June 10, 2001  -  Spring in Prudhoe Bay  -  Seattle to Prudhoe Bay

I awoke this morning near Seattle to an in-your-face Spring. The rhododendrons are in vibrant bloom, hummingbirds are mating with zeal and the salmonberries are almost ripe. With temperatures in the upper 60s, my rain-drenched home glows green this time of year. Two thousand miles north and half a day later, I disembarked at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Spring has arrived here too, but only in the last day or so. Temperatures are in the mid-30s, enough to begin to melt the snow piled up alongside the roads.

I wanted to see Prudhoe Bay, the largest industrial oil development in North America, before going to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). I want to get a sense of what could happen if the coastal plain of ANWR is opened to oil drilling. Located on the North Slope -- 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle and 1,200 miles south of the North Pole -- Prudhoe Bay is a staggering feat of engineering. The complex covers 250 square miles and employs thousands of workers. Everything -- piping, bulldozers, drilling equipment, trucks, fuel tanks, hotels, living quarters, a post office and general store -- was brought here by barge or truck. A power generating facility provides enough electricity for a city of 80,000 people. About 1.4 million barrels of oil a day are pumped to the surface from 9,000 feet in the ground. The oil is sent to Valdez, Alaska via the 800-mile, $8 billion Trans Alaska pipeline. My husband, Chris, and I visited the pipeline today at milepost "0." The scale of operations at Prudhoe Bay dwarfs any industrial site and is so mind-boggling in its enormity that I feel like I'm on another planet. How could something so huge smack in the middle of the Arctic not disrupt the area's natural inhabitants -- bears, caribou, birds, foxes, plants and other living things? The oil companies claim that oil activities on the North Slope have had no adverse effect on wildlife and their habitat. This is a hard pill to swallow.