Fairbanks Daily News-Miner from Fairbanks, Alaska • Page 16

Alaska, Daily News-Miner, Monday, August 18, 1969 (Continued from Page A-7) Promisine Practices in Programs for the Culturally Disadvantage) and their Relevance for Northern Native Charles K. Ray, Department of Education, University of Alaska. A comparison in the Education of Native People in Alaska and the Trust Territory of the Pacific E. Hawkins, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C. 12:15 p.m.

University Commons LUNCH10N 2:00 p.m. Patty Gymnasium SYMPOSIUM: Environmental Policies for the Prof. Richard A. le Department of Geography University of Washington, Seattle. Conservationists' Concern about Arctic Edgar Wayburn, Vice President, Sierra Club, San Francisco.

Petroleum Industry Policies for Protecting the H. Galloway, Vice President and Director, Humble Oil and Refining Houston, Tex. Federal Responsibilities in the North Slope Task Porcc-Dr. Leslie L. Glasgow, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Washington, D.C.

Discussants: Prof. Grant McConnell, Department of Political Science, University of California, Santa Cruz; Hon. W.I. Palmer, Alaska State Senate, Ninilchik; Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith, Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle; Dr. David R.

Klein, Leader, Alaska Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, University of Alaska. Conference Summary: Prof. George W. Rogers, Institute of Social, Economic and Government Research, University of Alaska. Sole Woman MUSKOX HUNTS Gets Aboard SS Manhattan WASHINGTON-Helen Delich Bentiey, the salty maritime writer nominated to be federal maritime commission chairman, will witness history-making ice breaking for the Nixon administration.

She will be aboard the S.S. Manhattan when it Chester, later this week to crash its way through arctic ice to make a new Northwest Pasage for the shipment of petroleum from the Alaskan oilfields. Long a battler for U.S. Maritime Might, Mrs. Bentiey had to use the persusive pugnacity for which she is noted to get aboard the ice-breaking tanker that will carry 180 male scientists and crewmen to the Prudhoe Bay oilfield of Humble, Atlantic Richfield and Britisl Petroleum.

"It's no -place for a woman," a male maritime commission official said of the arctic ice fields where John and Sebastian Cabot first attempted to sail over the top of North America in 1497. Mrs. Bently's nomination is expected to reinforce women's trust in campaign promises that the Nixon administration would place women in top, policy-making positions in government. Her historic trip will not mean (Continued from Page A-5) What need to be removed from the island herd are the old bulls which are surplus to its reproductive needs, and it is neither biologically nor economically feasible to transplant them. Conceding that the aesthetic of hunting muskox as a trophy game animal is arguable, the slaughterhouse approach makes far less sense when we consider that muskox hunt guiding could provide a real and perennial source of income to the economy of the 300 Eskimos at Mekoryuk, Nunivak's only village, who are still tied largely to a sea fauna subsistence.

While I'm a writer, not a hunter, having never pointed a weapon in malice at a living creature, I do maintain an abiding interest in the sound management of the wildlife resource in Alaska which is threatened by the philistine approach which Secretary Hickel epitomizes. that Mrs. Bently will be maritime commission chairman in absentia. The S.S. Manhattan will have two helicopters aboard to carry her to an Alaskan airport for her return to Washington.

During Presidents Nixon campaign last year, Mrs. Bentiey served as his adviser on maritime matters. He had originally intended to appoint her to the position on the maritime commission earlier this year. I have closely followed this controversy since its inception, when Hickel, 'then governor, misadvisedly vetoed a bill passed by the 1968 legislature which set tag fees of $500 and $1,000 for musk ox hunts, while laboring under the curious delusion that he was vetoing the hunts themselves. What Hickel's incredibly uninformed action did, of course, was merely prohibit the Alaska Fish and Game Department from collecting tag fees, in effect, rendering the hunts free.

The hunts never transpired, however, because Hickel then thwarted them by illegal executive dictum through his politically-appointed Fish and Game commissioner, Augie Reetz, now, thankfully, departed from a post for which he was so obviously professionally unfit. Reetz was somewhat pusillani mo and abetted by Fish and Wildlife regional brass who didn't want to get involved in a sticky controversy with the state. Needless to say, any public criticism by state Fish and Game unanimously, if privately opposed Hickel's then effectively stilled, just as any criticism from federal Fish and Wildlife opposed to his position been effectively gagged since Hickel'sappointment as Interior Secretary. ON THE NORTH SLOPE Secrecy Befouls FAA 9 Job By MIKE DALTON Staff Writer The sudden, burgeoning aircraft operations on the North Slope of the reluctance of oil companies to disclose their made it very difficult for the FAA to properly expand northward fast enough to meet the demands, Gen. William B.

Comstock of the Federal Aviation Administration explained here last week. The FAA official, an active duty Air Force officer assigned with the FAA, spoke to a ground school for pilots in Fairbanks and was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce last week. Gen. Comstock said the FAA's role and aim is air safety through providing air navigational aids, ground services, etc. He said of the heavy aircraft activity on the North Slope: "It has been difficult to program for those people (the North Slope operators).

Quite frequently we have had to 're-act' to situations rather than to plan and program for them." The northern Alaska operations constitute the largest civilian cargo T. airlift in aviation history, he said. In nine months of flying north from Fairbanks, 430,000 tons were delivered by air, despite interruptions by bad weather, i- winter, daytime, darkness, etc. The Berlin airlift, in an 18-month period, carried 1.8 million tons into Berlin, Gen. said.

That operation was an around-the-clock constant freight haul. Some of the hazards in the north country that confront pilots in no other area of the world were noted by Gen. Comstock. Heavy snows, low ceilings and visibility many times, darkness through November, December and January and extreme low temperatures added to the difficulty of flying and navigation. Comstock predicted that air travel to the North Slope in 1970 may reach 70,000 persons.

He looks for 50,000 this year. He also predicted increased freight hauls for this coming fall-through-spring freighting season. Comstock said his agency expects As an indication of the added activity at Fairbanks International Airport, Gen. Comstock compared the month of May last year to the same month this year. He said the flight service station in Fairbanks in May of 1968 handled 3,500 flights' service advisories.

In May of this Hercules ACTIVITIES FORECAST (Daily Basis) Federal Aviation Administration (Starting August 1, 1969) No. Aircraft Constellations(1649) 2 DC-6 1 727 i 737 3 Twin DC-3 F-27 7 Light Twins 70 Helicopters 75 C-82 2 Canadian aircraft 4 TOTAL 202 NORTH SLOPE PASSENGER FORECAST (in thousands) 1969 1970 1971 Operations per day 104 8 4 32 4 12 72 20 28 240 600 4 4 1,122 Scheduled Carriers Air Taxi and General Aviation almost 200 aircraft to be operating on a daily basis this fall in the north, either on the North Slope or between Fairbanks and the slope. These 200 aircraft, Gen, Comstock said, are expected to make an average of 1,122 operations each day. FAA terms each landing and takeoff an an operation so the 1,122 operations would actually be 561 flights. That figure is high for an area that one year ago had only one FAA regulated airport (Barrow municipal airport).

50 60 70 80 70 80 1972 1973 55 55 65 65 year, he said, that same station handled 18,000 advisories. FAA projections for air activity are based on information supplied from oil firms that plan to drill, or are drilling, on the North Slope, General Comstock said. Specific details are lacking in many cases because of the secrecy and tight security imposed by the oil firms. FAA took over air routing control to and from the North SLope on April 11 of this year, the FAA may said. His agency has also certified three airports as navigational aid stations in recent months.

Those are Umiat, a state-owned airport with a radio communication station operated by Wien Consolidated Airlines, Sagwon which is owned and operated by Interior Airways, and Prudhoe Bay airport "jointly used by Atlantic Richfield and British Petroleum. FAA has installed other navigational aids such as visual lighting signals, dye markers, runway identification lighting. More sophisticated navigational aids such as radar control are planned, General Comstock said. The air routing to and from the North Slope has decreased some of the confusion that existed last winter, the FAA man said. Northbound traffic is now routed over Chandalar Lake area while the southbound is brought down to Fairbanks via the Settles area.

To demonstrate the confusion in the air last winter, General Comstock said, "In March of thjs year we had 45 operational strips on the North Slope. No place in the United States has this many strips handling such large numbersof cargo aircraft." Most of those 45 airstrips were on frozen lakes or snow packed strips on the frozen tundra. The all-weather strips on the North Slope now, General Comstock said, are the Barrow municipal strip at Barrow Village, the Pingo strip operated by Shell Oil Texaco's strip at Kad River, Mobil Oil's at Kuparuk (on the Kuparuk River), Prudhoe Bay, Standard Oil of California's airport at Deadhorse (near Prudhoe Bay), Pan American's strip on the Kavik River, Interior Airway's strip at Sagwon, and Umiat. Today there are nine all-weather airstrips on Alaska's North Slope. Last year at this time there were only three (Sagwon, Umiat and Barrow)..