Protracted Section Line Easements on ANCSA Lands - 2017

This is another project discussing the potential effect of protracted SLEs on ANCSA lands.  For additional discussion, see Newtok Airport - Protracted Section Line Easements - 2019.  On the home page for this website, I note that certain projects I was involved in were performed for private clients not subject to the Alaska Public Records Act.  These projects would be subject to the R&M, Inc. confidentiality agreement associated with our contract.  For many of these clients I requested and received permission to publish documents related to their projects.  In this case, the request went unanswered.  As a result I have redacted information and withheld documents that could identify the client.  The subject, however, is well documented in the public record and my archives and may still offer some useful background into the subject.

For this project, the client was negotiating with an ANCSA corporation for what ultimately might be a restrictive easement or non-development covenant over their lands.  This could benefit the ANCSA corporation by generating revenue on lands it had no intention of developing.  By restricting development, the client would be eligible for a "carbon offset".  This is a tradable commodity that avoids or reduces the emission of carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere in an attempt to mitigate global climate change. The acreage of land associated with the carbon offset could be quantified using the BLM Township plats.  The client recognized that a non-development agreement with the ANCSA corporation would not restrict the public's use of valid section line easements for transportation and utilities.  The question was: Do these section line easements exist, and if so, what amount of acreage should be deducted for them from the non-development agreement?

My report to the client concluded that while Alaska DNR may continue to assert the validity of protracted SLEs, the risk associated with them is low, primarily due to the fact that their validity has yet to be tested in court.  The report and background materials linked below should provide a reasonably detailed summary of the section line easement issue in Alaska.