Management can block the proposed 211-mile Ambler Road and effectively cancel the project because the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or ANILCA, doesn’t explicitly require the Interior Department to permit the road across 24 miles of federal land managed by ...