GAIL PHILLIPS: Thank you, Malcolm, and thanks to everybody for being here this morning. This is the first time that we have printed a booklet or a report on the Talkeetna Dialogue. I've been attending the Dialogues since they started and it gives us as Alaskans a very good opportunity to move out of our comfort circle, move out of our circle of acquaintances and friends that we spend most of our time with and talk and discuss and discourse with people that we don't normally have an opportunity to meet with and talk about the issues facing Alaska today.

And during these Dialogues we pick one specific topic and we try to stay on topic, just discussing those issues, and bring out all the ideas that people around Alaska have. And what this gives us is an opportunity to share ideas, share thoughts and start the process of developing policies to govern Alaska.

I would encourage any of you if you haven't attended one of the Dialogues yet, please, sign up and come, they're very interesting, they're very informative, it's a good meeting, it only lasts for about a day and a half, it's well worth your time and it puts you in Talkeetna in the most beautiful time of the year, the fall time.

In your brochure you will see page after page after page and columns of ideas that were suggested by people during the forum this year. And I just want to talk to you about a few of the good ideas that came out from the panel discussions. We always have panel discussions and then we break into smaller groups to discuss the issues more in depth.

One of the big issues that was discussed this year is the fact that industries that come to Alaska to develop and work in our natural resources need to do more than just come, develop those resources and leave. They need to leave something in Alaska before they leave or incorporate themselves into Alaska. And one of the things that we discussed was their contribution to educating a workforce in Alaska. And the workforce was a major issue and topic of conversation during this event, you'll see a lot of comments about training people for the jobs so that the jobs coming up do not go to out of staters.

We hit on main issues, public safety, transportation. You know, we were babes in the woods during the last boom or before the last boom. We had no idea what that impact was or how that impact was going to hit us as far as crime, as far as prostitution and gambling, all those things, we weren't prepared for it. We at least now know what happened to us and we can look at what to do and how to prepare ourselves ahead of time for a huge influx of people and a huge influx of crime that follows an influx of people. You'll see a lot of comments in there about this.

The next thing is the transportation issues. The transportation of -- the construction of the pipeline severely affected our transportation system and our highway system in Alaska. We are -- Jeff Ottesen is going to talk about this, but we are starting now to prepare, how do we build our highways so that they can handle the construction loads that are going to be over them, how do we put in better routes so that the construction -- so that all of the construction materials can easily move to the projects.

Another issue is in our health care facilities. Right now our health care facilities are totally impacted with just Alaskans. What if we bring another 2 or 300,000 people to Alaska, how is that going to effect our health care facilities, we need to be prepared for that.

And the last one big thing is housing, we need to focus right now on housing not only for the construction workers' families, but for the construction camps and housing for people that are going to come. We're not ready for that yet, but at least we know now what we need to be prepared for and what we need to work on ahead of time.

So those are just some of the issues that we discussed and knowing ahead of time what we need to do and how to prepare ourselves, we can weather another boom.

MALCOLM ROBERTS: Thanks, Gail. And it's an important point to know that all the things you read in this Dialogue were not agreed on by the body who attended. There was no intent and there never has been at these Dialogues to drive us to consensus. The idea instead is to try and come up with fresh approaches, creative ideas, particularly to issues that have beaten us or deadlocked us in the past. So we will find there are a whole bunch of creative thoughts and new thoughts that came out of the process.

Brian Rogers, Information Insights' President, Chairman of the board of regents at the University and someone who through his own professional work had done a study on preparing Alaska for the next boom was also one of our moderators and Brian has come down from Fairbanks for this and we greatly appreciate it. Brian, give us a taste of your experience.

BRIAN ROGERS: Well, thank you, Malcolm, and it really was an honor to participate this year. The Dialogue process, coming with an open mind, sharing ideas, going away with new ideas really worked well I thought. And as someone who lived in Fairbanks during TAPS construction, it's really important to me that we get it right this time.

The construction of TAPS was characterized by a lack of planning ahead and a lot of challenges during the construction as a result. In large part we didn't know when it was going to start until it started. This time we have an advantage. We know according to the Alaska Journal of Commerce, construction will start in two years. That's from the Alaska Journal of Commerce 25 years ago today.

We had some challenges during TAPS in Fairbanks. The local phone service was overwhelmed within a year, in fact, they announced that they ran out of phone numbers and there wouldn't be any more for two years and so people were sharing phones. Those kinds of challenges won't happen today -- yes, they will, they'll be different challenges.

But what the lesson is is one that a lot of us learned in Boy Scouts, be prepared. If we plan ahead, if we think about what the impacts are going to be we can be prepared for them and not be standing on a procurement officer's desk sheetrocking the ceiling as they're working to do orders. That happened, I was the sheetrocker in 1974.

So this year's Dialogue said let's plan ahead, let's think about what are the metrics that we want to use to measure what the costs and the benefits will be.

I worked with a really great breakout group that looked at what should the role of state government be. And as an owner state dealing with a gas project what should -- how should we evaluate which project to support and how to go forward, how should we plan the infrastructure, you know, the pipeline's going to be either up north going east or east of here to Valdez so what's the impact on Anchorage?

Well, if you think about -- those of you who live in Anchorage for that freight, and a lot of it will land in Seward that's headed up say to the Glennallen area, so they'll load it on a truck and they'll drive up the Seward Highway and turn east. Let's see, first place would be on Tudor and cross Tudor and Lake Otis and continue on out or it'll come into the Port of Anchorage and come out Reeve Boulevard and go on the Glenn Highway. Two choke points there, we'll see a lot of freight going through. So even though the pipeline's not being constructed here you have to plan ahead as well.

The logistics challenges in TAPS were horrendous, they didn't know that the challenges with materials were big. And so dealing with the logistics, at least now we have a logistics program at the University that can provide some support.

I think the important thing for the Dialogue is that that's exactly what we need, we need public discussion of the issues. A lot of us weren't here during TAPS and don't understand what the construction issues are going to be, what the challenges are going to be in dealing with the -- how to determine what the revenue flows will be the state and how the state will manage those revenues when we get them.

And so one of the strongest recommendations out of our group was let's have a full and open public debate with all facts on the table. The Anchorage Chamber yesterday started some of that getting the facts on the table. I think the Dialogue started that process of the full and open public debate and I hope we continue that over the next year.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Brian. Well, two of our two speakers have both mentioned transportation issues. We have with us today Jeff Ottesen who's been in charge of putting together the highway use agreement between the state and whoever builds a gas pipeline. He tells me that the outline for discussion points in this agreement is five pages long.

Jeff made an outstanding presentation, I think he has a map to show us, of some of the preparation that is going on. It's just a backdrop for your own thinking on what we have ahead of us. Jeff? Let's welcome Jeff who flew in from Juneau for this.

And I failed to mention that Jeff is chief of planning for the Department of Transportation & Public Facilities. Jeff?

JEFF OTTESEN: Thank you, Malcolm. I was asked about six months ago by Commissioner Barton to take on the highway use agreement which essentially is a document that addresses all the issues related to the use of the highway by the pipeline builder. So we've been working on that document, we have been looking at prior documents negotiated for TAPS and for some of the gas pipeline proposals that have come and then not gone to fruition. So we have a lot of history we can look at.

But clearly one of the big issues is getting the transportation system ready for that construction activity. It's an activity that has to occur ahead of the pipeline construction. Those roads, those ports, those railroad improvements all have to be built and in place at the time that the flag drops on the pipeline. So go ahead.

One of the things we've done in looking at what do we need to do to be ready for pipeline construction, and bear in mind there are three proposals and two possible routes. So we've had to be flexible and keep our eyes looking at all those possibilities because we're looking at all modes of transportation, be they ports, airports, highways and rail and they're all going to be used and they're all going to be used hard.

We have also looked at what is needed up front, what do we need to do to be ready for that. The logistics of the pipeline construction are just simply staggering. The number of truck loads, the amount of material being hauled, it just is way, way above the background traffic we now have on the highway system.

The other thing we have to look at is what will be the post-construction impact and I think Gail talked about it a little bit, Brian talked about it. If you talk to the old timers in the department, the highway system was trashed and it took almost 10 years just to bring pavement back into a respectable condition after TAPS was done and there was really no mechanism, no financing mechanism and no plan of action to make that happen. That was just something that basically the state suffered through while they slowly took the dollars they had and redid the pavement. Go ahead.

This pipeline is somewhat different than TAPS and it's different in terms of how it affects the transportation system. There's going to be -- it's a buried pipeline and that means there's going to be a lot more earthwork loads than there were in the past. As you know TAPS is largely elevated through much of the section so you weren't digging this very large trench. The trench will typically be 10 feet deep and 15 feet wide and if you have to backfill that trench with select (ph) material as you very will may, that is literally one large belly dump truckload for every foot of pipeline or over the 800 mile length in Alaska, 4 million truckloads traversing the highway system.

There will be a greater use of modules, module movement is sort of a new invention that has occurred since TAPS was built. The modules are very large structures that are carried on a special tractor/trailer usually with several pusher and puller tractors assisting. They travel as slow as five miles an hour and they can occupy both lanes of a two lane highway at five miles an hour so you can imagine the complications this brings if you start moving these in very large numbers.

The pipe itself will be heavier, the wall thickness of the pipe is probably in the range of an inch and a quarter thick steel as opposed to half inch thick so that's two and a half times heavier for each stick of pipe going into the pipeline. That has impacts on pavement, it has impacts on bridges.

And then finally compared to TAPS there's a lot more traffic, there's a lot more population in Alaska than there was then. So what was often occurring on very remote and somewhat empty stretches of highway will be occurring now on highways carrying a lot more traffic, a lot more tourism type traffic, et cetera. All these are differences between then and now. Go ahead.

This map here, it's a -- there's a lot of information on it, I'm not going to try to give you all the little details, but essentially there are seven ports of entry that are possibly places where material can flow into Alaska, including Skagway and Haines. Those are not intuitively obvious, but for much of the pipeline's length through Canada, Skagway and Haines, for the very same reason they were important in the Klondike gold rush, will be important to the construction of the pipeline. They will also be important I should say for the construction of the McKenzie Pipeline in Canada which if you read this morning's newspaper could be the first project out of the gate.

So in addition to those two southeast ports you have Valdez, you have Whittier, you have Seward, you have the Port of Anchorage, you have Point MacKenzie's port, the new port there in Mat-Su Borough and as well Prudhoe Bay will play a role because there's really just a lot more opportunity to move products -- or to move commodities to the North Slope now than there was back in the early '70s.

The Alaska Railroad will be an important player, potentially the White Pass Railroad out of Skagway will be a player and then, of course, the highway system at some point becomes the last leg of every trip because even if you use these other modes at some point you have to get to the 800 mile distance that pipeline's being built and that will involve trucks.

So we have identified projects throughout that system and all those modes that we think are either things that have to happen up front to be ready for pipeline or would need to happen after the construction to basically resurrect the system and put it back into good shape.

So this -- I'll leave you with this, this is an example of a module movement, you get some idea of how large these modules are, how many vehicles are involved in these things and you can just imagine potentially hundreds of these being moved around the state to accomplish construction. You can see what I talk about, if this starts happening in the middle of summer when people all want to go fishing it could cause quite a traffic backup. So that's just to kind of give you a feel for what we're talking about. Thank you.

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Jeff. Before I introduce Rebecca Prieto I just want to recap a few of the conclusions we have because I know you've had a glance at the report but you obviously haven't had a chance to read it yet. But the conclusions, not unanimous as I mentioned, but the conclusions were we weren't ready for the last boom and we aren't ready today.

In some regards we're already facing boom time realities, the shortage of a trained workforce, if you've heard Dick Cattanach speak in the last six months you'll know what that's all about. In other words with the amount of state and federal construction going on for infrastructure with the large mining projects, with the other building going on, many of our skilled workers are already on the job, it's a big issue.

Training, we have some excellent training programs, quite a variety of them in the state, but they are certainly not producing the kind of numbers in terms of people to handle a job this size.

Some of our public agencies, including police and judiciary are already stressed beyond capacity. Walt Monegan our chief of police spoke to us and quite startling numbers of the few cases that actually go to trial just because of the pressure on our court system and so on.

The pressure on our nonprofit agencies, Gloria O'Neill of Cook Inlet Tribal spoke to us about that pressure that's on now and will, of course, multiply in another boom.

State government must play a major part in mitigating adverse impact and helping Alaskans benefit from the opportunities. And there are many ideas in this book about boom taxes perhaps, impact funds for communities along the pipeline, different ideas that came forward.

Legislation is needed now to prepare our state in terms of vocational training, access to our gas for our communities in state and other benefits.

So those are just a few of the conclusions that you'll find in the report.

Now one thing that we have heard continuously as we've done these Dialogues, and we don't charge the -- Mead, how much does the Aspen Institute charge to attend one of their sessions?

MEAD TREADWELL: 1,500 bucks to 2,500 bucks.

MR. ROBERTS: 1,500 to 2,500 bucks. Well, we charge $350 and that's kind of pricey for Alaskans and includes the wonderful meals at the lodge and so on, but it's kind of pricey for us and it's certainly pricey for those in our universities, our students, our younger people, but we've always had this feedback, where are the young people, where are the young people we're talking about who this is most important to.

And thanks to the First Alaskans Institute, I see Greta Goto there who by the way was our co-moderator of our Dialogue, the one before this, they put forward a major contribution to help us bring young people there, we had an outstanding group of young people and among them Rebecca Prieto truly stood out.

She is a former intern at the First Alaskans Institute, she is a graduate student at UAA in psychology. And, Rebecca, give us a flavor of what it was like to be there as a young person and any thoughts you have for the future of Alaska? Let's welcome Rebecca.