When Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) defends the $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" for a near desolate island in her homestate of Alaska, she may have good reasons.
It also helps that her family owns property on the island.
This past October, Sen. Murkowski took to the Senate floor to stop efforts to redirect federal funding for the bridge to help disaster relief in the Katrina zone and New Orleans.
She told her colleagues it was "very difficult to stand here as an Alaskan and not take this personally."
And for the Senator it may be very personal.
Though Gravina Island, Alaska has a population of just fifty, it is scheduled to benefit from this year's massive highway bill that doled out more than $24 billion in pork projects across the nation.
Alaska's congressional delegation secured a total of $941 million in pork projects, including $223 million for construction of the Alaskan bridge linking Gravina and its airport to the neighboring island of Ketchikan with a population of 14,000.
That's $4.46 million per resident of Gravina.
Recent news reports have revealed the Murkowski family owns land within one mile of the proposed construction site on Gravina Island.
Nancy Murkowski, Sen. Murkowski's mother and wife of Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski, owns a one-fourth interest in 33 acres on Gravina.
According to Ketchikan records, the land is valued at $224,600.
Sen. Murkowski defends her actions, telling the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that her financial stake in the property is too small to merit attention.
One of six siblings, Murkowski describes her interest as "one-sixth of one quarter of a worthless piece of property." Using Murkowski's formula, her interest in the property is worth $9,358.
But Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, says that figure is bound to multiply.
"It's very likely," he writes on his blog, "that the value of Mrs. Murkowski's 33 acres will soar if the bridge is ever finished ... And, of course, the value of Senator Murkowski's inheritance would soar as well."
"It would be hard not to take that personally," Pope concludes.
Murkowski dismisses Pope's criticism. "The inference by Pope that somehow or another this is benefiting me, I just have to shake my head with amazement," Murkowski tells the News-Miner.
"You look at the projects that we, the (Alaskan) delegation, are working on and, hey, it's not just Frank and Nancy and the Murkowskis that will see a benefit ... it's every Alaskan."
Sen. Murkowski's mother disputes the estimated value of the land and says the family has wanted to sell it for years.
In a letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News in July, she said the $224,600 estimated value was an "amazing figure since we have no power, no water, no sewer, no garbage, and no fire service for 33 acres of mostly muskeg, a flooded mine shaft, and the remains of an old stamp mill."
She has her own solution to the whole ordeal. "If the Sierra Club wants to buy it," she told the News-Miner, "we'd be happy to sell it to them."
No word yet on whether Carl Pope and the Sierra Club will take her up on the offer.
103-103
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.