Word: north
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...their understandable haste to obtain geological data before the bidding began, some of the oil companies scarred the tundra with seismic ditches that look from above like giant graffiti and littered it with garbage and empty barrels. Once full-scale exploitation of oil begins, the effects on the North Slope could become disastrous...
...tundra soil thaws a foot deep. But if the ground is gouged by heavy equipment, the permafrost is exposed. When it thaws, it turns into a small rivulet that continues to erode its banks, growing ever larger over the years. The permafrost also makes waste disposal difficult. In their North Slope operations to date, oil companies have bulldozed shallow lagoons into which they have dumped garbage and sewage. If they continue this practice, increasing amounts of wastes will seep through the spongy tundra and contaminate the whole water table...
...respect the land. Instead of using trucks to transport equipment, for example, Atlantic Richfield Co. lifted rigs over the fragile country with giant Sikorsky Skycrane helicopters. For its part, the Federal Government says it will enforce water-quality standards in the area. Because it owns vast amounts of the North Slope as yet unopened to oil exploration, the Government is in a position to insist upon whatever guidelines it can devise to control development and minimize damage to the Arctic ecology...
Already Alaska beckons on the north, and pointing to her wealth of natural resources asks the nation on what new terms the new age will deal with her. -The Frontier in American History, 1920, Frederick Jackson Turner...
Americans have long paid little heed to their frontier of the north, idealizing instead the memory of a Western frontier that is forever gone. Now Alaska increasingly presents what Historian Turner called the "stubborn American environment" with its "imperious summons to accept its conditions." The 49th state's environment is as raw and untouched as the Great Plains and Rockies were 150 years ago, offering anew a spaciousness unknown to urban Americans and an awesome treasure of untapped wealth...