Resource Development is Good for Our Health

Like seafood processing, hospitality, and the oil industry, trucking has traditionally been an Alaska industry that depends heavily on out-of-state workers. According to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s most recent report on nonresident workers, out-of-state drivers represented 18.5 percent of the workforce of 3,602 heavy and tractor-trailer drivers in 2016. That category of driver made an average quarterly wage of almost $14,000 that year. The nonresident count includes both seasonal workers and those who live elsewhere and regularly fly in for rotations.

Crum says that since 2016, oil and gas companies have flown in fewer commercial truck drivers from out of state. But he says the practice remains common in the seafood processing industry where companies frequently struggle to find qualified drivers at their remote plants.

That stopped me.  I had to ask, what caused this dramatic increase, larger than most of the rest of the US? The researchers’ discussion was interesting.  Socioeconomic and race/ethnicity, behavioral and metabolic risk factors, and healthcare factors combined to explain 82 percent of the contributing factors to change in life expectancy.

This begged the question: What was happening in Alaska during the years 1980-2014? 

Well, that’s not hard to answer for those of us who were here in those years.  The TransAlaska Pipeline began flowing oil in 1977.  Red Dog Mine began production in 1990.  The Magnuson-Stevens Act pushed out the foreign fishing fleets, leading to important development of Alaska fisheries.  These resource developments, along with others around the state, changed Alaska from a struggling new state, to an economically thriving place.

These resources became jobs and opportunity for work close to traditional homes, something previously unavailable. And boroughs were formed in these areas, enabling the ability to levy taxes that funded community infrastructure.

Healthcare, education, clean water, wastewater treatment, and good-paying local jobs transformed rural and urban Alaska. The Alaskan people benefited.

After the 1957 discovery of oil on the Kenai, Congress finally decided, in 1958, that Alaska had a chance of supporting herself on her rich resources.  Alaskan voters, all 46,000 of them, voted six-to-one to become a state.

As a territorial kid growing up in Fairbanks, I remember those days. I had the delightful chance to frequently go to work with my dad, a Wien Airlines captain. That meant riding along on an F-27 as he made rounds to rural communities around our state. They were referred to as “villages” then and they were isolated, poor, and small.

Then came resource development.  As a nurse practitioner, I had the wonderful privilege of providing healthcare services in those same rural areas, now thriving communities with schools, clinics, roads, and jobs. 

In one very remote community, I was on the same flight with a young man, going to his job at Prudhoe Bay. His wife and little son bid him good-bye at the airport. The airline agent told me that the young man was the pride of the community, bringing his paycheck back home, helping his parents and grandparents out with fuel costs in the winter, and supporting his family.

That is what resource development means for Alaska’s families. It’s all about our people. 

Yes, we love the state government revenue and services that pays for. We have all prospered during these years since oil and mining production. But the most important benefit of resource development is to our people, our families and our local businesses.

As a healthcare professional, it still brings tears of pride to my eyes to contemplate the change in our state. We still have challenges. But we met challenges before and have demonstrated an ability to solve them. The caribou, polar bears, and fish all coexist with our industries. The important thing is our lands are precious for the resources they contain, and our people can and will thrive by utilizing and stewarding them. Alaska’s resource development continues to bring health and happiness to our people.