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The biggest TAPS problem would come from burying the pipeline in permafrost; no one really knows how the soil would behave. Oil would enter the pipe at a geothermal temperature of more than 100°; pumping and friction would boost that to 180°. As a result, critics charge, the hot oil might create a "thaw bulb" in the permafrost as deep as 50 ft. If the pipe broke, either by sagging into the mush or by being jolted by an earthquake, the aftermath would make the Santa Barbara spill look like a picnic. Critics also fear breaks at the pipe's lowest points: riverbeds. They paint a stark scenario of rivers, black with crude oil, flowing to the sea with dead fish, birds and animals.
TAPS officials argue that special safeguards, including 73 cutoff valves and aerial surveillance, would prevent any disaster. Even so, last April, conservation groups persuaded a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to enjoin both the pipeline and the access road. Neither can be built, the court ruled, until the Interior Department heeds the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which requires a detailed report on the pipeline's ecological effects before the department can issue a building permit. Even without the court order, says Interior Secretary Hickel, his department will block the line until it is proved safe.
Hickel, though, is still an Alaskan and well aware of his state's economic anguish. With his tacit blessing, Alaska Governor Keith Miller clumsily tried to move ahead on the $120 million access road. He first got his legislature to approve a bill that would allow the state to build the road and then be repaid by the pipeline consortium. Not wishing to risk stockholder suits, the consortium turned down the idea. In order to reintroduce his plan. Miller asked the legislature to return to Juneau early this month for a special session. But when the legislators discovered that the Governor had no new alternatives for them to debate, they stayed home.
Such a defeat for the boom psychology has rarely occurred in Alaska's history, which is a monument to the rugged philosophy that "if you're going to be raped, relax" The first white explorer to see the place was Vitus Bering, a Dane sailing in the service of Czar Peter the Great. His 1741 voyage was soon followed by Peter's prornyshleniki (explorer-colonizers), who swept eastward through the gale-tormented Aleutian Islands with the rapacity of conquistadors. Though Peter yearned for an empire, his colonizers found only humble Aleuts and thick-furred sea otters. By 1801, the Aleuts had been decimated by harsh servitude and the animals virtually wiped out by overhunting. In 1867, Russia decided to sell Alaska in order to raise funds for wars with England. To Secretary of State William H. Seward, the land seemed a steal at $7.2 million, or 2¢ per acre. To most Americans, a few "wretched fish" could not justify