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October 21, 2005

Maps Matter

Arctic Map Vanishes, and Oil Area Expands
today's NYTimes:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - Maps matter. They chronicle the struggles of empires and zoning boards. They chart political compromise. So it was natural for Republican Congressional aides, doing due diligence for what may be the last battle in the fight over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to ask for the legally binding 1978 map of the refuge and its coastal plain.

It was gone. No map, no copies, no digitized version.

The wall-size 1:250,000-scale map delineated the tundra in the biggest national land-use controversy of the last quarter-century, an area that environmentalists call America's Serengeti and that oil enthusiasts see as America's Oman. The map had been stored behind a filing cabinet in a locked room in Arlington, Va. Late in 2002, it was there. In early 2003, it disappeared. There are just a few reflection-flecked photographs to remember it by.

All this may have real consequences. The United States Geological Survey drew up a new map. On Wednesday, the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee passed a measure based on the new map that opened to drilling 1.5 million acres of coastal plain in the refuge.
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The "new" map referred to in the article dates to 1978 which explains (but does not justify) how it was never digitized. How will newer mapping technologies (mobile GPS, etc) affect boundaries and boundary making?

Posted by pweil at October 21, 2005 10:34 AM

Comments

I had missed this. It does matter. There is an analogous story which might interest you; I'm foggy on the details, but it shouldn't be hard to find (originally related by Grey Brechin, who later wrote "Imperial San Francisco"). As I remember it, Leland Stanford was California's delegate to the Republican Convention, President of both the Central Pacific and later Southern Pacific railroads, and was paid by the government to extend the railroad to California. He was paid by the mile, a certain amount for flat land, double that for foothills and quadruple that for mountain crossings. Since his guys were out there surveying anyway, he was also hired by the government to draw up the first official maps of the west. Not surprisingly, the Sierra Nevada range on these maps is something like 300 miles wider and a lot more rugged than what is actually there. He was one of the Big Four western industrialists; carpet baggers all.

I'll bet Jimmy Carter has a copy of the ANWR map. It was one of the last and best things he accomplished in office.

Posted by: dcorr [TypeKey Profile Page] | October 21, 2005 11:47 AM

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