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The Associated Press

ANCHORAGE — A bill advanced Wednesday that if approved would for the first time allow a road to be built through designated wilderness in a national refuge, according to a conservation group fighting the proposal.

The U.S. House Natural Resources Committee on a voice vote sent the bill sponsored by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, to the full House for a vote. Young is the ranking member of the committee.

The bill would allow a 7-mile, single-lane gravel road through the 315,000-acre Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Southwest Alaska in exchange for 61,000 acres of land. The land would be added to Izembek and another nearby refuge.

Residents and town leaders of King Cove have lobbied hard for the road, saying it is needed to better connect the community of about 800 people on the Alaska Peninsula with the even smaller community of Cold Bay, population 70.

The attraction of Cold Bay is its airport. It has a 10,000-foot runway, the third-longest runway in the state. The runway was built for use in World War II and saw some action during the Vietnam War, but now is mainly used for arrivals and departures for a daily commercial flight from Anchorage.

King Cove argues that it needs a reliable way to the airport in emergencies.

“There are a lot of things about our day-to-day life that aren’t what they ought to be in the 21st century,” said Gary Hennigh, city manager of King Cove.

Moving the bill along not only threatens the refuge but also the integrity of the nation’s other wilderness areas, said Trish Rolfe, Alaska regional representative for the Sierra Club, which testified against the road proposal last year.

If the bill passes it would for the first time allow a road through designated wilderness in a national refuge, Rolfe said. Most of the refuge was designated as wilderness in 1980 under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

Rolfe said the area is a critical habitat for many species of birds, including nesting tundra swans, as well as caribou and grizzly bears.

“I think that opening a wilderness area to road building could certainly increase the likelihood of other areas being opened up to road building,” she said.

The road issue is not new. Instead of approving a road, Congress a decade ago funded other options for access to the Cold Bay runway. It allocated more than $37 million for a hovercraft and docks at King Cove, as well as improvements to the airstrip and the health clinic.

The hovercraft, residents and community leaders say, has failed to meet expectations.

According to King Cove officials, it is costly to run and expensive to use. It can’t be used in the fog or when gale-force winds kick up. It is prone to mechanical problems.

Flights from King Cove’s unpaved airstrip are delayed or canceled half the time, they say.

The Aleutians East Borough can’t afford the hovercraft, Hennigh said. In the last fiscal year ending February, the borough incurred a hovercraft loss of $832,000.

Things have only gotten worse lately with the steep increases in the price of fuel and insurance, he said.

“We simply need a dependable road that allows us to get in and out of King Cove whenever we need to,” he said. “Weather dictates a lot of our life out here.”

The road issue was settled a long time ago, said Nicole Whittington-Evans, associate director of The Wilderness Society in Alaska, when Congress came up with $37.5 million for the hovercraft with explicit prohibitions against allowing a road.

“The truth is, these needs were met 10 years ago, when Congress gave millions of taxpayer dollars specifically to provide a safe and reliable way for King Cove’s residents to get to Cold Bay,” she said.

The Wilderness Society said two dozen conservation groups have lined up against the road.

Hennigh said King Cove began pushing for the road in the fall of 2006. Since then there have been numerous trips to Washington, going door-to-door to appeal to lawmakers and testifying before the committee, he said. It took 1 1/2 years of “hard negotiation” to get the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on board, Hennigh said.

The lobbying continues, Hennigh said by cell phone Wednesday, as he waited to board a plane at Reagan National Airport for the return trip to Alaska. He was accompanied by King Cove Mayor Ernest Weiss and Della Trumble, president of the King Cove Corp., among others.

In the past two weeks, the King Cove delegation visited each member of the committee, pitching the road, handing out a packet of information and a DVD.

Rolfe predicted the road proposal again will reach a dead end.

“In the long run, the House will not pass this,” she said.

A vote before the full House has not been scheduled.