Political Quotes

“Mr. President, most of our roads, when we are talking about the IRR roads, are not necessarily roads that are going to carry a vehicle. These are roads that will carry pedestrians, a four-wheeler, a snow machine. These are the ways that Alaska's Native people access our subsistence resources, haul their subsistence food home. These are the roads that form the link to the village airport, which is the only way out during the wintertime. If there are no roads, you have to be flying to all of these locations. This is a picture of the village of Kwigillingok, which lies on the western shore of Kuskokwim Bay, 388 miles west of Anchorage. In this village, the primary mode of transportation is by foot, ATV, and snow machine in the wintertime. But you look at this picture, it is all nice, green--it looks beautiful. But it is tundra. It is wet and marshy. If you get down there in your rubber boots, you are going to be up to your knees in brush and water. You cannot walk through this and would not want to put a vehicle on it. So what you see here is a real technological breakthrough in how to build rural roads in places where dirt and gravel either just do not exist out there or just do not work. This was built using IRR funds from the Native village of Kwigillingok, funding from the State of Alaska, and funding from the Denali Commission. This is construction of a geo-tech grid track. It looks like grading.…”