Alaska's U.S. senators have expressed delight at a recent assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey that reports a significant untapped natural gas reserve in Cook Inlet. Others say this may only be good news on the surface. The agency reports an estimated 19 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, about 600 million barrels of oil and 46 million barrels of natural gas liquids. This is a drastic increase over the agency's last assessment from 1995 that calculated a mean of 2.14 trillion cubic feet of gas in southern Alaska.

...people wanted to see more areas set aside for conservation, said Bobbie Jo Skibo, program coordinator for Alaska Center for the Environment. "I'm upset," Skibo said. "A lot of people put their blood, sweat and tears into the public process...

...whales might be facing extinction and focused on technical legal issues, said Randy Virgin, director of the Alaska Center for the Environment. "I feel like the canary is lying dead in the cage and we're jumping up and down screaming about it and...

Cook Inlet beluga whales will not join the endangered species list.

Opinions differ widely on whether it is a good idea to build the Knik Arm bridge, estimated to cost between $400 million and $600 million.

Alaska environmentalists on Wednesday handed U.S. Forest Service officials more than 1,000 letters supporting an initiative that would ban road building and timber cutting in roadless portions of national forests.

JUNEAU - An Alaska Native village joined with environmentalists and organizers of the Republican Moderate Party to dispute a new law aimed at curbing some public interest litigant lawsuits. They filed a lawsuit in Juneau Superior Court on Wednesday alleging future disputes over major public policy issues will be affected. The lawsuit was filed one day before House Bill 145, passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Frank Murkowski, is to take effect.

Deborah Williams' letter (Sept. 28) attempts to rebut Lew Williams' excellent piece (Sept. 17) on environmental organizations. With two Williamses involved, I have taken the liberty to refer to them as Deborah and Lew. Deborah's letter at best was astounding, at worst misleading. First, it was interesting what Deborah did not say.

Web links For more, go to Roadless Area Conservation: www.roadless.fs.fed.us/ Alaska Center for the Environment: www.akcenter.org Alaska Chapter, Sierra Club: http://alaska.sierraclub.org . ANCHORAGE...

The federal energy bill passed this week in the U.S. House includes incentives toward the construction of a proposed $20 billion natural gas pipeline. Gov. Frank Murkowski and one of the gas companies involved are optimistic the project will proceed to the next engineering phase.