Word: alaska
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even at night the aluminum sky gleams to every corner. To the south, a light swivels its beam around lonely Alaska, 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle and barely 1,400 miles from the North Pole. Five hundred yards to the north, an iceberg, bleached turquoise by the cold and shaped like a baby's cradle, rocks along. There is no driftwood or trash in the freezing Beaufort Sea. Nature all but forbade man to sail in this place, and Captain Walt Kardonsky knows...
...skipper of the 9,000-hp. oceangoing tug Cavalier and his crew of seven are part of a convoy of tugs and barges making the hazardous trip from the Pacific Northwest to the oilfields around Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. Once a year, for up to six weeks, the Arctic ice pack crumbles away from the Alaskan coast, giving the oil companies their only chance to transport equipment too large to be carried by airplane or truck from Anchorage, more than 600 miles to the south. In 1975, when the entire fleet was trapped in the ice, the scheduled opening...
Severance taxes are nothing new. Michigan began collecting 4% on the gross value of its mineral exports in 1846, and 33 other states now impose such levies. But as fuel prices have soared, energy-rich states have increased their tariffs. Alaska, for instance, raised its oil tax from 12% to 15% last June. That was reasonable compared with Montana and Wyoming, which are exacting 30% and 17%, respectively, on coal exports. All told, coal, gas and oil severance-tax collections have ballooned from $2.1 billion in 1977 to $4 billion last year. Says Governor Brendan Byrne of New Jersey...
...Thompson. "Energy-rich states are now exporting their tax burdens around the country." A study by the Commerce Department shows that nine states depend heavily on severance-tax income to run their governments. In Louisiana, 23% of the 1978 state budget came from these taxes; in Wyoming, 22%; in Alaska and New Mexico, 19%; and in Texas...
...third and best novel, Robert F. Jones tracks the elemental grandeur of Alaska from feral Eden to pipeline ruination. In 1950 Bush-Pilot Buddies Jack Slade and Sam Healey are forced to land their aging C-47 in the icy outback. Charlie Blue, a Tlingit Indian shaman, appears and assists them through a surpassingly beautiful valley to rescue. The pilots promise to return, but before they can, Healey leaves Slade holding a smoking pistol and a murder rap in the wake of a saloon brawl. End of partnership. Slade settles down to homestead the secret valley. Thirty years later Healey...