(Photo by Eric Kroh) Villager Thomas Napageak worries drilling will disrupt the Native way of life.

By Eric Kroh/Medill – Nuiqsut, Alaska

Thomas Napageak, at 25, is the youngest whaling captain in the tiny Alaska Native community of Nuiqsut. The village lies on a serene expanse of tundra just inland of the Arctic near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and 50 miles west of Prudhoe Bay, the largest oilfield in North America.

“We live off the ocean, we live off the land,” Napageak says, who hunts the bowhead whale during the fall, as his ancestors have done for centuries. “And that is something I’m definitely going to fight for [for] the rest of my life.”

He’s so far from the pundits who bicker about the pros and cons of possibly lifting an offshore drilling ban in areas currently untouchable. But so close to the battle raging in northern Alaska, where drilling in the Arctic Ocean has been a constant for years.

Scouring the frigid waters for his quarry, Napageak has seen the impact of offshore drilling firsthand:

Ship activity from oil drilling and exploration disrupts whale migrations, driving hunters farther out in the ocean to search for the whales, on which they depend. Just four whales provide enough spoils to last a year for the roughly 500 villagers in Nuiqsut.

But Napageak has seen large groups of whales fleeing from barges, and no whales are to be found for miles after ships pass. Further, crews search for oil in the Arctic by emitting large underwater blasts of sound. These explosions, according to Napageak and others, are 10 times the volume of a rocket launch and cause considerable damage to whales while disrupting hunting.

Minus the whales and other animals — caribou, wolverines, seals and geese—on which they depend, Nuiqsut villagers have little access to adequate sources of food. At the lone store in the village, a small box of dry spaghetti costs $3.85, a box of Cheerios goes for $7.44, and a 12-pack of Coke is marked down to $9.48. It’s a stark reminder just how remote this nook is, how removed these people are.

Representatives from Nuiqsut, along with the Alaska Wilderness League and other conservation groups, have successfully sought injunctions blocking oil companies from drilling in the Arctic because of a lack of investigation on their part into the impact of exploration on whales and other wildlife.

Oil companies, who spend millions each year to lessen the environmental disruption, say they can drill more safely than ever, and have long disputed the claims similar to those made by Napageak. But spills, Napageak says, are an inevitability.

And should a spill occur, he and others say, harsh arctic conditions prevent oil companies from doing much more than burning it off the surface of the water.

Onshore drilling is no better, say Nuiqsut residents. Napageak has served as a Subsistence Oversight Board Member for the region–essentially a conservation police officer. It was his job to observe operations at the Alpine oil and natural gas field, which is primarily operated by ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc., and is situated downstream on the Colville River just 4 miles from Nuiqsut.

There, Napageak says, he observed serious infractions on a daily basis. He saw workers spill oil without cleaning it up. They frequently drove heavy machinery outside of allowed routes, destroying sensitive plants that take 50 years to grow out on the tundra. In general, he says, there is a flagrant disregard for regulations on the part of oilfield workers, and a lack of monitoring by oil companies.

Nuiqsut residents have come to distrust oil companies’ promises. Alpine was originally slated to be a smaller operation, on the order of 40,000 barrels of oil per day. But the discovery of so-called “champagne oil,” the creme de la creme of crude, prompted a rapid expansion and a ramp-up of production to roughly 100,000 barrels per day.

ConocoPhillips promised they would provide 50 permanent jobs for the village, and would limit flights into the area that have been blamed for scaring off native animals. The company delivered neither, villagers say.

While Alaska Natives receive considerable revenue from oil companies for drilling on their land, the offshore drilling dispute is not about money, Napageak says. Whalers hunt to feed their community, and are not paid for their hefty investment of time and resources during whaling season.

“I’m definitely for the industry [trying] to make our lives better,” Napageak says, “but if it’s going to impact our traditional way of life I’m definitely going to be against something like offshore drilling.”

Flooded farms in Iowa may have far-reaching effects on corn prices and ethanol. (Photo by Eric Kroh)

By Eric Kroh

As farmers in Iowa clear sediment deposited on their land by the Mississippi, Iowa and Cedar rivers, it remains to be seen just how much damage the floods have done.

At a community meeting in Wapello yesterday, close to where the Iowa River empties into the Mississippi, farmers were reporting 100 percent damage to their corn crop. It’s too late in the season to replant corn, and it wouldn’t be eligible for insurance anyway, so some are trying to get soybeans in the ground while they still can and others are throwing in the towel.

A report released by the United States Department of Agriculture Monday predicted the amount of corn harvested in the fall would only be 2 percent less than what was forecast before the floods. But even such a small loss can have large consequences at a time when there is much less corn to shuffle around in the ledger than there has been in the past.

Corn stocks — the amount of corn at any given time not being used for anything — are at the lowest levels they have been in decades and analysts fear they could drop even lower. Low corn stock levels means high corn prices, said USDA economist Alan Baker, in an interview. Bad news for gas and food prices.

It’s also bad news for the ethanol industry, which already was reeling from high corn prices. Ethanol giant Verasun recently said it would delay the opening of three new ethanol plants due to high corn prices. Some have taken the opportunity to rally around Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s request to the Environmental Protection Agency to repeal the ethanol mandate, which he says is artificially inflating food and gas prices.

On Monday, more than 50 GOP House members, led by Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, voiced their own support of a repeal of the ethanol mandate. It remains to be seen whether Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama will throw their hats into this ring.