Well, I appreciate that, General. I know that you've spent considerable time in Alaska looking at the operations there at Greely.

I continue to strongly support this bill.

It is important that we finally get to that point where we are able to bring a resolution to this issue.

Forty years is a long time to be waiting for these land issues to be resolved.

So it really does give us that full umbrella of protection that we talk about when we discuss the advantages of a missile defense system that truly does cover all of the United States?

But at the end of it you recognize that you cannot make every interest 100 percent happy.

Sealaska is the only corporation situated that way.

Please do not let our towns become ghost towns. Kill this bill.

I want to make sure that this legislation, not only addresses the equity that is at stake here for the Sealaska shareholders, but also for those who live and work and raise their families in the region.

We respectively ask that you vote no on Senate Bill 730.

This bill allows Sealaska to select other lands to complete its entitlement.

Without passage of this bill, Sealaska will likely be forced out of the timber business.

Well, I think your visits help to contribute to good strong morale and commitment to the work as well.

It stuns me to think that we're still in a position where you are saying you can't implement your plan.

So essentially the $4 million that you indicate that it will take to put it into this storage mode allows us a level of flexibility, the option, if you will, if we need to, to reconfigure.

Unless this bill passes we do have, again, some very dire economic situations within the panhandle region.

It is long past time that Sealaska shareholders get the lands they were promised nearly 40 years ago.

Our reality is that if, in fact, we are not able to come to a resolve with this Sealaska legislation the existing remnants of the timber industry in Southeast Alaska are just not going to survive.

That is something that none of the other regional corporations were given the opportunity for.

I strongly urge the committee to table this bill once and for all.

We cannot keep just talking this to death because 40 years have passed.

I think we all recognize that this must happen.

The referenced legislation would allow the Sealaska Corporation to select several of the old-growth reserves in southern Southeast Alaska and the corporation's representatives have stated that they intend to log the-lands selected for…

Isn't it better from an environmental perspective and certainly for the critical habitat perspective to allow the proposal that we have before us?

What we're trying to do with this Sealaska bill is to try to keep the timber industry hanging on.