Alaska State Gvn. Cut Funding For Oil Inspections In 2001, 2002 - ADN

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Alaska pollution regulators asked state lawmakers in 2001 and 2002 for more money to heighten inspections of aging North Slope oil pipelines, but legislative leaders cut the funds both times as they coped with budget deficits, current and former state officials say.

Michele Brown, who was environmental commissioner under then Gov. Tony Knowles, said she's not sure whether the additional funds, including money to hire 13 new people for the department, could have prevented August's jarring partial shutdown of the Prudhoe Bay field due to corroded and leaky pipes. But she said that not getting the funds was a setback for safeguarding the nation's largest oil field and the state's most important revenue source.

The biggest of the two requests came in December 2001. Knowles proposed an "oil safety and development initiative," a nearly $5 million plan that cited a need for issuing faster permits to industry and also more scrutiny of the 25-year-old network of North Slope pipes and valves, some of which had failed in preceding months. More than half the funding would go to Brown's Department of Environmental Conservation.

Lawmakers didn't fund the plan when they wrote the state budget in the spring of 2002, Brown said. "It hardly even got the time of day," she said.

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http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/8153310p-8046086c.html