The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation denied a climate change petition on Thursday submitted by a group of teens. The petition asked the state to reduce carbon emissions, monitor greenhouse gasses and come up with a long term climate change strategy.

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In late August, the teens hand-delivered the petition to DEC commissioner Larry Hartig. In his rejection letter, Hartig said the request posed “significant consequences for employment and resource development” in the state.

Seb Kurland, a member of Alaska Youth for Environmental Action, the group that submitted the proposal, was initially disappointed by the decision. But the 17-year-old from Juneau isn’t giving up.

“I’m hopeful the governor and the Lt. governor will take action on this subject,” Kurland said. “And that their newly appointed members will do something about it.”

The governor’s office has made some strides to address climate change since the teens voiced their concern. The administration created a new position, appointing a climate change adviser.

Lt. Governor Byron Mallott said a climate plan is forthcoming.

Kindred Post, a post office, gift shop and gathering space in downtown Juneau, has selected 10 art submissions to print on 1,000 postcards. The selections are from around the state, and from a diversity of artists.

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Kindred Post’s sidewalk sandwich board reads: stamps, boxes, shipping services, handmade and Alaskan made gifts and good vibes. An image of a woman wearing an American flag hijab that reads “We The People” is in the storefront, and just inside is a hoodie that reads “Social Justice Hustle.”

“So when we first started Kindred Post I’d had this dream to fill it with local art,” artist and writer Christy Namee Eriksen said.

Eriksen has owned the business for 3 years. Beyond post officey stuff, it’s known for selling artful jewelry, happening First Friday art gatherings and “Tiny Post Office” concerts.

“People come here every day to buy postcard stamps and they’re always looking for postcards,” Eriksen said.

Eriksen had already tapped some of Juneau’s usual suspects for art, so a contest seemed in order. And it had a bonus.

“We’d be able to learn what type of art and artists might be out there that we weren’t familiar with already, and we opened it up state wide,” Eriksen said.

250 submissions came in between July and August.

Among the 10 winners is Tom Chung who teaches art at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The image is of him riding shirtless on a moose in front of the backdrop of an Alaskan wilderness.

“I don’t see representations very often of Asian males, and so I use myself because it’s a little bit of an act of rebelling and I guess that I believe I live in a culture that says I am not desirable or not beautiful, and so I place myself in these sort of images of desirability or masculinity to kind of rebel against that,” Chung said.

Crystal Worl is a Juneau-based mixed media artist and business owner that works in paint and fashion design.

“I submitted six pieces and the one they selected is called “White Raven,” Worl said. “I like to acknowledge my Tlingit side using formline, and then I also like to acknowledge my Athabascan side through putting beadwork, floral patterns in my paintings. This one has a seaweed pattern that looks like a growing stem…. There’s a moon below Raven. You get the feeling that you’re looking up into the sky at Raven, and this is coming down and it feels also like you’re under water.”

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Additional winning images include a humpback whale in watercolor, a fox under the aurora, an image of a hand-embroidered umbrella. Some of the winning artists’ names are recognizable, some not—including a kid’s marker drawing of a large green dinosaur-like beast sort of hugging the Kindred Post store.

Having a diversity of artists is important to store owner Eriksen who studied social justice in college and co-founded a poetry slam in Juneau that is known for inclusiveness and empowering voice.

“I had a equity clause built into the competition,” Eriksen said. “So we wanted to prioritize artists who have otherwise have had social marginalization, and maybe not have had as much access to artistic opportunities as others.

Eriksen, her staff and other community members judged.

“So we would give preference to artists who self-identified as either a woman, LGBTQ, a person of color or an indigenous person, artists who are experiencing a developmental disability, or just a disability,” Eriksen said.

“I thought that was really great, I noticed that,” Chung said. “And we were allowed to write a little comment with our submission and I wrote I am a gay person of color that also lives with a disability. And it’s not just I guess to give a leg up to people that might need a little more encouraging, but also being inclusive to all sorts of diversity it expands the range of viewpoints that can be shared.”

“Why is that important to you: social justice and equity,” Eriksen asked. “Why is that a part of your business?”

“Our success is tied to the success of our neighborhood, of our city, of our community,” Chung said. “And so if you have that type of commitment to the place or the people that you belong to, then the question for me would be why would you not be committed to social justice? Why would you not want to raise up and work towards equality for all of its members?”

This week we’re hearing from Joey Shugarts in Anchorage. Shugarts moved to Anchorage three years ago from Michigan.

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SHUGARTS: Moving to Alaska has been a dream since a kid, and I know it may sound funny but when I saw Balto as a kid, it kind of piqued my interest and the Northern Lights and everything. And then I really love to hunt and fish and I really love the ice and the cold so Alaska’s kinda always piqued my interest, even though Michigan was kinda cold in ways. But, I wanted to move up here.

So my dad didn’t make it to Alaska because he died from a rare form of asbestos mesothelioma — sarcomatoid mesothelioma — so we knew for about four months and then he passed away. And so I decided, you know, my dad died at a young age of 46 and if I was gonna make my move to Alaska, I should make it happen. So six months later, I packed up everything I could in my Jeep with my dog and we moved up here.

I love all the wildlife. In fact, the other day, I went for a walk in the park where I was picking wild cranberries — I run into a black bear. Less than ten yards… I love it.

I really wanted to see my first moose, and when I moved up here it took a few days before I’d seen my first moose. And I was kinda bummed. I mean, I went out to the airport, out to Earthquake Park and places where people had told me to go. And I finally went over to Kincaid in the evening, and I probably got a little closer than what I should have. But I had this big, huge, beautiful bull moose just come. It was amazing when you have an animal that big close to you just breathing. You wanna touch it, but you know you can’t. (laughs)

I will have to leave for graduate school because, unfortunately, Alaska does not have a dental school. But I wanna move back as soon as possible. I love it up here and this is my permanent home. Even though Michigan is where I’m from, but I wanna make Alaska my permanent home.

Gov. Bill Walker is calling on the legislature to make changes to the crime reform bill known as SB 91. But one major part of the law, a pretrial services program, is on track to begin in January. As part of that program, the state wants to shift its relationship with 15 communities that operate rural jails. It will mean more money for local police departments, but also more work on the prevention side of things. Haines is the first community to sign the new contract.

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Last week, Department of Corrections Commissioner Dean Williams crowded into one of Haines’ three jail cells for a photo-op with the borough mayor, manager and police chief.

The local leaders had just signed on to a new contract that pays the borough an extra $30,000 to provide what are call ‘pretrial’ services.

“The biggest growth in our prison population in the state have been this pretrial population,” Williams said.

Williams explained that the goal of Alaska’s new pretrial program is to keep people who aren’t much of a threat out of prison as they await trial or another resolution to their case.

“Imagine there’s two people charged with the same crime, they both get a $1,000 bond put on them because that’s what the traditional system has been,” Williams said. “If you have $1,000 you pay it and get out. If you don’t, you stay in prison until your court date. That is a bad system.”

Williams said this exposes low-level offenders to more serious criminals and it could cause them to lose a job or be away from their family.

“And so we’re really trying to make decisions based on what risk a person represents, not their ability to pay a monetary bond,” Williams said. “It’s been disproportionate, quite frankly, if you’re a poor person, you’re less likely to get out of prison.”

The first step of the new pretrial program is a risk assessment. Geri Fox is DOC’s new pretrial director. She said the risk analysis will be based on a series of objective questions.

“How many felony arrests has this person had in the last five years?” Fox gave an example. “How many misdemeanor arrests has the person had in the past three years?”

Who conducts the risk assessment and monitors the defendant if they are not behind bars? That is going to depend on the location. Williams said DOC will hire about 60 pretrial service officers for bigger cities in Alaska. But in small towns like Haines, he sees that role falling to local police departments.

That’s where the community jails contracts come in. DOC pays 15 communities, from Haines to Kotzebue to Cordova, to operate rural jails. Williams wants to add on to the contracts, so that police departments participate in monitoring and supervision of defendants outside the jail cell.

“With the increased monies that DOC is giving us and the increased responsibility, I think at the end of the day we’re better serving our community,” Haines police chief Heath Scott said. “We’re in touch with people we need to be in touch with keep them on the straight and narrow, so to speak.”

The Haines department consists of a chief, soon to be four officers, and five dispatchers. The dispatchers also act as corrections officers, operating the jail. Scott said the new pre-trial responsibilities may require either another part-time dispatcher or more overtime hours. But he thinks the $30,000 DOC is adding to the contract will cover that work.

“We don’t know exactly what it looks like right now,” Scott said. “We’ve done no supervision, we’ve done no monitoring right now. But we don’t think it’s going to be a heavy lift.”

Scott hopes the revised contract means DOC funding is more secure in the future. Two years ago, the state chopped community jails money. It meant a $170,000 hit to the Haines Borough. The police department is still heavily reliant on the community jails funding.

And Williams hopes the roll-out of the $10 million statewide pretrial program will make Alaska’s justice system more equitable.

“It just makes sense, you don’t want low-risk people who’ve had a bad day in prison,” Williams said. “Have them be responsible and pay a consequence otherwise. But if you’re a risky person and you’ve been able to pay your way out of prison, those days are done.”

So, as the legislature prepares to debate changes to SB 91, Williams and his department are preparing the pre-trial program. That includes meeting with smaller communities like Haines, to see if they’re willing to partner in this new focus on prevention.

In 2016, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 91 — an omnibus criminal justice reform bill. Now, just over a year later, some are blaming the law for increases in crime and calling for its repeal. Join us for Talk of Alaska as we explore what SB 91 actually does, and what factors could be influencing crime rates in the state.

HOST: Anne Hillman

GUESTS:

• Brad Myrstol – associate proffesor at UAA Justice Center
• Greg Razo – Criminal Justice Commission
• Statewide callers 

Participate:

• Call 550-8422 (Anchorage) or 1-800-478-8255 (statewide) during the live broadcast
• Post your comment before, during or after the live broadcast (comments may be read on air).
• Send email to talk@alaskapublic.org (comments may be read on air)

LIVE Broadcast: Tuesday, October 3, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

SUBSCRIBE: Get Talk of Alaska updates automatically by email, RSS or podcast.

Voters in Fairbanks and outlying areas will consider ballot measures Tuesday to outlaw marijuana businesses in the city and borough.

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Safe Neighborhoods Fairbanks members say the proliferation of those businesses near residential areas presents a growing threat to families. Marijuana advocates disagree. They say making pot illegal again would halt the industry’s economic benefits and bring back the bad old days when consumers got their pot from the black market.

Jim Ostlind and other members of Safe Neighborhoods Fairbanks say they’re not looking to make marijuana illegal. He said advocates for borough Proposition 1 and Fairbanks Proposition A just want to keep marijuana businesses from opening up in residential and other “sensitive” areas.

“They feel like there needs to be some kind of control over this that isn’t there now,” Ostlind said.

Ostlind heads up Safe Neighborhoods’ political action committee, and he said members of the organization believe the Fairbanks North Star Borough is far too lenient in granting and renewing marijuana business permits.

“It looks to us like if a marijuana business wants to go in next to where you live, you’re going to have a marijuana business for a new neighbor,” Ostlind said.

Karen Bloom sees it differently. Bloom owns a marijuana-growing business in Fairbanks, and she says hers and all others in town have been granted permits and licenses because they followed the letter of the law established after Alaska voters approved legalizing marijuana three years ago.

“These are legitimate businesses, in a legitimate industry, following state and local regulation,” Bloom said.

Bloom said marijuana entrepreneurs don’t set up shop in a residentially zoned area, because that would violate state law and borough code. The borough only allows the businesses in areas zoned for agricultural, industrial or general use, or GU. Bloom said residents who don’t want a marijuana-related business in their neighborhood should work with the borough to rezone it residential, using the process Planning Director Christine Nelson outlined in a September 20th Fairbanks Daily News-Miner piece.

“The director did an excellent write-up on how residential neighborhoods that are zoned GU could go about being rezoned as a residential neighborhood, therefore prohibiting cannabis from being nearby,” Bloom said.

Commercial marijuana opponents said that’s a difficult and unnecessary process. And Ostlind said they distrust borough officials, because despite residents’ protests and big turnouts at public meetings, like one held for a proposed cannabis-growing facility off Badger Road, the borough has approved every application for marijuana business conditional-use permits.

“The community came out in force against this, there were so many people they had to have two nights of testimony,” Ostlind said. “Over a hundred pages of written testimony was submitted by the neighbors, and yet the permit was granted.”

Borough planning commissioners said they approved the application because it met all requirements. Bloom said that’s why it’s unfair for backers of the ballot propositions to resort to a referendum instead of seeking rezoning. She says if they prevail in next Tuesday’s vote, most marijuana consumers probably will go back to buying pot on the illegal black market. And she says there won’t be any public hearings or stateand local regulation for those dealers.

“Well, I can tell you right now the black market isn’t going to give two hoots about where they sell that product,” Bloom said.

Ostlind disagrees that marijuana consumers would flock to the black market. He predicts most would go to elsewhere outside the borough to buy, or would grow their own.

Marcey Luther thinks that’s unlikely. She works at a Fairbanks cannabis-cultivation shop, and is a member of the Alaska Marijuana Industry Association, and she said most people wouldn’t drive long distances to buy pot, nor be willing to invest the time and money required to grow it.

“The reality is that it takes a budget, it takes skill, it takes a space and it takes time to produce a productive crop,” Luther said.

Luther said if commercial marijuana were made illegal, it’s certain that most recreational users would revert to the black market – where quality control and consumer information is nonexistent.

“Black-market cannabis isn’t tested,” Luther said. “It can be full of mold. It can be full of pesticides. It doesn’t have the chemical breakdown on it.”

Ostlind said those are concerns for marijuana consumers, not the backers of the ballot measures.

“It’s not our responsibility to worry too much about the outcome of these initiatives,” OStlind said.

Ostlind said the same goes for the marijuana entrepreneurs. He says they should’ve known that there was a possibility that their operations could be made illegal by a voter initiative or referendum, as allowed for in the 2014 ballot measure that legalized pot in Alaska.

“Everybody knew what could be coming down the road,” Ostlind said, “and they made a decision, a business decision, and really I think that’s their responsibility.”

Bloom said that’s an irresponsible and short-sighted attitude to take about the dozens of area residents who’ve invested heavily in marijuana businesses and the hundreds who work in the industry that’s already brought significant economic benefits to the city and borough.

“We have warehouses that were sitting vacant and that are now filled and providing jobs,” Bloom said. “We have families that couldn’t work full-time that now have a year-round job, full-time. We have a tax base that we are contributing to.”

Ostlind doesn’t think it’ll be that much of problem. And he said in any case commercial-pot prohibition is the right thing to do.

Gov. Bill Walker and his top aides tried to make the case for enacting a new tax to a group of business and political leaders Friday.

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The state must figure out a more sustainable way to pay for services, Walker said.

He spoke at a breakfast hosted by the nonpartisan think tank Commonwealth North in Anchorage.

“It’s not fun to roll out stuff involving the word – I don’t know how many ways you can disguise the word tax – but we just say it the way it is. It’s a tax,” Walker said. “We’re at the point where we can no longer be the only state in the nation that doesn’t have a broad-based tax.”

Walker has proposed a tax of 1.5 percent on wages and self-employment income. There would be a limit. No one would pay more than twice what they receive in an Alaska Permanent Fund dividend.

Revenue Commissioner Sheldon Fisher said the tax would help stabilize the state’s economy. It would raise an estimated $320 million.

Fisher said that while there are more opportunities to reduce the cost of government, the state has already made deep cuts.

“When we talk about rightsizing government – when people talk about it – my argument is going to be that we need to be talking about the programs we have,” Fisher said. “It’s easy to kind of say, you know, ‘State government is bloated, the departments are bloated, we know we can – they can do this more efficiently.’”

Walker’s chief of staff Scott Kendall said the lack of a broad-based tax creates what he called the “Alaska disconnect.” He said that’s when growth in military or private-sector jobs lead to higher government costs without providing revenue to pay for the costs.

“The F-35s coming to Fairbanks – phenomenal for Fairbanks, phenomenal for North Pole – at the end of the day will actually cost the state money: more public safety, more schools for kids, more wear and tear on the roads,” Fisher said. “That’s the Alaska disconnect.”

Kendall said industries – including the oil industry – will wonder whether they will have to bear the burden until the state has taxes that rise with growth.

A special session on the tax bill and a second measure to increase jail times for offenses is scheduled for Oct. 23 in Juneau. Walker could add more items to the special session agenda.

The loss of state jobs is hitting Southeast Alaska hard.

Tourism has overtaken fishing as the region’s largest private industry. That’s the word from a new report released in September detailing the region’s economic booms and busts.

The region’s total wages and job numbers are down, according to Southeast Alaska by the Numbers, a report covering the 2016 calendar year.

Meilani Schijvens wrote the report for the Southeast Conference, an economic development organization. She presented her findings at its annual meeting in Haines.

The biggest hit is to government jobs.

Schijvens said about 30 percent of the region’s 45,000 jobs are in state and local government. Add to that more than a third of its $2.2 billion in wages.

“A lot of people say, ‘Well, people, you know, are retiring,’ or ‘They’ve left their job and it’s not being replaced.’ It doesn’t matter if the actual individual leaving the job isn’t impacted,” Schijvens said. “It ends up being a huge hit to our economy.”

Schijvens said Southeast lost 250 state jobs last year and three-quarters that many so far this year.

That’s a total of 750 lost jobs over three or so years, a nearly 15 percent drop.

“The loss of 750 state jobs is equivalent in terms of wages to a large mine being shut down in Southeast Alaska. It’s actually slightly bigger,” she said. “It’s more wages than if we shut down one of our mines in Southeast Alaska. So it is an enormous economic hit.”

Mining jobs, by the way, are up, but only slightly.

Southeast tourism continued to grow in 2016.

The number of jobs went up 5 percent, providing nearly a quarter of the region’s business earnings.

“Our visitor industry, in terms of wages, is now our most important private sector industry for the first time ever,” Schijvens said.

Tourism’s relative economic standing rose, in part, because the region’s seafood industry declined.

Schijvens said fisheries jobs dropped by more than 10 percent, and earnings went down by almost twice that amount. The fisheries business is cyclical, so one or two years may not predict a longer trend.

The report shows hits to businesses on land and sea.

“In 2016, shore-based seafood facilities processed 30 percent fewer pounds of seafood than in 2015. And Southeast Alaska state fisheries tax revenue fell by more than 50 percent. These losses are also directly affecting our communities,” Schijvens said.

Schijvens said Southeast lost residents in 2016, as it did the previous year. About 650 people moved away.

“Juneau really bore the brunt of those losses. If you look at Juneau, they had their third largest population decline in the history of that community, because they’re really ground zero for state jobs and state wages,” Schijvens said.

The biggest population increases were in several small Prince of Wales Island cities, which ranged from 10 percent to 30 percent growth. Gustavus, Skagway, Tenakee, Klukwan and Wrangell also picked up new residents.

Schijvens made some future projections too. She expects continued decline in government and construction jobs, tied to the lower price and quantity of oil.

Local stores, those not targeting tourists, also will lose some ground, as will timber.

But it’s not all bad.

“We do expect our visitor industry to continue to expand tremendously. We expect our health care (sector) to continue to grow, we expect our mining industry to continue their positive trends. We expect seafood to be a lot better moving forward than it was in 2016. And we expect our maritime industrial jobs to continue to expand as well,” Schijvens said.

And how do the region’s industries view the future?

A survey included in the report shows about half of business owners and managers expect things to be the same. A third say it will be better. And the rest say it will be worse.

An Anchorage lawmaker is requesting the Legislature’s October special session be held in Anchorage instead of Juneau.

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In a letter to Gov. Bill Walker, Republican Rep. Chris Birch argued it would save money and increase public participation on crime legislation — Anchorage lawmakers and residents have expressed concern over a spike in crime there. Birch sent the the letter Wednesday after attending a town hall on crime in Anchorage the night before.

In it, Birch said maximizing public engagement with Senate Bill 54, which would modify last year’s Senate Bill 91, a criminal justice reform bill, is crucial to addressing constituent concerns.

“This isn’t an effort to move the capital or anything of that nature,” Birch said. “It’s an effort to bring some balance and recognize that we need to be accessible to the public and certainly at this time money savings are certainly a plus as well. I mean if three quarters of the Legislature can basically forgo transportation and associated costs with relocation for a month, that’s just a bonus.”

Birch added that many legislators are likely planning to attend this year’s Alaska Federation of Natives conference in Anchorage, which wraps up two days before the special session begins.

Birch said he spoke with the governor and his chief of staff about the letter, and expects the majority of the Legislature to support his request.

On Friday at a breakfast event at Commonwealth North in Anchorage, Walker was asked why the special session couldn’t happen in Anchorage.

“Well, the Capitol’s in Juneau. Gavel to Gavel is in Juneau. Alaskans all over the state are able to participate through the Gavel to Gavel process and be able to observe what goes on, ” Walker said. “So yes, it would be more convenient to have it in Anchorage. That’s not where the Capitol is. And if the Legislature would like to convene and move it to Anchorage, I won’t oppose that.”

Juneau Democratic Rep. Sam Kito III said he thinks the request is short-sighted in several respects.

“One is we will have to fly regular staff to Anchorage in order to support any activities,” Kito said. “We currently don’t have a location suitable to have the entire House meet. That would have to be procured. And the other challenge is we don’t have Gavel Alaska in Anchorage, which means that the public would be less involved, even though he said they would be more involved.”

Kito said Alaskans are able to weigh-in electronically through the Legislature’s teleconference system. He also said that when the Legislature last met in Anchorage in 2015, they had about the same number of people attend the hearings as they regularly see in Juneau.

“I do think we will hear from as many people on the teleconference line or through letters to the committee on SB 54,” Kito said. “I think we have probably a better opportunity to connect with Alaskans if we’re in Juneau and we have the ability to broadcast all the information.”

Kito said he will speak with his fellow Juneau legislators and together they will encourage Walker to keep the session in Juneau.

Juneau Sen. Dennis Egan could not be reached for comment. Juneau Rep. Justin Parish had yet to review the proposal when reached.

KTOO’s Andrew Kitchenman contributed to this report.

On a crisp day in September, the village of Kongiganak, or Kong, filed into a little white church and laid Maggie Mary Otto to rest.

The service was crowded. An elder and de facto marriage counselor, Otto was beloved. She was the kind of person who cooked steaming plates of walrus for her community every January for Russian Orthodox Christmas — even though she wasn’t Orthodox herself.

After the viewing, Maggie Mary Otto’s pallbearers carried her casket outside, placed it on a metal cart, and attached it to the back of a four-wheeler.

Kong’s cemetery is a 10-minute drive on a boardwalk over marshy tundra.

A procession of four-wheelers followed the casket to a rust-colored hill and a smattering of chalk-white crosses.

Rather than lowering Otto’s body into the ground, pallbearers placed her casket on a low wooden platform, raised about six inches above the ground on blocks.

A half-dozen men lift a white, wooden box and place it over her casket to protect it from the elements, covering it completely.

Climate change is thawing the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta’s permafrost, and it’s doing more than cracking foundations, sinking roads and accelerating erosion.

In villages like Kong, communities have stopped burying their dead because, as the permafrost melts, the oldest part of their cemetery is sinking.

Digging graves in the soggy ground was just making it worse.

In the cemetery, the white crosses stick out of the sunken ground at odd angles, some of them almost completely submerged in the brackish water.

“After we dug down 6 feet, it created a lake around it,” Tribal Administrator Roland Andrew said. The swamp appeared about 10 or 15 years ago and then expanded, swallowing the graves around it.

The graveyard in the neighboring village of Kwigillingok, or Kwig, is also sinking into swampland.

After consulting with Kwig’s elders for advice, Andrew said that Kong started laying its loved ones to rest in boxes above ground.

Digging into the ground removes the plants and topsoil that insulate the permafrost and accelerates the rising water.

Andrew said that the swamp stopped expanding when Kong stopped burying its dead, but a row of white grave boxes from about a decade ago are teetering at odd angles, sliding feet-first into the lake.

The water is still causing problems.

Back in town, Mrs. Otto’s family hosted her funeral feast in an old high school gym. Community members piled their bowls high with seal stew and akutaq while children wrestled each other by the bleachers.

Otto’s daughter, Betty Phillip, sat quietly in a corner. Her mother was laid to rest on higher ground, but not all of her family is so lucky.

“Her dad and my grandpa,” Phillip said. “He’s one of them that’s under the water.”

If Phillip wears rubber boots that reach above her knees, she said she can wade close to his grave, but can’t quite touch his cross.

Others tell similar stories.

One man said that his cousins tried to drain the water from around his grandparents’ grave.

When they were alive, they held the family together; his cousins didn’t have much luck.

Another woman, Hannah Jimmy, said that her parents, aunts, uncles, sister, and best friend are all in the cemetery, buried together in a single row.

They’re underwater now.

“We’re so poor we can’t even do nothing about it,” Jimmy said.

Andrew said that the village is trying to move the sunken graves to higher ground, but doesn’t have the money yet. He said thawing permafrost is warping Kong in other ways.

The river is eroding the shoreline and Kong itself is sinking. The hill that the village stands on is slowly slipping down to sea level.

When asked whether he thought that Kong would ever need to be relocated because of climate change, Andrew was quiet for a moment then sighed.

“This hill used to be high,” Andrew said. “And it’s still going down.”

Andrew doesn’t see Kong relocating. If anything, he said Kong’s population might double in size in the future.

Community members in Kwig are talking about moving there because of the seasonal flooding.

Andrew wants to be buried next to his parents; he keeps a picture of them above his desk.

They died last year within about eight months of each other after being married for over 60 years.

Their grave boxes still smell like fresh paint and are wreathed in plastic flowers, propped up on blocks on the cemetery’s highest ground, at least for now.

Much of the history of the Alaska Highway up to this point has overlooked the sacrifices and mistreatment of the black men involved in its construction. Dennis and Christine McClure hope to bring these issues to light in their book ‘We Fought the Road.’

The McClures first started researching the highway when Christine found some of her father’s letters written during his military service. Lieutenant Colonel Turner Timberlake had been an officer of an all-black unit working on the highway. Dennis says that a 2013 trip up the highway to see where Christine’s father had worked sparked the idea for the book.

“As we traveled we realized that very few people knew there had been any black soldiers up here, and that bothered us,” Dennis said. “We’re two middle-class white folks, but the more we learned about this the madder we got.”

Through their research, the McClures uncovered military policies that prevented black men from performing certain jobs and even denied them leave from their posts.

During a winter when temperatures dropped to 40 below, Christine says black troops were ordered to build barracks for their white officers, while they lived in tents.

“So the Jim Crow that was evident in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama or Florida, where these soldiers came from, was very much alive while they were in the army,” Christine said.

Some of these men are still alive today. The McClures were contacted by 97 year old Leonard Larkins about his experience building the highway.

After he enlisted in the military, Larkins said he was put on a train without receiving any information about where he was going or what he would be doing. After weeks of travel, he arrived in Skagway to start work on the highway.

“And nobody ever said a word to him or even acknowledged that he and the other 3,000 men just like him even existed,” Dennis said.

However, the experiences of these men are starting to gain recognition.

At the end of May, Larkins was invited to Alaska for the 75th anniversary of the Alaska Highway at Fort Greely. At the ceremony, he was thanked by Governor Bill Walker for his service.

The McClures are on tour, promoting “We Fought the Road.’ The book will be released in October.

Three candidates seeking election to an open seat on the Interior Gas Utility board all agree it’s taken far too long to bring natural gas into the Fairbanks area. All three say if elected they’d push to accelerate the IGU’s efforts to bring gas here and build a system to deliver gas to its customers.

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The Interior Gas Utility was established five years ago by the Fairbanks North Star Borough to offer area residents a lower-cost alternative to heating oil, and a cleaner-burning fuel than either oil or firewood.

IGU board candidate Patrice Lee is a longtime air-quality advocate, and she said her experience with the issue would help her move the IGU to more quickly secure delivery of natural gas to Fairbanks and from there, to the area’s homes and businesses.

“The opportunity to get affordable clean energy to Fairbanks is a natural extension of our need to clean up the air,” Lee said.

Board candidate Scott Eickholt agrees that’s important, but secondary to the main mission of getting gas here and distributing it.

“A lot of folks are focused on getting clean air,” Eickholt said. “But in order to get there, we’ve got to get the job done first.”

Jeffrey Rentzel is also seeking election to a three-year term on the board, and he cites affordability as his priority.

“We need to get this going so we can get an alternate and affordable fuel to heat our homes and businesses and it will help us clean up our air,” Rentzel said.

The 60-year-old Rentzel retired a few years ago after working 28 years for the state Department of Health and Social Services. He now works as a juvenile justice office at the Fairbanks Youth Facility. He said that experience with bureaucracy would help him get the IGU moving more quickly.

“To make faster progress is basically what I’m looking at,” Rentzel said. “Going slow, talking things to death is not what I do. I want to get in, get it done and move on.”

Eickholt, who’s 45, emphasizes his experience with construction and contracting gained through nine years of work with Local 942 of the Laborers Union, where he now serves as business manager. Before that, he worked for NORCON, a big Anchorage-based oil- and gas-industry contractor.

“I’ve got about eight years working directly with management and contracts in this kind of industry,” Eickholt said. “So, it gives me the background to add a lot of value to the board itself.”

Lee cites her diligence in researching issues and organizing and mobilizing the community among her top qualifications for the board. The 62-year-old retired schoolteacher points to her work with Clean Air Fairbanks and Friends of Fox Springs as examples. And she said she’ll advocate for consumers and businesses if elected to IGU board Seat D.

“Residents must have stable, affordable, clean energy,” Lee said, “and our businesses will be more competitive with affordable clean energy.”

Lee said she’d employ her researcher acumen into the IGU’s proposed purchase of Texas-based Pentex Alaska Natural Gas Company. The IGU is considering buying Pentex, the parent company of Fairbanks Natural Gas, mainly for Pentex’s natural-gas liquefaction facility in the Mat-Su to process the fuel and its trucking operation to transport it to Fairbanks. The utility wants FNG for its local natural-gas distribution system.

Both Eickholt and Rentzel say they strongly support the Pentex purchase.

If President Trump’s tax agenda goes into effect, taxes for people of all income groups would go down next year, on average. But only a few Alaskans would get the big tax breaks.

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According to a preliminary analysis by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, most of the total tax benefit in 2027 would go to the top 1 percent — people making more than $730,000 a year. On average, they would save more than $100,000 a year in taxes in 2018, the report says. But you won’t find many of the nation’s 1-percenters in the Far North.

Economist Mouhcine Guettabi at the University of Alaska said the state has a fairly equal distribution of income, compared to other places.

“We only have about 15,000 returns or so every year that have more than $200,000 in them,” Guettabi said.

That’s fewer than 5 percent of Alaska taxpayers claiming income of more than $200,000, according to IRS data. And, at the other end of the scale, Guettabi said Alaska’s poor aren’t all that poor, thanks in part to the Permanent Fund dividend.

“That means there’s a lot of people in the middle,” Guettabi said. “And so if indeed a lot of the changes are going to negatively impact middle class Americans, then that means that there’s a larger percentage of Alaskans that are going to feel it.”

The Tax Policy Center said most households in the income range of $50,000 to $150,000 would see their taxes stay the same or drop modestly, though about one in three would see an increase.

The White House and Republican leaders in Congress unveiled their tax proposal last week. Some vital information wasn’t included, like the income levels for the tax brackets. The Tax Policy Center said it filled in some of the gaps with information from previous Republican proposals. Critics charge the think-tank’s report is based on faulty assumptions.

One thing the Republican proposal would explicitly do is eliminate deductions, such as municipal real estate taxes. Some 70,000 Alaskan property owners use that deduction to lower their federal tax bill.

Frank Sammartino, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, said eliminating that deduction would have some effect in Alaska.

“Although the percentage claiming the deduction, and the average deduction that people claim, is much lower than in most states,” Sammartino said.

The vast majority of Alaskans don’t itemize. They take the standard deduction, which the Republican plan would double.

Republicans in Congress are expected to spend the next several weeks working on their budget proposal, to set the stage for their tax legislation.

But the tax plan is already having one effect in Alaska: It undercuts one of the selling points for Gov. Bill Walker’s proposed payroll tax. If Congress passes the Republican tax plan, a statewide levy like the one Walker wants would no longer be an IRS deductible.

Two remote learning students just graduated from a Kodiak College Alutiiq language program.

They’re striving to keep the language alive in Port Graham and Tatitlek, two villages where Alutiiq, or Sugpiaq, people speak the regional dialect of Chugach Alutiiq.

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Libby Eufemio, who runs the Alutiiq Studies Program, explains the Alutiiq nation covers a large chunk of geography, including the Kodiak archipelago, the southern Kenai Peninsula, and Prince William Sound.

Eufemio said the college’s occupational endorsement certificates enable students to teach the Alutiiq language.

“This type of degree is really important in more than just the education level,” Eufemio said. “It’s doing something really concrete that is gonna help preserve an ingenious language.”

One of the graduates, Brandon Moonin, works for Chugachmiut, an organization which brings education and other services to the Chugach region.

Moonin teaches children of different ages in Tatitlek.

“Right now, I think we rated our village right on the brink of extinction for the use of the language in the village,” Moonin said. “It’s either grandparents or beyond that actually use it in the village, and our elders population is shrinking pretty fast.”

Moonin said he grew up with Alutiiq – his dad and grandparents were fluent speakers. But he said he was nervous about teaching it.

“‘Cause it’s not really something I’ve ever done or something I’ve actually ever wanted to do, but since I think it was my first week of class, I stepped in, I could just see the kids were excited about what I was teaching,” Moonin said. “They were able to take it right in, and they started using it around the village. Every time they would see me they would start talking to me in whatever they did pick up in class at all.”

Moonin’s cousin, Ephimia Moonin-Wilson, is the other graduate and also works for Chugachmiut. She teaches in Port Graham, a village with fewer than 200 people.

Moonin-Wilson believes teachers can bring about a revival of the Alutiiq language, or Sugcestun, through their students.

“With the knowledge of having sentences, they can speak in the community and, hopefully, when they speak with their parents, their family, the elders, eventually the Sugcestun will be a natural medium in the community,” Moonin-Wilson said.

Moonin-Wilson said she loves her students’ excitement to be in the classroom.

“They are learning and they want to learn more, and that really warms my heart up,” Moonin-Wilson said.

Chugachmiut held a ceremony in late September to honor the graduates.

At least two Alaskans are dead, and another is wounded, after a gunman’s rampage at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas. Many other residents were at the event and fled to safety, sending messages back to family overnight and into Monday.

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48-year-old Mike Cronk lives in Tok, and was at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival when gunshots erupted late Sunday night. He described what happened during an interview with ABC News.

“It was very horrifying. At first it sounded like fireworks, and then my buddy that was standing right next to me said ‘I’m hit,’ and then we knew it was real,” Cronk told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

The friend hit was 52-year-old Rob McIntosh of North Pole. According to the Alaska Dispatch News, McIntosh’s family expect to make a full recovery.

McIntosh is one of more than 500 people injured in the shooting.

Cronk waited for the gunfire to stop before he and others climbed over a fence, put McIntosh on a cart and rushed to safety. They loaded four injured people into a truck and raced them toward medical care.

“One of the guys in our truck did not make it, either,” Cronk said. “I carried him out of the truck and he passed away in my arms.”

The shooting is being called the worst in modern U.S. history, with 59 people dead as of Monday afternoon. Among them is Anchorage resident Dorene Anderson, who according to social media called herself a stay-at-home mother. Her daughter wrote on Facebook that Anderson was one of the victims. The post was shared on a page for fans of the Alaska Aces hockey team, which was a passion of Anderson’s.

Another victim is 35-year-old Adrien Murfitt, a graduate of Dimond High School in Anchorage who commercial fished out of Chignik on the Alaska Peninsula. Murfitt’s mother, Avonna, described her son as tall, handsome and shy most of the time. He was a big country music fan and went to the festival annually. This year he was celebrating a successful fishing season.

“He decided to go down there with his friend, life-time friend from Anchorage, Brian McKinnon,” Murfitt said.

Murfitt began learning about what was happening from her son’s ex-girlfriend, who was also at the festival, and called crying in a panic to say she thought she’d seen Adrien get shot.

Murfitt stayed up all night.

“We’ve called the Red Cross, we called all the hospitals because we didn’t know if he was one of the ones who was in the trauma unit or not. But nobody had any records of him, so I still don’t know where he is and nobody’s called me,” Murfitt said.

“But Brian saw him die,” Murfinn said, referring to McKinnon. “I called Brian about 6:00 this morning and he finally told me.”

Murfitt said her son was killed in the first round of shots that rained down on 22,000 concert-goers. In videos posted to social media of the assault, long bursts of what sounds like automatic gunfire cut through a performance by country musician Jason Aldean. The New York Times reports that at least 20 rifles were found inside the 32nd floor hotel room of the suspected gunman, Nevada resident Stephen Paddock, including AR-15s, rifles set up on tripods and outfitted with scopes, along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Paddock is believed to have killed himself before law enforcement reached him, and no motive is yet known.

Murfitt said that among his siblings, family and friends, her son will be tremendously missed.

“He was just enjoying life. And it’s just such a terrible thing that happened. Just a young man enjoying life, having a good time after a hard season of work,” Murfitt said. “And I love him. I love him.”

It’s not known how many Alaskans were in Las Vegas for the festival. Throughout Monday, stories came in of relatives calling and scouring social media to locate loved ones who’d attended. That included Governor Bill Walker, whose niece was in Las Vegas.

“We watched it last night, and we knew she was at the concert so we were very concerned,” Walker said in a short interview Monday. Eventually he got a text saying she was safe. “At that point they were hiding in a hotel basement.”

Walker spent part of Monday calling families of those killed and injured, some of whom he has personal connections with.

“I, of course, convey my condolences, but I also want to find out what I can do to help them,” Walker said. One request was made of him, and Walker said he’s following up on it.

At this point Walker has no plans of pushing Alaska’s congressional delegation for any changes to national gun policies.

“Today’s not the day to have that discussion. I don’t have any intention at this time of doing that. Right now we’re dealing with the loss and the tragedy,” Walker said. “I’ll continue to reach out in any way I can help the families of the victims.”

Flags in Alaska and around the country will be flown at half-mast until Friday.

This story contained contributions from Alaska Public Media’s Casey Grove. 

By next fall, the first batch of University of Alaska Southeast undergraduates are expected to begin a first-of-its-kind scholarship program for Alaska.

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Students that are accepted to the College Student Pre-Commissioning Initiative (CSPI) become active-duty enlisted members of the Coast Guard, receive full salary and benefits and start a track to become fully commissioned officers upon graduation.

UAS and the Coast Guard on Monday signed an agreement, establishing the program. During the signing ceremony, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Michael McAllister said the partnership opens up an “exchange of knowledge” between the campus and the Coast Guard.

“It’s a great opportunity for the many, many Coast Guard men and women in Alaska, but particularly Southeast Alaska, to get engaged back in the classroom, whether they’re as students, as mentors, or even guest instructors from time to time,” McAllister said. “It’s an opportunity for students here at UAS to get out and learn about some of the things the Coast Guard does in terms of marine environmental protection, in terms of fisheries enforcement, in terms of search and rescue and give them experiential learning out in the field.”

Students must be full-time sophomores or juniors to apply. Much like ROTC, students accepted into the program are on track to become fully commissioned officers upon graduation. They also receive up to two years’ full tuition. Unlike ROTC, CSPI students are active-duty enlisted members of the Coast Guard and receive full salary and benefits.

Lt. Junior Grade Collin McClelland graduated from the CSPI program at Norfolk State University more than a year ago and is now assigned to Juneau. McClelland comes from five generations of military service, so being involved in a tight-knit community was a major factor in his decision to join.

“Being a part of the Coast Guard in an area like this is something to be proud of and something that definitely makes you go home, go to sleep at night and you feel like you did something,” McClelland said.

UAS Chancellor Rick Caulfield signed the agreement with McAllister, and said the campus has plans to create a scholarship for freshmen and sophomore students who plan to enroll in CSPI.

“Juneau has a great marine industry, and the more we can educate young people about all aspects of the maritime industry here, whether it’s joining the Coast Guard or getting involved with the fishing industry or marine repair,” Caulfield said. “It gives students an idea of how they can make a living in this beautiful setting that we’re in and how important maritime industry is to our economy here in Juneau.”

Applications for the first CSPI class at UAS will be due in January.

This week, Pebble Limited Partnership is expected to publicly unveil the outline for a plan to mine the copper and gold deposit northwest of Iliamna. Those who have been briefed say the company’s plans call for a much smaller mine than discussed before, and appear to address many of the concerns raised by Bristol Bay residents and fishermen, environmentalists and the EPA.

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As a region, the Bristol Bay watershed has largely opposed Pebble, perhaps in increasing numbers, for the past decade. Much of the effort focused on pushing President Obama’s EPA to finalize preemptive Section 404(c) Clean Water Act restrictions that would have blocked permitting of Pebble Mine’s dredge and fill activities. Pebble filed several lawsuits, alleging in one that EPA and anti-mine activists were colluding to reach a predetermined outcome. That lawsuit found traction in the court of U.S. District Judge H. Russel Holland, who agreed to an injunction against further EPA effort until the case was resolved.

President Trump’s EPA agreed to settle the lawsuit with Pebble, allowing the company to enter into a normal permitting process as defined by the National Environmental Policy Act. A caveat was added that the company must file for permits within 30 months.

Ahead of CEO Tom Collier’s presentation of Pebble’s plans to the Resource Development Council in Anchorage Thursday morning, the company has been briefing some stakeholders ahead of time.

Nathan Hill, the manager of the Lake and Peninsula Borough, has seen the 150-plus slide PowerPoint presentation with the company’s estimates about the size and scope of the project, and what it will mean for nearby communities.

The Pebble deposit sits within the Borough’s boundaries.

“The position of the Borough is neutral,” Hill said. “We are tasked with approving permits regarding any development in the Borough, so for us to have anything but a neutral stance would not make our permitting process a fair one.”

Hill is Alaska Native, a BBNC shareholder and member of his local tribe. He is a lifelong commercial and subsistence fisherman who lives in Kokhanok, along the shores of Iliamna Lake. Hill knows as well as anybody the stakes involved, and depending on the success, flop or failure of Pebble, the borough he manages stands to gain or lose more than anywhere else in Bristol Bay. The Lake and Pen Borough pulls in roughly $1.5 million in taxes from the commercial sockeye harvest each year, a revenue stream that depends on a healthy fishery. But the Borough will also have some taxing authority over the project, if it’s developed, that could reap millions annually.

A Pebble Mine might create more jobs and contracts for village corporations, but there will inevitably be disruption to today’s way of life and potential for a wide range of environmental risk to Lake and Pen communities. Amidst a tense dialogue given to backbiting and hyperbole, Hill said his assembly and mayor have tasked him to stay informed and meet with Pebble as needed.

“To ignore facts and reality doesn’t do anything to satisfy that,” Hill said. “In my opinion, if you want to have good information, you need to be open to that information. That’s what I’m trying to do, keep apprised of all arguments and all information, and make myself available to do the job of borough manager.”

In the past, the Lake and Peninsula Borough has been targeted by Pebble Mine opponents, notably Alaska’s wealthiest resident Bob Gillam, who funded ballot initiatives, lawsuits and propped up George Jacko Jr. as a candidate against incumbent Mayor Glen Alsworth, Sr. The Borough has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting what they claim are frivolous lawsuits, and Gillam’s standing with wider Pebble opponents suffered on account of his relationship with Jacko. A former state senator, Jacko’s reputation for harassing young women stretches far beyond the claims made against him during an official investigation while he was in office in the early 90s.

Downstream from Pebble’s deposit, down the Koktuli to the Mulchatna to the world-famous king salmon producing Nushagak River sits Dillingham, the largest hub in Bristol Bay and center of the region’s loudest opposition to Pebble.

“I’ll fight Pebble till my last breath,” H. Robin Samuelsen said.

Also a lifelong commercial fisherman, Samuelsen is a chief with the Curyung Tribal Council, a director with the Bristol Bay Native Corporation, and the chairman of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation’s board of directors. Few if any have had near the influence over Bristol Bay’s past quarter century as Samuelsen, and few if any are as prepared to lead this fight from the front as he is. But he is not choosing to engage with Pebble directly, at least for now.

“Not having seen the plan, I will still oppose the Mine. It has many ramifications that could affect the commercial fishery, sport fishery, and subsistence fishery out here,” Samuelsen said.

Samuelsen said others who answer to him have seen Pebble’s plans, and he is concerned to hear that the company may focus on the Pebble West deposit which drains to the Koktuli River. He and many others opposed to Pebble have long alleged the risks from hypothetical mining scenarios that may now be less applicable, and he and others have long called for Pebble to lay its cards on the table. Thus, he is willing to take a look at what the company is proposing.

“I think there’s room for us to invite them, they don’t have to invite us, we’ll invite them, to look at what they’re planning on doing. It isn’t just a ‘hell no’, we’re monitoring the situation, and I believe that the super majority of Bristol Bay is going to continue to oppose that Mine,” Samuelsen said.

The United Tribes of Bristol Bay, a political advocacy group representing 14 tribal councils in the region, has taken a lead position in opposing Pebble. A UTBB contingent has traveled to nearly every village in the region to shore up support ahead of Pebble’s rollout and an EPA visit, and they protested outside the Pebble advisory committee’s August meeting in Anchorage. They turned down an invite to join and even address that meeting, and Executive Director Alannah Hurley said will continue to refuse discussions that presume a mine will be built, no matter the size.

“We have known from the very beginning of this threat exactly what is up there. We know from their own presentations to their shareholders and to the investment community exactly the type, size and location of the Pebble deposit. Those are things that cannot change,” Hurley said. “The impact of that type of mining on our watershed has not changed. Nothing has changed when it comes to the Pebble Mine other than politics.”

Hurley said the residents UTBB has heard from are deeply frustrated to still be talking about a mine they have opposed for a decade.

Pebble has a few supporters in the region who have mainly voiced the importance of the jobs and income that, especially around Iliamna Lake, other organizations have failed to create. Then there are others who are more open to see Pebble vetted normally, Lisa Reimers said. As CEO of the Iliamna Development Corporation and Iliamna Natives Limited board member, Reimers has worked with Pebble in the past and earned the ire of mining opponents for doing so. She hopes for an open, robust debate about what is at stake, but not does not believe her detractors will come to the table.

“To me it was a perfect example when they were having this [Pebble advisory committee] meeting and they invited United Tribes in, or the people that were protesting, they refused to go into the meeting to have a discussion with this new advisory committee Pebble put together,” Reimers said. “To me, nothing has changed. If anything it’s gotten worse with the protesting and animosity.”

IDC and INL will take a hard look at Pebble’s plans and see if it makes sense for the area, said Reimers, adding that Iliamna leadership has not taken a firm position in support of or against the project. This past summer was a difficult one, she said, discussing how contract work with Pebble did not go smoothly, and adding that IDC shareholders and others in Iliamna were left wondering if this mining company can be trusted any more than the rest.

Reimers asked the Bristol Bay Native Corporation board to help produce non-Pebble related work and contracts, if the board is to remain insistent against the Mine. No other options were provided, she said.

The BBNC board of directors spearheaded an ugly fight against one of its own directors when she signed onto Pebble’s advisory committee this spring. Kim Williams of Dillingham was first ousted from her role as director of Nunamta Aulukestai, then BBNC’s board threatened a recall vote with the full backing of the deep-pocketed corporation to unseat her. Williams, one of the proposed mine’s loudest opponents, backed down and resigned from the Pebble advisory committee in June.

After that, her father William Johnson agreed to join, as did Alexanna Salmon from Igiugig. Neither are known to give into bullying, though Salmon said the move probably cost her a few friendships for now.

Salmon is opposed to the Mine, as she believes most of her community is too, but she wants to be informed and perhaps affect outcomes from the inside.

“This Pebble project is located on state land that has been designated for mineral development, and I have no control over that property or its status besides being a single resident voter of this state,” Salmon said. “This is a project that is in our backyard, it will be life-transforming for our community, and if there’s an opportunity to learn what they’re planning, I want to be at that table. And it’s not for me, it’s for all of the future generations.”

By late this week, stakeholders and the public should finally get a first glimpse of Pebble’s mining plans and the company’s estimated impacts on the local environment and economy. The rollout will start in Anchorage and Fairbanks, but Pebble said they will bring the conversation to the region in the months ahead.

Next week the EPA is coming back to Bristol Bay again too, to see what’s on the minds of folks who live at the crossroads of the world’s greatest sockeye salmon fishery and one of the largest copper and gold deposits on earth.

This article was corrected to state that Lisa Reimers is a board member of Iliamna Natives Limited, not Iliamna Village Council as originally written.

The state’s ombudsman’s office said staff at Spring Creek Correctional Center violated the law in 2013 when they stripped 12 inmates and locked them naked in cold cells without clothing, blankets or mattresses for up to 12 hours. The ombudsman made recommendations to rectify the situation in a report released last week. The Commissioner of the Department of Corrections said he’s determined to prevent something like this from happening again.

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In early August of 2013, 14 inmates created a disturbance at Spring Creek by smashing toilets, windows, and sinks. They were moved to a segregation unit.

Ten days later, one of the inmates broke a shower head and tried to flood the housing unit. 12 other inmates were accused of encouraging him. They were taken from their cells and chained together, stripped in front of a female staff person, then locked naked into different cells without coverings or mattresses.

Staff was not reprimanded for their actions. An inmate filed a grievance that was dismissed by the Spring Creek administrators. Those officials no longer lead the institution.

The Ombudsman’s office found the staff’s actions to be illegal, unconstitutional and against Department of Corrections policy.

“This kind of behavior is not acceptable in our prisons,” Alaska State Ombudsman Kate Burkhart said.

Burkhart acknowledged that the inmates “had previously destroyed a significant amount of property in the prison. [However,] that doesn’t justify what happened.”

Burkhart said policies and procedures to protect the safety and dignity of both inmates and staff broke down. The report recommends changing policies on strip searches and the use of restraint devices.

Department of Corrections Commissioner Dean Williams said he agrees with the findings of the report. His staff are already implementing most of the recommended changes and are revising other DOC policies, some of which are more than 20 years old.

“What happened then, by every standard that I have and that I think our department leadership have, that incident was completely unacceptable,” Williams said.

Williams and his leadership team are pushing to change the culture of the department to prevent incidences like this in the future. Part of that strategy is to improve the relationship between inmates and staff by treating both with respect and humanity.

“This whole concept isn’t just for the benefit of the inmates,” Williams said of the cultural shift. “It’s really about developing another element of security around how you interact. Because when you have relationships with people, even ones in your custody, they’re more likely to have better interactions so you don’t have this developing ‘us-versus-them’ dynamic.”

Williams also created an internal investigation unit that’s independent of the institutions to look into reports like this one and to take corrective actions. The 2013 incident was investigated by the lieutenant who ordered the illegal actions. The new unit has also investigated the 2013 incident and concurs with the ombudsman’s findings.

The ombudsman report also suggests equipping corrections officers with body cameras. Williams said he is open to the idea and to the accountability body cams provide to both inmates and staff, but he needs to consider how the evidence would be handled and how the policy could impact other departments.

The man at the center of a lawsuit over National Park Service authority to regulate rivers in Alaska parks is reacting to the most recent legal decision in the case.

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A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision Monday in the long-running case filed by Anchorage hunter John Sturgeon. Sturgeon contested a National Park Service ban on hovercraft use within Yukon Charley Rivers National Preserve, in the eastern interior. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which remanded it back to the 9th Circuit in March. The appeals court again backed Park service authority. Sturgeon points to a disconnect between the two courts.

“Supreme Court said over and over again, Alaska’s different by law. That our laws are different,” Sturgeon said. “That our parks, reserves and refuges are supposed to managed differently than the Lower 48.”

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) that established Yukon Charley Preserve, and many other federal parks in Alaska, allows NPS system wide regulations, like the hovercraft ban, to be applied inside Alaska parks, but Sturgeon maintains non-federal in-holdings, like state owned rivers, are not included.

“The federal government should not have control over state-owned navigable waters. That’s the bottom line,” Sturgeon said.

The environmental law firm Trustees for Alaska is sided with the park service in the Sturgeon case. Attorney Katie Strong said this week’s ruling clarifies a difference between river waters and other park in-holdings, like state and Alaska Native lands, which are immune from NPS regulations.

“Waterways flowing through the parks are public lands and they are to be regulated by the Park Service,” Strong said. “To protect the parks as Congress intended when establishing them.”

The Sturgeon case, and the broader fight over control of Alaska Rivers, may not be over. Sturgeon said he’s considering another appeal, noting that his case is backed by the state, numerous groups and many Alaskans.

As property and violent crime continue to increase in Anchorage, the city’s police department is internally reorganizing to better respond.

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Speaking at a press conference inside Anchorage Police Department headquarters Tuesday, Police Chief Justin Doll announced that the department’s expansion in recent years is allowing it to increase its focus on property, drug, and violent crime. APD’s new initiative has three main elements, all of which, should be fully in place later this October.

“Overall, our goal here is to more effectively deal with violent offenders, and run more efficient drug investigations, and gather and utilize relevant intelligence,” Doll told a handful of reporters.

Doll said that the internal rearrangement is meant to “streamline that chain of command, make us more efficient, and make sure that we don’t have bureaucracy getting in the way of active investigations and operations.”

The changes include bringing officers and detectives focused on drug crime in the Community Action Policing Team and Vice unit under the same command, as well as expanding intelligence sharing with other law enforcement agencies, and adding one detective a piece to the homicide and robbery/assault units. Finally, the department is creating an entirely new unit designed to support larger investigations.

“That’ll be things like helping serve search warrants, run surveillance, find witnesses, assist detectives with long-term investigations,” Doll said.

“When they’re not doing those things, they’ll provide high-intensity patrol operations in parts of town as we identify hot spots and crime trends,” Doll added of the new Investigative Support Unit, set to be comprised of eight patrol officers under the supervision of a sergeant.

Across Anchorage, residents, business owners and elected officials say crime is on the rise, though the causes and degree of increase are hotly contested. Doll agrees there is more serious crime taking place compared to recent years, and sees this new strategy as aiming to make the police department less reactive and more proactive responding to the trend.

But the chief stopped short of identifying the rise in crime, either locally or nationally, as attributable to any single cause or explanation.

“I think in Anchorage we have a combination of things,” Doll said. “The department suffered from low staffing for a while, and I think whenever you don’t have law enforcement pressure on criminal activity it tends to increase. I think that we’re seeing a rise in the use of opioids, and that tends to affect property crimes because those people need to have sort of income or something they can trade for the drugs that they need to stay not sick. So I think it’s a whole host of things.”

Doll says of the 409 officers at APD today there are still dozens in training, with another academy in December expected to further grow the force.