Environmental Protection Agency Regional Administrator for Region 10 Casey Sixkiller is in state this week, along with EPA’s #2 Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe and Jane Nashida, assistant administrator for tribal affairs.
The group is keenly interested and focused on tribal sovereignty, while reducing the State of Alaska departments to observer status during the meetings this week. Alaska’s Native Rep. Mary Peltola will miss these meetings, as she has been partying out of state.
On Monday, the EPA met with leaders in Alaska’s oil industry, including ConocoPhillips, Hilcorp, Santos, and Alyeska Pipeline Co. The group is heading to the North Slope to talk with tribes and review federally contaminated lands, and then to Southeast Alaska to focus on transboundary mining issues with Canada. Although Alaska has a transboundary working group, it appears to be cut out of the talks. The EPA has also been hearing about air quality in Fairbanks.
Steve Cohn, state director of Bureau of Land Management, has been part of the entourage.
Sixkiller was appointed Regional Administrator, Region 10, of the EPA by President Joe Biden in May 2022. In his role, Sixkiller oversees the EPA’s work across the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska, and 271 tribal nations, most of them in Alaska. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
Along with the EPA, Alaska is getting another big Biden Administration visitor this week, Secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg. Alaska’s senators will be accompanying him in Kotzebue, Anchorage, and Southeast Alaska, but Peltola will not attend.
In addition to not showing up to help members of the Biden cabinet understand Alaska’s economy, Pelota was missing from meetings of her own House Infrastructure and Transportation Committee last week. Instead, Peltola has been attending parties out of state.
