A proposed undersea communications cable from Juneau to Skagway and Haines has met an unexpected obstacle: A park.
Laying of the Lynn Canal Fiber link was expected to begin this fall, but in September officials at Alaska Power and Telephone were told there was a problem: The proposed cable is expected to run through the Chilkat Islands State Marine Park south of Haines.
“We’ve actually delayed the project due to some permit issues,” AP&T vice president Tom Irvin said.
At 85 miles, the Lynn Canal Fiber link is short as submarine cables go, but it would be the longest ever installed by AP&T, which provides Internet, power and telephone service to smaller communities across Alaska.
The Lynn Canal cable is expected to provide faster Internet service to Skagway and Haines, but AP&T has grander plans for the conduit. In state documents, it envisions the cable as the first stage of a backdoor connection between Alaska and the Yukon.
That Canadian territory is currently served by a single, vulnerable cable stretching south along the Alaska Highway, and outages are not uncommon. Southeast Alaska is connected to the Outside via a pair of connections, but each of those cross an earthquake-prone region of the Gulf of Alaska, and outages have been caused several times in recent years due to undersea landslides.
Linking the two regions would improve reliability on both sides of the border, Yukon government documents state.
Political negotiations would be needed to extend the cable across the border, so for the time being, AP&T has focused on completing the first leg of the project, the undersea link between Juneau and Skagway.
The seabed in state waters (up to 3 miles from the tide line) is considered state land just as much as anything above water is. AP&T bought the special undersea cable it needed, surveyed the route it wanted to take, and applied for a permit from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources to use state “land” for the cable.
Rob Edwardson, of the DNR’s division of mining, land and water in Juneau, said his work is “largely complete,” but because a portion of the cable’s planned route travels through the 6,929-acre marine park off the tip of the Chilkat Peninsula, it needed separate permission for that portion of the route.
In 1983, the Alaska Legislature created the marine park — and several others across the state — to, in lawmakers’ words, “maintain its natural, cultural and scenic values.”
State parks, particularly marine parks, the Legislature said at the time, are intended to promote recreation and tourism, hunting and fishing.
The Legislature’s action “means that this area has a different legal status,” explained Claire LeClair, chief of field operations for the Alaska Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation.
No regulation or statute allows the parks division to approve a cable through a state park.
“There would be no way for us to authorize that in a legally defensible way,” LeClair said.
The obvious solution would be for AP&T to route the Lynn Canal cable around Kataguni, Shikoski, Anyaka and Talsani islands, which drip off the end of the Chilkat Peninsula like drops from a melting icicle and are protected by the park.
“It’s not a deal-breaker,” Irvin said of that approach, “it just means it’s going to add a huge cost burden for us.”
AP&T has already spent $600,000 to store the cable it planned to lay this fall. The new route would have to be surveyed, and that would add up to $300,000 more. Then, AP&T would have to buy more cable and splice it into the existing length being stored in Washington state.
AP&T would rather avoid those costs if it can, and it is asking the parks department to consider that cables already run through the park.
On nautical charts, a purple legend east of Kataguni Island, within the waters of the park, states: “Cable Area.”
In the first half of the 20th century, the U.S. government and telecommunications companies strung copper telephone lines between Juneau and the northern end of Lynn Canal. Those cables existed decades before the park did, which may provide a legal out for both sides.
While the parks department may not be able to approve a new cable, it might be able to authorize a replacement for an old one or otherwise take advantage of the fact that the Lynn Canal Fiber project wouldn’t be an entirely new addition to the park.
Will that argument pass legal muster? LeClair and Irvin each had the same answer: “I don’t know.”
