Interview with Dirk Nickish

Dirk Nickish is an accomplished bush pilot in Arctic Alaska who lives in Coldfoot in the summer and Fairbanks in the winter with his wife and two children. He has a degree in economics. They live off the grid and have their Coldfoot cabin within a few feet of the runway.

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My wife and I run a small air taxi business, and we predominantly fly into the Brooks Range and north coast regions of Alaska. We live in Coldfoot where there is the trooper and his family, the truck stop across the road and that pretty much sums it up. I have two kids, ages 9 and 7. We predominately live in the bush, but we have a cabin outside of Fairbanks. We live a kind of seasonal lifestyle. During the winter, things slow down so we go there and travel quite extensively to developing nations as vacation.

We home school our children because the nearest school in Fairbanks is five hours away. Rather than Danielle and the kids leaving to go to school, we decided to home school. It works better with our lifestyle. Both Danielle and I are third generation pilots. Both Danielle’s grandfather and father were Northwest airline’s captains. I am also a third generation pilot. My grandfather used to deliver mail in North Dakota from the airplane back in the 40’s where they used to just fly where the farm, drop out the mail sack. My dad commercially flew for us for a couple of years but now flies for himself.

I moved to Alaska in ‘94 from North Dakota and my wife from Washington. We actually moved there the same month but didn’t know each other until a year later. Before moving to Alaska, I was a crop duster and I had several friends who hounded me incessantly to move to Alaska and said that I would like it and fit in just fine there. He was right. When the company that I was flying for sold out, I started thinking of running my own operation and I decided to go up and check out Alaska. I went up for the summer and never did leave. It’s now home since that’s where we live and that’s where my kids were born. Every time I come back down to the lower 48, I am very anxious to get back home.

Only recently we became a seasonal business. We used to fly year round, but there are not a lot of bush people left anymore to provide winter service. We operate two Beavers and we operate them on tundra tires. We haul backpackers, rafters, hikers, and hunters. But, we do some work with National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Science Foundation. Ecotourism is predominantly what our industry is, however. In season we start about 6 in the morning and we get going with the airplanes. A lot of times the planes shut down around midnight again. My wife works on the airplanes a lot during the day and we rotate on maintenance of the planes. Between flights I help her look at things and tell her which way to go from there. The kids basically run the office and their lemonade stand, which is really quite possibly more profitable then the air taxi business.

We sleep about 50 foot behind from where the airplanes are parked at night, and when the airplanes start in the morning, everyone wakes up whether they are ready to or not. It really is a family business, a lot like being on the farm where you have to make hay when the sun shines. During the summer is when we work. We conduct our business a lot over the internet now which is a wonderful tool because you can log on almost anywhere and answer emails. Our winter work consists in complying with regulations by 19 government agencies now, all of which have some new reporter or new addition to comply with. So we spend more time with regulations than we do flying. We have a small dog team and we run dogs almost on a daily basis. We eat predominately caribou and we hunt caribou in the spring. We do it as a family activity. We all go out and we hike through the woods until we find caribou, we all work on cutting them up, and bringing them home.

There are about 47 commercially permitted operators in the arctic refuge so there are 47 small businesses directly tied into the arctic refuge. I look at often the fight for the artic refuge as a small business versus big business. In the arctic refuge, we always consider it a really unique place because all the air taxis are very small. There’s Shanan Air which is Tom out of Kaktovik. Kirk Sweetzer with Yukon Air is also a single pilot operator. The largest one is Wright Air Service who have several airplanes. They are kind of small in the bush operations and we have a great relationship with them.

As a matter of fact, we talked to each other on the radio all of the time and we’re constantly working with each other to get people moved when one person gets jammed up or has a problem. You just think nothing of calling the other guys and going, “ Hey, can anybody do this?” On a daily basis in mid-June or mid-August when things are really busy around 7 or 8 in the morning, we’ll talk about whose got people where and while if you can grab these people for me, I can pick yours out there. We all kind of work together and that’s very unique.

I loved Ted Steven’s classification of us as green extremists because like I said, I’m from rural North Dakota, we didn’t eat any oatmeal or hug any trees while growing up. I started out my flying career as a crop duster and came to Alaska with no preconceived ideas that anything had to be saved. I actually flew for geophysical firm out of Houston in South America for two winters back in the mid 90’s. It wasn’t until my son was about 3 months old was that we flew in the arctic refuge. One morning, I had an empty leg going out so I took my wife and son out and dropped them off with camping gear with the idea that I’d do my flying and come in that evening to spend the night with them and start off the next day from there. So I dropped them off; it happened to be on the Aichilik River in mid to late June.

By the time I returned, there were so many caribou out there that I couldn’t land. I had to just fly around for awhile and wait. There were just thousands and thousands of caribou passing through, and it was literally at that moment that I questioned, “I wonder where my son will ever have the opportunity to bring his children and have them have a similar experience?” From that moment on, my perspectives on a lot of these things started to change. This is not about me. This is about my kids and their kids, and the real question of how much is enough.

Tom Brokaw wrote a book called “The Greatest Generation.” I read that book and it was very interesting to see the challenges that those people surmounted and the sacrifices they made. Then I think about my generation, and I think someone is going to write a book titled something more to the effect of, “The Generation That Rested on Past Generation’s Successes to Make the Future Generations Pay the Price.” It frightens me and I feel truly guilty about it. I don’t care if gas hits $4.00 a gallon because then more people would quit just driving everywhere, and they would actually get out and walk and we would have to quit spending so much on research for heart attacks.

More than that, we have the opportunities and certainly our fore fathers have proven that we can come up with answers. I find it a little disheartening that I fly air manufacturing 1952 and if you equate out the pounds carried by the speed per gallon burned, its more efficient than most of the planes that have been built in the last five years. I still don’t really consider myself an environmentalist but my wife likes to think of herself as a humanitarian. I don’t think we are going to destroy the earth, we are just going to ruin it for us to live in. Something will still be surviving here; maybe it’s the cockroaches. We should be looking at it as a humanitarian effort as much as an environmental because it’s our own necks we’re hanging and certainly the necks of our children.

Much oil development on the north slope is occurring today where you have basically three directly linked user groups: the air taxi’s, the commercial recreational guides, and the commercial hunting guides. Outside of that, you have the commuter airlines, the shuttle services that drive people up and down the Dalton Highway, as well as Alaska airlines and the hotels in Fairbanks. Several thousand people a year come through to see these areas who all spend a fair amount of money on their way.

A lot of people promote drilling in the artic refuge as being good for the economy and I don’t actually see it that way. It would certainly be good for investment companies or overseas companies, but as far as small companies go, there are very few benefits. Almost all oil service companies are out-of-state based companies. If you look how often a dollar turns around in the economy, we see small business’ dollars tend to re-circulate 17 times in the local economy. If you compare that to a dollar spent at Wal-Mart, it equates to about 60 cents on the dollar. So it’s quite dramatic, and applies also to these big companies that are in the mineral extraction industry.

By and far, the employed work force there is all out of state. I think the impacts on small businesses that are operating there are absolutely huge. I heard a figure that 600 millions dollars is what they figure the business contributions are of the arctic refuge to small businesses. Certainly we can’t compare to big industry dollars, but I believe we are dollars that are being operated and earned by a sustainable basis. We hear that we need to develop these resources for jobs for our children. Maybe for the children that are ready to hit the work force right now, but what about their children? I mean the mineral exploration industry does not provide long-term benefits. All you have to do is go check on coal industry in Kentucky or in bigger contrast, go to places like Chile where there was the huge phosphate industry and now there’s just thousands of miles of toxic waste sites.

Furthermore, if you look at the way leases are written, its private property once it’s done. You cannot actually drive the Dalton Highway all the way north and then step your foot into the ocean because the leased lots start at Dead Horse. You have to take an oil company tour. You cannot privately go through any oil-leased area. Essentially by opening up the 1002 area, you have the potential for absolutely cutting off all recreation from the foothills.

I can speak for both Kirk and I, when we have days off in the summer, we typically find ourselves somewhere in the refuge with our family, hanging out, playing on the beach or if we have extra time we go camping. Most others bush pilots share similar sentiments. There isn’t a single one of our air taxis that couldn’t sell out or go fly for someone else and make a quick buck if they drilled in the refuge, but none of us are there for the quick buck. I certainly do not push being a pilot on any of my kids, but certainly if one of my kids wanted the business, I hope the opportunity for them exists. The family farm was everything growing up, and that way of life is gone to a large extent. It still exists in Alaska, but its slipping away fast to the almighty dollar. It’s really quite sad because we run a family-operated business.
           
Although we all burn a lot of gas, the only thing I wish that we would be devoting more of this energy for drilling to come up with better technology. I'd be the first person to sign up for it. We're off grid in Coldfoot. We generate our own power, we got rid of our old generator and got a new generator that burns essentially less fuel but we hardly run it because we run on solar all summer long. We start our generator whenever we have to run heavy shop equipment. We do not have a large system, but if we can run our business that way, then certainly there are other answers besides drilling. I don't think anybody here is prepared to start living out in the cold again, but we have to find what is truly responsible mineral extraction. Can you imagine the jobs in the industry involved in alternative energy? We are a tech country so we should be teaching and leading others.

As far as positive effects of drilling, I don’t see any at the current level. One of the arguments that I hear for drilling is that the oil companies are responsible because it’s in their best interest to do a good job. I have found that to be completely false helped mostly by great advertising campaign by the oil industry. Both Exxon and BP have proven time and time and time again that they would rather pay fines than comply with regulations.

A few years ago it came out and it was hushed up incredibly quick that less than half of the check valves on the pipeline are working at any given time. I know that people are quick to point out that there have been thousands of spills in the Deadhorse /Prudhoe Bay area, but the oil companies respond, "well you know we have to report a quart of gas spilled or a quart of anything and let's face it, who here hasn't spilled a quart of gas while filling their car, dropped the can while doing their lawn mower? But in the last 3 years there have been 3 spills in access of 15,000 gallons so that's kind of a little bit unacceptable. If I spilled 15,000 gallons you can dang well be sure I'd be out of business, I'd be gone, I'd be wiped off the map tomorrow.

For them, it’s just a little PR blip that gets covered up and then they get to negotiate their fine. The Exxon Valdese spilled twenty some years ago and there still fighting the law suits that they lost 20 years ago on it. We don't hold them responsible and certainly government has no real interest in holding them responsible. If you could prove to me that all of this could be done in an environmental, in a way that there would not be spills, in a way that they would not be producing waste, you could start considering the pros and cons of economic development. We always hear about all this great technology but why isn't it in place? And if it is in place, then it's failing.

Ted Stevens once asked me about receiving the permanent fund. I said, "Yep, we sure do". We put ours in our kid's college fund and I mean, I didn't move to Alaska for the permanent fund and when the permanent fund goes away, I will still live in Alaska. I look at the permanent fund as blood money; it’s bribe money. A lot of people use it for fun money, but I look at it as the money to pay back our kids for what we are taking away from them and it's not much of a pay off. It is one thing that I truly wish it would just go away so that argument would also go away.

Oil company promises are what kind of brought me to D.C. for the first time several years ago was when Arco and BP started this huge media campaign in Alaska. They had all these songs about how everything's great and we're doing so well, full page ads in the paper, big bucks. You know, BP doesn't have a gas station in Alaska. Immediately you start going, "Okay, so what do they really want?" Well, they are literally trying to buy something from us, and the oil companies only buy when it's a good deal" which means it's a bad deal for you. So anytime I see a huge media blitz, I immediately think that it's far cheaper for them to spend all that money on a media blitz than it is to either take the current terms of the lease or deal with the consequences. I think certainly the promises they make are to labor, and I hate to say that they tend to court the less educated with all sorts of promises.

The fact is, on the North Slope, they only hire as many natives as they need to fill the quotas and they give them the worst jobs where they very seldom will get promoted. They're the guys that will get to grease the Caterpillars. If you shut down the oil patch today, I venture to say that half of Wasilla, Anchorage area would just move out. They do add jobs to the economy but largest percentage is imported.

Concerning natives, there's nothing better you can make as a statement as to wave the discrimination flag and say we're going to provide jobs for natives in these villages that have no money. They hire a few to fill quotas and more of the native culture becomes lost. I mean we convinced them to move into these towns with oil money. Houses are built that all have oil heat in them and now you talk about taking away the ability to heat their house. They're in a lose-lose situation and I find it really sad that they are used in this way.

Frank Murkowski, when he got elected, talked about next global oil boom and how great the oil boom was going to be. I think it'll boom, but isn’t that where inflation rocks a place? All sorts of labor comes in, the locals can't even hardly afford to live there anymore, and they have to leave. Then, the boom leaves, the rift raft that came in and spent their money stay, and the economy craters. I mean, you don't have to read a lot about history to realize that that's what a boom is. There are a few people that come in and make just a ton of money and leave.

I don’t really know what to make of the future. Every year we have more bureaucrats that makes being small businesses harder. Every year big business gets bigger and in just the last couple of years in Fairbanks we went from having no box stores to almost no small businesses. Everything's a box store. You know we have Home Depot, Lowe's, a big Wal-Mart, a Sam's Club. All the local grocery stores are closed now, but we have Fred Myers and Safeway.

In the big picture, we have seen a great change in the environment. The tree line was steadily moving north. We're constantly in a bit of an argument with the Fish & Wildlife Service about allowing us to brush out air strips and they say, “Well you can't brush out any air strips because it has to be left in its original state.” We go “Well that's cool except there was never any brush on these gravel bars until 5 years ago.” In the last 5 years, it has been an issue because the alders have grown from foot high plants to where they are now knocking the lights at the wing tips of the Beaver which is 8 1/2 ft in the air. A few years ago, we had 3-4 inches in Coldfoot on the second or third of June. It was the first time in June that I had gone out there that it was completely blanketed white. We got within 10 miles of the coast and there was no snow and all the lakes were open. I ended up landing them on this lake which is what we have always landed on. We taxied over to the far side and I said to my passengers, “You guys can carry the stuff from here. You got sleds to drag it on over.”

Interestingly enough a couple of days later another plane went in there to haul in the rest their gear. He taxied in over and fell through the ice. That lake is normally hard frozen and sure ice through first week of June. As a matter of fact I've landed as late as the 16th of June so whether that was a freaky year or not I don't know, but normally you fly across the coastal plain that time of year and the snow is all gone until you get within 10 miles of the coast which is still winter for another 2 weeks.