president jimmy carter says no to Alaska finding oil

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"So the debate started way back in 1977, I think that was the first time I came to Congress and testified on that issue," Herrera recalled.

At that time, Stan Senner was a young environmentalist from Fairbanks, Alaska. He flew to Washington to lobby for protection of the coastal plain, a wilderness teeming with wildlife in northeastern Alaska.

"We knew right from the outset that it was going to be a big fight," Senner recalled.

He remembered that environmentalist members of Congress were determined to stall the bill until it protected the refuge's coastal plain. They succeeded in the House, but not in the Senate. Then President Jimmy Carter, who supported preservation, lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan, and environmentalists like Stan Senner were worried.

"There was this enormous pressure to settle for whatever we had to settle for to get the larger Alaska Lands Act taken care of, " Senner said.

What they settled for was limbo for the coastal plain. Congress asked the Interior Department to research the possibility of oil development, and it reserved for itself the power to decide whether to open it to drilling in the future.

"The Arctic refuge issue was unresolved. Everyone just punted to future sessions of Congress," he added.

That was the beginning of a wrestling match in Congress over the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that has stretched more than three decades. It has been full of tricky legislative maneuvers, late-night votes and passionate lobbying efforts by both sides.

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