A team of South Korean researchers was in Nome during September to study the effects of climate change on Arctic permafrost ecosystems. The project is one of many throughout the Arctic and Antarctic sponsored by the Korean Polar Research Institute, or KOPRI.

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The small group of scientists and technicians on this Western Alaska expedition stayed in Nome for several weeks and drove daily to a site near Council. They used a special automated chamber system to measure concentrations of carbon dioxide in the permafrost and how fast it’s being released into the atmosphere. They also looked at some of the physical and chemical properties of the permafrost and its microorganisms.

Min Jung Kwon is a postdoctoral researcher with KOPRI. She spoke about the urgency of the research.

“With the atmospheric temperature rising, and sea level rise, and all the sorts of phenomena associated with climate change, we’re trying to understand it,” Kwon said. “We’re trying to see the big picture in how the phenomena of climate change is affecting the environment.”

Building that big picture includes gathering data from KOPRI’s two Antarctic research stations and its Dasan Research Station, on Norway’s Svalbard Island. KOPRI also operates an icebreaker, Aeron, which stopped in Nome on September 16 as part of its annual Arctic voyage. It visits the Arctic in the summer and the Antarctic the other half of the year, during the southern hemisphere’s summer.

KOPRI also collaborates with institutions around the world, including the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which was a partner on this Western Alaska project.

For a non-Arctic country like South Korea, Kwon said such collaboration is essential:

“We rely on the cooperations with institutes and researchers in the Arctic countries to not only give us tips on where we should set up our research stations but if we have common interests and research fields, then we will try to collaborate and see where we can help one another.” Kwon said.

Kwon’s collaborative research has taken her around the world, to sites in Russia and Canada.

“In Nome is where I find the most beautiful landscape,” Kwon said. “To see the many trees, to see the many mountains — it’s a great sight.”

And it’s an odd place, she admits, to find researchers from Korea. But Kwon stressed that Arctic climate change is a global issue.

“What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic,” Kwon said. “It’s actually affecting the entire globe. And we, as a mid-latitude country, we are also very much affected by the changes in the Arctic climate. So we have been experiencing more and more colder temperatures during the winter and more extreme weather. I don’t think we try to see it as an isolated phenomenon, but we try to see it as a connected system.”

Kwon and her colleagues are back in Korea for now, compiling and analyzing the data they’ve collected. But she said, in the future, KOPRI hopes expand its work in the Alaskan Arctic to the winter months, though they’ll probably need a few more layers for that.

Early Thursday morning in Anchorage Pebble CEO Tom Collier began the rollout of Pebble Mine’s new design. The company is focusing on a much smaller footprint in the Pebble West deposit only.

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“We set as a goal trying to get into the ballpark of what the Obama EPA would have allowed to have been built in the region, and we’ve done that,” Collier said. “So, the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment said that something 4.7 square mile footprint could be built, and we’re at 5.4 square miles as we go forward with this project.”

A footprint includes the pit, tailings facilities, and waste rock, the latter of which the company said will be used in construction of the tailings dams and not left in open piles. EPA estimated Pebble’s footprint would be at least 13.5 square miles, Collier said, more than double what the company is now planning.

Including all other facilities and construction, Pebble now said the entire project footprint has been reduced to 12.7 square miles, less than half of what it used to be, and now smaller than the proposed Donlin Gold Mine on the Kuskokwim River.

Collier said these and other changes are in direct response to the concerns and criticisms raised over the past decade.

“We’ve decided that we’re not going to do secondary gold recovery in this project, so there’ll be no cyanide in the region,” Collier said. “Tailings facilities will be much smaller. We’ll separate out those that might generate acid if they’re not treated in a special way, and make that facility lined and even more buttressed so it’ll be safe. By making the mine smaller, we’ll only be in two drainages, the North and South Fork Koktuli, and not in the Upper Talarik drainage which was part of the original plan.”

The current design of a Pebble Mine, during normal operations, will disturb or damage a “negligible, as in, not measurable” amount of sockeye salmon spawning habitat, said Collier. To measure what could happen to sockeye in the event of a catastrophic failure of a tailings facility, similar to the 2014 Mount Polley disaster in British Columbia, the company is using the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment developed under President Obama’s EPA. That study suggested that with no remediation or clean-up, some 10 miles of the Koktuli’s salmon habitat would be damaged for 10 years.

“When we look at what that looks like in terms of sockeye production, it would literally be two one hundredths of one percent of the sockeye production in the region. That’s a risk that we don’t want to run, and we believe we’ve protected against that risk, but that’s the worst case. And those that think we would or could destroy all the salmon in Bristol Bay just don’t have the facts before them,” Collier said.

To move the ore to Cook Inlet, Pebble’s new plan uses an ice-breaking ferry to cross Iliamna Lake to a shorter new road east of Kokhanok. Not building a northern or southern route road around the lake will significantly cut down Pebble’s overall impact on wetlands, Collier said. Those routes are still being explored as alternatives for an Environmental Impact Statement.

Pebble is looking to form a revenue sharing corporation to pay out dividends to local residents and village corporations during the project, since the deposit is not on Bristol Bay Native Corporation lands. The individual checks may be $500, and the corporations may see $500,000 annually. Collier wants to find new ways to help local fishermen, and produce enough power to offer low cost electricity for the region. That power could come from a new natural gas plant across Cook Inlet or be generated closer to the site.

The project has been scaled back from an estimated annual operating budget of $1 billion to $400 million. Pebble believes annual royalties to the Lake and Peninsula Borough will still be around $20 million, that local residents will have access to some 1,000 news jobs, and village corporations will have access to ample new contracts.

Pebble does not have a new partner yet, Collier said, but he is still planning to file a permit application before the end of the year.

This week we’re hearing from Andrew Jasper from Bethel. Jasper is originally from Aniak and works as a behavioral health aide for the Yukon-Kuskowkwim Health Consortium.

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JASPER: I think my background is mainly social work… helping people. I like helping people. When there’s accident happened in the village, when I’m called to go out I go out and do that.

I want to help my people because a lot of them are using substance abuse — maybe drugs and alcohol — and I wanna help those people get better. Growing up here, I learned a lot from my elders and that’s what I’m doing now. It’s passing down the knowledge I learned from my elders.

My passion is playing music. I play a variety of instruments. I play guitar. I play mandolin. I play keyboards. I play violin. Little bit of harmonica, little bit of bass. When my brother came home from high school, he bought a guitar and that’s when I learned how to play the guitar.

Country music… mixed country music and maybe country rock. And I have a band of my own, Jasper Band from Akiak. We do fiddle dances in villages. When we’re called to go to villages, that’s what we do.

I’d rather have our own… not too many people. ‘Cause when I went out of state, there were too many, too many… too many people out there. I’d rather have not too many people from outside. But they can come and visit if they want to, but not to stay here (laughs).

I never considered to move out of state, but I’m thinking of moving out of Bethel to Anchorage maybe (laughs).

KYUK intern Jared James gathered this interview in Bethel. 

Last month, the community of Wales, in Western Alaska, hosted one of the biggest Alaska Native dance festivals in the state. 10 groups from around the region and as far as Anchorage flew in to the village over Labor Day weekend, to sing, dance, drum, talk — and heal.

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It’s 2 a.m. at the western tip of the Seward Peninsula. The Northern Lights dance outside in the starry autumn sky above the community of Wales, and inside the school gymnasium, the Shishmaref Kigiqtaq Dancers show no signs of letting up, either.

The Wales Kingikmiut Dance Festival is now in its 18th year. It was started in the 1990s, when the Native dance tradition in Wales was revived after decades of absence. This has since grown to be one of the largest Alaska Native dance festivals in the state. It’s a high-energy, late-night celebration of family, community and cultural heritage.

Anna Oxereok is president of the Native Village of Wales, which organizes the festival. Throughout the weekend, she’s running around town and the school, making sure everything goes smoothly. When she has a few moments to talk, she explains the festival is about more than dance:

“To me, it’s a healing process. If you look, they’re visiting,” Oxereok said. “They don’t get to see each other but once a year. A lot of relatives that never see each other are getting to see each other, or meeting our relatives that we didn’t know.”

Across the room, a group of women are singing songs in Inupiaq. Oxereok commented on the significance of this sort of rite of collective memory.

“Our language is so much deeper than the English,” Oxereok said. “We can’t seem to get it across with enough passion in English compared to Inupiaq.”

One of the singing women is Sophie Nothstine, a member of the Anchorage Kingikmiut Singers and Dancers. Nothstine said it was difficult to see her culture suppressed by white missionaries in the 20th century. Dancing, she says, helps overcome some of those negative feelings. She asks not to be recorded, but said, “Coming here makes us feel whole.”

Edward Tiulana, with the King Island Dancers, said he can feel that when he’s performing.

“We have to work together as a partnership,” Tiulana said. “You can’t try to sing over someone. And when you hit that note where everything is in harmony, it’s like … it’s hard to explain.”

But Tiulana tried to put his feelings into words.

“And then, keeping the drumbeat, the heartbeat: I look into my skin on the drum, especially when we really get going, because that vibration — you can see it, and it’s alive, it’s a real thing,” Tiulana said. “When you’re able to reach that level, it’s mystical. It’s like the songs are alive and they take over your body.”

Many of the songs he sings originated in a place that’s been uninhabited for about half a century. King Island lies due south of Wales and northwest of Nome. Tiulana describes it to me:

“It’s like a fortress sticking out the water,’ Tiulana said. “There’s no beach. It’s all huge boulders, and it’s like a mile long and a mile and a half wide.”

Tiulana said in the 1930s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs commissioned a school there but the Lower 48 teachers weren’t cut out for the weather, and the school closed in the 1960s. At that point, families started to move off the island, settling in places around the state.

Tiulana used to live on the island. His grandfather, who started the dance group, began teaching him how to drum when he was five. Today, he lives in Anchorage and works as a dance instructor at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. Tiulana said it takes dedication and passion to preserve the tradition.

“I sit there and I listen to recordings all day long, hundreds and hundreds of times — get the song right, to sing it right, just how I’m hearing it,” Tiulana said. “Because some of these old recordings from the 20’s, to listen to those guys: they’re on-point, every single time. No mistakes, their voices are all matching. They’re on that other level. We haven’t even gotten halfway in my generation, so we’re still working to reach that.”

The King Island Dancers is one of the largest groups at the festival, with nearly 15 drummers who fill the gymnasium with thunderous sound. Dancers don traditional head- and arm-pieces and animal masks. One drummer, an older man, closes his eyes, submerged in the song. The group even brings out oars and performs a rowing dance.

Beneath the dances, there’s an undercurrent of mourning — for lost homeland like King Island, and lost community members. The festival is dedicated to three elders and three youth who died in the past year: one elder originally from King Island, the other five all from Wales.

Samuel Johns is visiting the festival to give a keynote talk on his project, Forget Me Not. It started as a Facebook group that helps homeless Alaskans in Anchorage, who are mostly Alaska Native, connect with family around the state.

“I could feel the grief — just from that King Island over there,” Johns said. “I looked at it, and I was like, man, something about that island over there. And then I asked the lady, ‘Where’s King Island at?’ and she pointed right at that island. And then the first thing she says to me is, ‘I’m from Little Diomede. You want to know the history of Wales?’ And she starts talking to me about historical trauma. I’m like, ‘You’re reading my mind right now.’”

Johns said his work is very much motivated by that trauma.

“For the last 10,000 years, my people have had a sustainable way of life, and we were fine, we survived,” Johns said. “And then, out of nowhere, contact happens. I mean no disrespect to anyone’s religion, but as soon as the religion came in and we were forced to lose our identity, that’s when things started happening to my people — alcoholism, diabetes, drug addiction, the list goes on and on. Those things didn’t even exist. We never even had words for any of those things. That means something. So now, now is the time for me to do what I can do to help bring culture back into our lives.”

Johns said doming here gives him hope for the future.

“It’s beautiful seeing that they still have this festival going on,” Johns said. “It’s beautiful seeing that people are still walking around here with kuspuks on, and they’re drumming and singing inside right now in the school, probably the same school where, once upon a time, they told them they weren’t allowed to drum and sing.”

Throughout the festival, the younger generation seems energized by the tradition. A young boy from King Island, no older than 4 or 5, dons armpieces and dances with the men. The Wales Kingikmiut Dancers are a young group: maybe half of them are under 25. And in all the groups, children, adults and elders dance together.

Among the many who tell me how crucial the mix of ages is, is Annauk Pollock, also known as Denise. It’s her first time at the festival, where she’s dancing with the Anchorage Kingikmiut. She’s originally from Shishmaref, and many of her family there dance and sing. But she grew up between Utqiagvik, Fairbanks and Massachusetts. After time in Washington, D.C., Pollock moved back to Alaska to work with her native town on facing the effects of climate change.

“After everything I’ve experienced, and all the places I’ve lived or traveled, this is where I feel the most connected,” Pollock said. “What’s most meaningful to me is being connected to my Inupiaq community, speaking the Inupiaq language, and working to protect our lands and our life ways.”

Pollock said that includes preserving the dance tradition, which, for her, has become a source of inspiration.

“I always feel refreshed after going to dance class, and it’s such a great way to begin the week. It feels like I get a lot of energy to go forward with the work I do,” Pollock said. “So in order to keep this going, I think we need to have a lot of young people who are actively working to get resources to continue.”

One such active young person present at the festival is David Miller. He grew up in Teller and has performed with the Teller and Anchorage groups in the past. Now, he lives in Nome, and this year, he was invited to come to Wales with the King Island Dancers. I asked him why he dances.

“I want elders to be proud of me. I want our religion to keep going,” Miller said. “It’s fun, it’s like a sport. You have a dance and you really like it, and before you go up, you’re saying that you’re happy that the song is on right now, because it’s fun. Every dance you perform, it feels like you learn something every time, passed on. You need to know about your ancestors.”

That sense of duty to both past and future, the weight of history, the grief of losing loved ones. Those could overshadow the simple joys of singing, drumming and dancing. But they don’t.

As the golden full moon sets, just off the Cape Prince of Wales, and plunges into the sea, the dance goes on.

There’s been a lot of bad news in recent weeks. Devastating hurricanes, tension with North Korea and a horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas. We face risks each day. How should we manage the stress that accompanies them without becoming overwhelmed and how should we talk to children about it all?

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HOST: Lori Townsend

GUESTS:

• Kevin Berry – ISER Researcher
• 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).
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LIVE Broadcast: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

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Pebble’s critics are not showing an interest in the company’s new concept to mine the copper and gold deposit northwest of Iliamna. The United Tribes of Bristol Bay has called the plan a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” another attempt at bribery, and the “latest in a long list of lies.” Another longtime opponent sees this week’s news as more an investment ploy than serious attempt to put a mine into permitting.

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Rick Halford is a Republican former state senate president, and these days spends a lot of his time working to protect the PFD. But he has also been one of Pebble’s staunchest opponents, and has worked closely with Trout Limited, United Tribes of Bristol Bay and others to block this and any mine from being developed in the Bristol Bay watershed. He spent some time looking at the new concept Pebble put out Thursday.

“My first question is, how are they going to, before the end of this year, actually apply for a permit?” Halford said. “That’s the core promise that was announced. There’s a lot of slides, and a lot of promises, but that’s not a plan.”

Halford said this is certainly more interesting than some “back of the pizza box plans” from the past, but he’s still skeptical the company is even serious about taking the project through. He thinks this conceptual rollout is aimed investors, not regulators.

“I mean that’s their real experience is more mining in the stock market than mining in the ground,” Halford said. “The big mining interests have walked away from the project at the expense of hundreds of millions of dollars. So they’re looking for another large mining interest, and anything they can do to make the project look viable is to their advantage.”

Halford is also suspicious that the public is seeing the same presentation that investors are looking at, especially after Northern Dynasty Minerals CEO Ron Thiessen was quoted in Denver recently talking about a project that will last for many generations, not just the 20-year project Pebble said it will take into permitting.

“It’s very difficult to see how you could ever enforce a small mine limitation,” Thiessen said. “You have a combination of multi-national interests that it would take to develop it, and it’s not going to be ‘we’re going to do this partly.’ Once you start, you have opened and empowered a mining district with infrastructure, and it’s going to go as far as they can find resources.”

Pebble agrees that an increase in the size or scope of mining at the deposit is certainly possible after the first mine, but says that all new efforts will require separate and extensive permitting. There’s no illusion by anybody that there is a lot of copper and gold northwest of Iliamna, and several companies – Pebble included – are interested in going after those minerals eventually.

Halford said some of Pebble’s new concepts did move in the right direction, but he’s also very skeptical about some of the company’s claims.

“One of those being that you can somehow separate the impact on the Nushagak drainage and the Kvichak drainage, when in fact the project sits in a saddle that straddles both of them, and it’s pretty hard to separate when you have subsurface exchange between drainages,” Halford said.

The ball is in Pebble’s court to put an actual plan together and file a permit application, said Halford, something he doesn’t think may ever happen, let alone by December.

Of the opposition and its plans, Halford said they are growing and their mission is clear. He was heartened to see Governor Bill Walker come out as “unconvinced” and “not supportive” of Pebble on Wednesday.

Three people were arrested in a drug bust in Ketchikan Tuesday night. During the bust, Ketchikan police seized a pound of meth, 2.75 ounces of heroin, a handgun and a semiautomatic assault rifle loaded with armor-piercing bullets.

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Charged in the bust were 31-year-old Arthur Castillo, 52-year-old Loretta Garcia and 31-year-old Alfonso Sandoval.

Also during the raid, police seized about $16,500 cash, paraphernalia they say is related to drug sales and some pot. The bust was the result of a months-long investigation.

During a news conference at the police station hours just after the raid, the drugs, cash and weapons were laid out on display in the briefing room. Sgt. Mike Purcell estimated the street value of the drugs, starting with the methamphetamine.

“Two-tenths of a gram will sell for about $100. This is a little over a pound, so you’re looking at well over $200,000 worth of methamphetamine alone,” Purcell said. “The heroin, if you break it down to street level, one-tenth of a gram typically goes for $100, so total value of that was, I think over $70,000.”

Sgt. Andy Berntson said the three suspects were contacted downtown, on Main Street. He said police knew ahead of time about the firearms and made sure to make the arrest away from where those weapons were kept.

Berntson said the cash and firearms were found at Garcia’s home on North Tongass Highway.

“The AR-15, the assault rifle, which was loaded, was propped up inside, leaning against the side of her closet,” Berntson said. “Right up above it was a large stack of over $5,000 of the cash, literally sitting on top of that 44-magnum revolver you can see right there. In the middle, behind the divider of the closet was a locked safe that contained the bulk of the rest of the cash.”

Berntson said the drugs and more cash were seized from Castillo’s apartment. He said this is the largest drug bust at a residence in Ketchikan that he can remember, and is the first time that they seized an assault rifle with armor-piercing bullets. The guns are not illegal to own, but if guns are used in connection with a crime, they can be forfeited.

So far, the defendants have not been charged with weapons misconduct. Berntson said more charges are possible as the investigation continues. He says the defendants were charged initially with crimes police felt confident they had immediate evidence to support.

Bernston said about 10 officers, including Alaska State Troopers, participated in the drug bust.

“It was kind of a rolling event that started early in the evening and went until about 1:30 in the morning before we all left,” Bernston said.

Garcia, Castillo and Sandoval were each charged with two counts of second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance. Castillo faces an additional charge of third-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance.

All three defendants had their first court appearance Wednesday afternoon.

Sitkans paid their final respects last week to Herb Didrickson.

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The 91-year-old Tlingit elder died in Sitka on September 25. In many ways Didrickson was everything you’d expect of a man of his generation: A 1946 graduate of Sheldon Jackson High School, who married his sweetheart Pollyanna. He subsequently earned an Associate of Arts Degree from the college of the same name. He spent 30 years working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as an Industrial Arts instructor at Mt. Edgecumbe, coaching sports and refereeing basketball.

But Didrickson was also something most can never claim to be: The greatest athlete ever produced in Alaska.

The stories have always sounded like myths. As an older man, Herb Didrickson would be in the stands cheering on the Mt. Edgecumbe Braves.

Invariably someone would point to him and tell point out that Didrickson had been a huge star in his day, and that at 5’10” he could dunk a basketball from a standing jump, and maybe bump his elbows on the rim.

Yet people who saw and played against Didrickson in his prime don’t dispute any of the stories.

Gil Truitt was just a couple of years behind Didrickson in school.

“He had the ability in all sports — things coaches tried to teach, to Herb came naturally,” Truitt said. “He didn’t have to work hard, but I never knew anyone who worked harder in any sport than Herb. He was continually trying to improve himself as an athlete.”

Didrickson honed his skills as a student athlete against the big military teams stationed in Sitka during World War II. He averaged around 30 points a game in his student days. Later, playing Gold Medal Basketball for Sitka’s ANB team, Didrickson’s average dropped, as he developed his mastery of the assist, and a style of basketball that would later become associated with NBA greats like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.

“There’s not a team in America — not a team in America — he wouldn’t have started for as a point guard,” John Abell said.

Abell is also something of a basketball legend. Growing up in Sitka he watched Didrickson play Gold Medal. Abell graduated from Sitka High in 1954, and went on to play for Oregon State University, and eventually coach for the 1964 Olympics.

“I’ve seen worldwide athletes, worldwide basketball players. And it can be etched in stone that I never saw a basketball team at any level that Herb Didrickson couldn’t have played for,” Abell said. “As a point guard, Herb Didrickson was 40 years ahead of his time.”

In 2012, Abell and Truitt nominated Didrickson for the the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame. Didrickson was already in the Gold Medal Hall, as well as the Alaska High School Hall, but he was never really tested outside of the state. It was important to frame Didrickson’s nomination against other inductees like Carlos Boozer and Libby Riddles.

“I look around and I see players now at the college level, and there isn’t any doubt in my mind that he would have been able to play with them in today’s game. That’s a big statement, I understand that,” Abell said. “I’ve watched him, and year after year I would see things develop, and I’m thinking, “My gosh, I saw Herb do that back in the 50s!”

Gil Truitt said that Didrickson and his teammate Moses Johnson perfected what they were calling the “lob pass,” but is nowadays referred to as the “alley-oop.” Basically, a player sprints for the basket and jumps, just as his teammate has lobbed up the ball. Done right, it results in a dunk, or an elegant tip-in.

Although Didrickson was only 5’10”, Truitt said he could do either.

“Standing under the basket he was able to jump and dunk the ball from a standing position,” Truitt said. “And he did mention that he bumped his elbow on the rim a few times.”

But despite the sheer physical prowess, Truitt argued that Didrickson brought many gifts to the game: He was an extraordinarily quick ball handler, often the fastest person on the court. He had long arms and defensive instincts that made him impossible to challenge. Truitt remembers opposing coaches instructing their players to turn and pass the ball anytime Didrickson came near. And there’s this: Win or lose, he’d visit the other team after the game in their locker room to congratulate them.

Unlike many athletes of the era, Didrickson’s career was not interrupted by war.

“Personally, I thought Herb had a great life and family. And he enjoyed where he was living,” Abell said. “And remember they didn’t have — especially professionally, hell, I knew (Jim) Barnett, he got $4,200 for going to the Warriors — they didn’t have the big bucks they have now. If they had seen Herb in today’s market and said, ‘Herb, you know, x-number of millions…’ it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Herb said, ‘Thank you. That’s very generous. But I’m happy where I live. I’m happy with my friends here, and I don’t want to give that up for money.'”

While college is a stepping stone to pro basketball, it’s not for other sports. The Alaska Sports Hall of Fame said the Seattle Rainiers minor-league baseball team also made an unsuccessful attempt to recruit Didrickson to be a centerfielder.

Just one more reason, according to the Hall of Fame, that it considers Didrickson to be “the Jim Thorpe of Alaska.”

This summer, a popular water source in Haines tested positive for E. coli. The Mud Bay spring is not regulated by the borough and is not regularly tested. But it’s where a lot of people get their drinking water. And some residents are not planning to stop.

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The so-called spring is on Mud Bay Road, just before Letnikof Cove. Two pipes stick out of the hillside, with rocks built up around them. It looks pretty official, but it’s not. I drove out to the spring on a summer afternoon to take a sample of the water. I got there just as a bunch of tourists were finishing up. The visitors were sipping the water out of paper cups.

I tested for arsenic, nitrates, nitrites and total coliforms.

RaeAnn Galasso is filling up several buckets of water and loading them into the back of her car. She said she’s been drinking this water for a long time.

“Sometimes for cleaning,” Galasso said. “I have a dry cabin, so it’s all this water. I’ve been using it for over 20 years. My plants do really well. I like it. It tastes great.”

But, Galasso said it is concerning that it’s not tested. That concerned me too. I sent samples to the Juneau-based water testing company Admiralty Environmental.

The lab results show no significant levels of arsenic, nitrates or nitrites. But they did find E. coli. The test doesn’t show what strain of the bacteria is present. Cindy Christian is a drinking water specialist at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. She said E. coli is not always bad for you. There are strains that are harmful but some that are benign.

“But they’re all associated with fecal matter that comes from mammals,” Christian said. “And some other organisms. Birds and things can carry E. coli also. In drinking water, they are not supposed to be there at all.”

Christian said E. coli is an indicator bacteria. It could mean other nasty stuff is in the water, too. Like salmonella or giardia.

With waterborne diseases like these, Christian said the symptoms are usually gastrointestinal. You might have diarrhea, abdominal cramping or lose your appetite. Some strains can cause more severe health problems.

Let’s back up a bit to how we came to test the water. We asked listeners to send up things they’ve always wondered about this area. One person sent a question asking: ‘Is the Mud Bay Spring really a spring? Or should it be called the Mud Bay runoff?’ I grabbed a friend and hiked in to the woods, trying to trace the pipes and creeks to the source.

But we couldn’t find it. So, I dug back further into the water’s history.

Haines resident Randy McDonald said he’s the one that put in the pipes, and built up the rock around them. He said he installed the pipes in the mid-1980s. McDonald said people were already getting water at the spot, but he made improvements to increase the water flow.

Someone did take measures to keep animals away from the water. But, the fencing has fallen over since then.

Christian, with the DEC, said Haines isn’t alone. She’s come across similar unregulated drinking water sources around the state. She said in terms of monitoring water quality, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a spring or runoff.

“Springs are usually treated as surface water also, so even if it were a natural spring, it would still – may not be suitable for drinking water unless it’s treated,” Christian said.

Christian said the safest bet for people who want to keep drinking the water is to boil it.

But many residents who have depended on the water source for years aren’t scared away by the E. coli. Krystal Norberg lives out Mud Bay and is even more reliant on the water because she has a dry cabin.

“I’ve drank it for 10 years,” Norberg said. “I’ve never gotten sick. Nor have I ever known anyone to have gotten sick.”

After we reported on the presence of E. coli in the water, the Haines Borough started looking in to testing it. At a recent meeting, the assembly voted unanimously to conduct a test.

But, Christian said no matter how many tests you do, one thing isn’t likely to change. She said because the so-called spring is untreated surface water exposed to elements and wildlife, it’s always likely to have bacteria like E. coli.

Indian Point, a former Tlingit village site on Auke Bay, may be ceded to a nonprofit dedicated to Aak’w Kwáan heritage.

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The land was controversially acquired by the federal government before ending up in municipal hands in the 1960s.

At the southern-most point of Auke Cape, a rocky outcropping offers sweeping views of Indian Cove and Indian Island. Auke Cape is commonly known as Indian Point. These names give away this area’s history.

“This is a south-facing, waterfront lot with beautiful views of Auke Bay,” Greg Chaney, lands manager for the City and Borough of Juneau, said. “Which is the exactly the reason that the Native people selected it for their village site so many centuries ago.”

The cape’s southern tip has been city-owned since the 1960s. It picked up a third tract in a three-way swap in the 1990s and now holds most of the cape and is looking to return it to the descendants of its original inhabitants.

“It’s very much like finding a wallet that somebody has – you pick it up on the street and you think, ‘Oh, this belongs to somebody,’” Chaney said. “And so then, you know, I think most people would agree the proper thing to do is to return it to the rightful owners.”

Randy Wanamaker, a former Juneau Assemblyman wrote to the Assembly last month recommending that the city give Indian Point to the Goldbelt Heritage Foundation. The 73-year-old recalls spending time there as a boy with his grandfather who was born on Auke Bay.

“We used to put branches in the water for the herring eggs and dip nets in the water and get the herring out,” Wanamaker said by telephone from Seattle where he now lives. “That was a practice that was going on for thousands of years, but it got wiped out by the commercial fisheries.”

Goldbelt Heritage shouldn’t be confused with its sister organization Goldbelt Inc., a for-profit Native corporation. The nonprofit’s mission is cultural stewardship.

“They do a lot of things that honor and respect the culture and history of the original inhabitants,” Wanamaker said.

The story of how Indian Point became government land is typical of what happened to many Native villages across Alaska.

By the 1920s, much of the Native population around Auke Bay had moved to Juneau and Douglas to work in the mines, though they would periodically return to Auke Bay to hunt, fish and gather food.

“They were practicing a lifestyle that was in balance with nature. But the Forest Service in Southeast Alaska always said it was not used and it had been abandoned and that would be their justification when they acquired it for the federal government,” Wanamaker said. “The federal government did not consult with the Alaska Native people when they dispossessed them of their land. They just took it away.

As recently as 2002 in the Forest Service’s official history in Alaska asserts that Auke Bay villages were abandoned.

Anthropologist Tom Thornton, investigated the cultural value of Indian Point on behalf of the federal government in the 1990s, said it wasn’t so simple.

“There was sort of a larger campaign to move Native people off of the Tongass forest land, and burning cabins and things like that. And the Forest Service always denied that until they stopped denying it and then apologized for it,” Thornton said in an interview from the University of Oxford where he’s a professor.

Thornton’s research helped get Indian Point listed last year on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Forest Service first acknowledged in 2008 that it had wrongly removed fish camps and smokehouses, vital for the subsistence lifestyle, in the early 20th century.

Tongass National Forest spokesman Paul Robbins Jr. said in a statement that the Forest Service acknowledges that the destruction wasn’t limited to fish camps.

“As we continue our dialog with the Aak’w Kwáan and various other tribes in this region, the Forest Service is going to remain open to all new information as historians continue to delve into the storied past of Southeast Alaska.”

The 52 acres on Indian Point is perhaps the most valuable — in real estate terms — that the city owns.

“That’s why we have to be very careful about transferring it to an organization that’s going to look out for the cultural interests of the Aak’w Kwáan and not just look at it as a multi-million dollar asset,” Chaney said. “In our current generation, we have the opportunity to right a wrong that was done generations ago. This was the old village site, this was a sacred site, and we could return it to the Aak’w people in our time.”

Indian Point was almost cut up in the 1960s for a housing subdivision. Opposition by the Alaska Native Brotherhood and others put a stop to that.

A half-century later, the possible fate of Indian Point again lies with the Juneau Assembly.

The lands committee is slated to consider the transfer later at its Oct. 23 meeting.

Gov. Bill Walker announced Friday that he appointed Leslie Ridle to be commissioner of the Department of Administration. Ridle said her focus will be on the bottom line.

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“Our priorities are to create as many efficiencies as we can for the state,” Ridle said. “We’ve been working really hard to provide service to the public and to our internal agencies, to save money and to reduce costs and do as much as we can to help with the state budget.”

The Department of Administration serves other state agencies, including overseeing labor relations. It also provides indigent defense and children’s legal advocacy.

Ridle has served as the acting commissioner for the past month, after serving as the deputy commissioner for more than two years.

The department will negotiate contracts with seven labor bargaining units in the coming year. Ridle didn’t say whether the administration will pursue pay freezes supported by some lawmakers.

“We’re just getting started on most of them this fall, so of course pay will be a topic of the negotiations,” Ridle said. “I don’t know for sure what all will come up at this point. I can’t negotiate here on the radio with you, but everything’s on the table in the beginning, of course.”

Ridle is a Juneau resident. She has worked for Mark Begich when he was a U.S. senator and Anchorage mayor. She was also an eighth-grade social studies and English teacher in Eagle River.

The second floor of the Atwood Center at Alaska Pacific University was packed shoulder to shoulder with dozens of Alaskans who gathered to celebrate the first official Indigenous Peoples Day in Alaska.

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The celebration at APU featured an opening blessing, buffet lunch and music and dance performances. “BYOD,” or “bring your own drum,” was a commonly quoted term at the event.

In June of this year, Gov. Bill Walker signed legislation recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day in Alaska, replacing Columbus Day. Alaska is the second state in the nation to make the official change.

Elizabeth Rexford was a First Alaskans Institute Fellow who worked with Representative Dean Westlake of Kotzebue. Westlake was one of the representatives who sponsored the legislation that created Indigenous Peoples Day within the state. Rexford mirrored the excitement of the day’s gathering.

“You know, it warms my heart to see everyone coming together and to be proud of our histories, our cultures, the diversity here in the state,” Rexford said. “And today, a lot of people are wearing their atikluks, their kuspuks, their regalias, their native bling earrings and berets and things like that. And I think that every year it’s only going to grow from here on out,” Rexford said.

Indigenous Peoples Day will be celebrated each year in Alaska on the second Monday of October.

A 42-year-old Ketchikan man was arrested and charged Friday with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence for allegedly killing 55-year-old Richard Branda on Thursday evening.

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Joshua Kenneth Bliss had his first court appearance over the weekend. Bail was set at $250,000, and a public defense attorney was appointed to represent him.

Some details into the alleged crime were available in a complaint filed in court by Ketchikan Police Sgt. Mike Purcell. He writes that police received a call at about 11:30 Friday morning reporting a man apparently asleep off to the side of Water Street.

Purcell writes that police found Richard Branda dead with a large stab wound on the right side of his neck. The complaint states that the wound was about two inches long, and there was a large pool of blood under Branda’s body.

The complaint states that Bliss called the police station later on Friday to report his involvement. Police say Bliss told officers he had stabbed Branda in the neck on Thursday evening during an argument. Bliss also allegedly told police that he threw the knife he had used into the ocean the next day.

Bliss’ next scheduled court appearance is 9 a.m. Friday in Ketchikan District Court.

A Petersburg resident has been recognized by the King of Norway for her dedication to promoting relations between Norway and the U.S. The Ambassador of Norway to the United States was in Petersburg last week to hand out the Medal of St. Olav.

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A handful of Petersburg residents are gathered at Glo Wollen’s beach front home to have a cookout. Wollen is the current President of the local Sons of Norway lodge and she’s also the town’s Harbor Master.

At this point, she had no idea she’s getting an award. As far as Wollen’s concerned, she’s just hosting important visitors. The last time the Norwegian Ambassador visited Petersburg for the Little Norway Festival in 2016 Wollen also hosted a BBQ at her place.

“We’re hosting the Ambassador of Norway to the United States of America here and his assistant and our Norwegian consul that is located up in Anchorage,” Wollen said. “So, we’re having a little Alaskan party. And we also have the Lt. Governor of Alaska as well.”

Southeast Alaska’s Senator Bert Stedman was also there.

People were socializing in the back yard while local black cod, salmon and shrimp are grilled over a fire.

Soon, people are called around the deck because Ambassador Kåre Aas wants to publicly thank Wollen for the hospitality. He says he is also here for another reason.

“His majesty King Harald V has told me to come here,” Aas said. “When his majesty wants to honor a person or persons he gives them the Medal of St. Olav.”

The medal is round and silver and hangs from a red, blue and white ribbon. Wollen also receives a diploma.

Aas said the medal is given to Norwegians or foreigners who have been working hard to strengthen the relationship between Norway and another country — in this case, the U.S. He said he nominated Wollen for the medal.

“Since you were born–your mother is here–you grew up in a fishing family, and your father he told you a lot about values, Norwegian’s values,” Aas said. “Your mother, she told you about how to interact with other persons, how to sew and how to cook.”

After the award is given, Wollen received hugs from friends and poses for photos.

Aas said the king’s medals are seldom given out, maybe one a year to Americans.

“It’s really a recognition of what Glo has been doing in working and promoting and maintaining Norwegian values in Alaska,” Aas said. “But also really emphasizing what many Norwegian Americans think about their relationship to Norway historically, politically but also culturally. And his majesty, he really honors those who are really advocating [for] our two countries.”

Aas said that based on this recognition he believes that when Wollen visits Norway – which she hopes to do – she will be able to meet the King of Norway himself.

Wollen herself didn’t give any speech after receiving the award but besides wearing a new medal on her chest, she also had a beaming smile on her face.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks is also holding events to honor Indigenous Peoples Day, today — from 4 to 9 p.m. — highlighting Alaska Native cultures. UAF vice chancellor of rural, community and Native education Evon Peter said it arose out of support from across the university community.

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”We had a ground swell of student government organizations, formal resolutions from UAS and UAF student bodies and then later the staff alliance and the faculty alliance submitting letters to President Johnsen encouraging a recognition within the UA system,” Peter said. “President Johnsen did sign a memo saying we’re going to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day in alignment with what came out of the state government.”

Peter said the evening program features Native dancing and singing, comments from community leaders, and UAF professors speaking in three Alaska Native languages: “Gwich’in, Yupik and Inupiaq.”

Peter said the university is a natural venue for the Indigenous People’s Day celebration because it brings together peoples from across the state.

”We serve a really broad swath of the state, and we have something like 13 indigenous languages that are a part of that geographic spread,” Peter said. “And so not only is UAF an institution here in Fairbanks — or “Tanan” as we call it it Gwich’in — but we also have these different campuses spread throughout the state.”

Peter said UAF has been investing in Alaska Native arts and education over the last several decades, and today offers everything from a certificate in tribal management to a Ph.D in Indigenous Studies.

A controversial ballot initiative intended to protect salmon habitat has cleared a major hurdle, setting up what could be an intense political fight.

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A judge in Anchorage on Monday ruled that Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott was wrong to deny the initiative, organized by the nonprofit Stand for Salmon.

Mallott rejected the ballot measure in September, arguing it would tie the state’s hands and prioritize salmon habitat over other potential uses of state land, like mining or oil development. The state said if it’s enacted, the measure could complicate efforts to build projects like roads, pipelines and the proposed Pebble Mine. The initiative is also opposed by a wide range of industry groups.

At a hearing last week, Valerie Brown with Trustees for Alaska, who represented Stand for Salmon, argued the ballot initiative isn’t aimed at prohibiting development, though it would add to the permitting process.

Superior Court Judge Mark Rindner agreed. In his ruling, he called it “pure speculation” to predict the impact of the initiative.

“The court has no competent evidence regarding the impact of the initiative,” Rindner wrote. “Nor does such evidence exist.”

Rindner said the initiative leaves enough room for the legislature to decide how resources are used.

“Because the impact of the initiative can only be determined after legislative action occurs, the court finds, as a matter of law, that the initiative is not an allocation and is thus constitutionally permissible,” Rindner wrote.

Mike Wood, one of the ballot measure’s organizers, applauded the decision.

“I think the ruling that the judge had was awesome,” Wood said. “Set politics aside and read it for what it is. And I think he did that.”

Wood, a commercial fisherman, was involved in opposition to the Susitna Dam. Two of the initiative’s other organizers, Gayla Hoseth and Brian Kraft, have been involved in fighting the proposed Pebble Mine.

Marleanna Hall is executive director of the Resource Development Council, one of the groups opposed to the ballot initiative. Hall said she’s disappointed, and her group is asking the state to appeal.

“Unfortunately, this initiative, as it is, poses a grave threat to community and resource development,” Hall said. “It puts economic activities highly at risk.”

Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Bakalar said the state is evaluating whether to appeal the decision to the Alaska Supreme Court.

“Clearly we disagree with the court’s legal conclusion that the measure is a constitutional use of the initiative,” Bakalar wrote in an email. “Whether to appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court includes an evaluation process that will take several weeks to complete, and that process is underway. In the meantime, we are complying with the superior court’s order and working on printing petition booklets for circulation as quickly as possible.”

Stand for Salmon can now begin collecting signatures. It aims to get the initiative on the ballot in 2018.

Barring a Supreme Court decision blocking the initiative, Brown of Trustees for Alaska said, “the next decision is whether this is a good idea or not. That’s the decision of the voters, not of the Lieutenant Governor.”

The initiative isn’t the only effort to make state laws protecting salmon habitat more stringent. It’s similar to a bill introduced in the state House by Kodiak Republican Louise Stutes, and co-sponsored by Anchorage Democrats Andy Josephson and Les Gara.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said the bill was introduced by Reps. Stutes, Josephson and Gara. In fact, the legislation was introduced by Rep. Stutes and later co-sponsored by Reps. Josephson and Gara.

Amid growing frustration over an uptick in crime, officials in Anchorage are weighing what kind of solutions they want from lawmakers in Juneau. The Anchorage Assembly took the rare step of holding a meeting Saturday to hear public testimony on what residents would like to see done about Senate Bill 91, the omnibus criminal justice reform measure signed into law in July of 2016. Almost immediately after the bill passed, a debate began over whether its provisions were worsening the city’s levels of property and violent crime. That argument is now boiling over in community councils, Assembly meetings, and listening sessions arranged by state legislators.

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One resident with a negative view of the bill’s reforms is Cindy Moore, whose daughter was killed by her boyfriend in 2014. Since then, Moore and her husband have been persistent advocates for changes to the criminal justice system in Alaska.

“Our system was broken before SB91. Now that SB91 has passed, it’s worse,” Moore said during emotional testimony at Saturday’s meeting.

The Assembly’s public safety committee is currently assessing two resolutions to send to state legislators. The measures are non-binding, but could influence how Anchorage’s large delegation pursues reforms in the coming special session and beyond. One proposal from the committee’s chairman, Eric Croft, himself a former prosecutor, asks for an increase in funding for alcohol and drug counseling promised under the law, along with modest revisions to the legal code. A competing resolution from Assembly member Amy Demboski asks for a full repeal of SB91, which Demboski believes is too broken to be fixed. Nearly everyone who spoke during four hours of testimony demanded a full repeal.

Richard Evans has lived in Anchorage most of his life, and is frustrated by the years-long rise in crime coupled with what he says is an inadequate response from police that leaves citizens and business owners like himself ready to take security into their own hands.

“I’m not going to call Anchorage Police Department if someone breaks into my house. I will not call them to stop the crime, I will not call them to deal with the people coming into my house. I will be calling them to pick up a corpse,” Evans said to wide applause from the audience.

When SB91 passed, its aim was to save taxpayers money by reducing jail time for non-violent offenders, and put the savings into treatment and anti-recidivism programming. Elected officials in Anchorage say they are not receiving that state money for substance abuse treatment. And some prosecutors believe scaling back on penalties for misdemeanor crimes like shop-lifting and low-level theft has emboldened criminality while simultaneously making their work harder.

“From a prosecution level it has dramatically impaired the tools that we have to effectively hold people to account and that’s what we do,” Michael Schaffer, a lawyer in the Municipal Prosecutor’s office, said.

Schaffer testified the office is facing pressure from multiple fronts. The state District Attorney’s office, which handles more serious felony crimes in Anchorage, has less capacity because of cuts from legislators to the Department of Law. As a result, Schaffer said the DA’s office declines a greater number of serious cases that are passed back down to municipal prosecutors and added to already-heavy caseloads.

A small number of those who spoke Saturday cautioned against using SB91 as a scapegoat for a number of overlapping issues facing Anchorage and the state. One of them was Sean Dabney, who testified he’d spent most of his adult life behind bars from drug offenses in his early 20s. Dabney sees blame being heaped on SB91 as people look for explanations to overlapping social ills.

“It seems like right now it’s just a witch hunt. SB91’s the witch, and we’re trying to get rid of it,” Dabney said. “But you can’t just throw people away. And if you just repeal SB91 then, to me, you’re still (locking) people up, (throwing) away the key.”

Both resolutions on SB91, the reform and the repeal options, will go to a vote before the full Assembly during it’s Tuesday night meeting in the Loussac Library.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said Monday his top priorities for changes to federal tax law are making sure they’re good for Alaska and that they promote economic growth. But he also said he’ll consider the size of the national debt.

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Sullivan met eight Juneau business leaders as part of a swing through Southeast Alaska this week. He sought their input as he prepares for the Senate debate this fall over changes to federal tax laws.

Sullivan said he’s optimistic about the how President Donald Trump’s administration’s policies and appointments will affect the economy. Along with the tax changes, Sullivan is hopeful about infrastructure, permitting and energy policies.

But Sullivan said Trump doesn’t always help himself. He responded to a reporter’s question that referenced Trump’s latest quarrel with Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican.

“The president’s insults or tweets … are not helpful and, you know, I’ve tried to encourage the White House to stay focused, disciplined and credible,” Sullivan said. “If we’re going to get tax reform done, if we’re going to grow the economy, you know, going after Bob Corker – who’s a good senator – it’s just not helpful.”

Congress and Trump’s administration are considering a framework for changes that include lower corporate taxes and fewer deductions.

“Unlike health care, where a lot of the issues are very partisan, a lot of the policies that have been introduced in this framework are bipartisan, or should be bipartisan,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan said he’ll consider the effect of tax changes on the national debt.

“We’re going back now to deficits of a trillion dollars a year, so in the last 10 years, we’ve doubled our national debt,” Sullivan said. “So, I worry about it. A lot.”

But Sullivan said the changes’ effect on growth will be most important. He pointed to the 1960s and 1980s as decades when tax cuts occurred before fast growth in the economy.

“One of the most important things, when you look at the debt and the deficit … from my perspective there’s a lot you can do to address it,” he said. “But the most important way to address it – by far – is to be able to grow out of it.”

Sullivan would like to see tax reform reduce the number of deductions and other loopholes. But he said it will be a challenge.

“You know, everybody’s saying, ‘Health care was really hard. Tax reform’s going to be real easy,’” Sullivan said. “And I don’t believe that, right? I think it’s not going to be easy.”

The business leaders who met with Sullivan came from different backgrounds.

Rick Shattuck is an owner of Shattuck & Grummett Insurance. He expressed concern over whether the tax changes would affect all businesses equally. The framework includes a top individual tax rate of 35 percent, a rate for some businesses owned by individuals and partnerships of 25 percent, and a corporate rate of 20 percent.

“Well, I think any time the rates are going down, that’s good, but I question why the tax code should pick winners and losers,” Shattuck said.

Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. CEO Angela Rodell said she’ll be watching how other countries react to changes the U.S. makes. For example, if Congress closes loopholes that benefit foreign investors, other countries could react by closing their loopholes that benefit the permanent fund.

Sullivan will also visit Sitka and Ketchikan this week. He also met with Alaska Airlines executives in Seattle during this trip.

Sometimes companies or agencies lose their equipment at sea. And rather than leave an expensive investment behind on the ocean floor, they send in the troops.

In this case, “the troops” is one Kodiak local.

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ROVs, or remotely operated underwater vehicles, come in various forms. Mark Blakeslee says he’s got several of those.

“There’s big expensive ones costing millions of dollars in the oil industry that have lots of capabilities,” Blakeslee said. “There’s also inspection class ROVs.”

Blakeslee contracts with different companies to retrieve their gear. Things like acoustic doppler current profilers, which measure water speed and direction, and a lot of other high tech instruments.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration most recently hired Blakeslee to rescue a data collecting tool they had dropped in the waters of Barrow Canyon.

“They were towing a winged object. Sort of a cage with wings on it,” Blakeslee said. “They could command it to go up or down in the water column through this tow cable, but the cable broke and they dropped it in 500 feet of water.”

Blakeslee said they went out on an oil response boat and tracked the machine by following its cable.

The mission wasn’t without complications, including bad weather and technical difficulties.

“The first day we got down and I lost a thruster,” Blakeslee said. “I saw a small white flash of death, but it was just the death of a thruster, so that was disappointing, but I had enough maneuverability to go around in big circles.”

It took a few days, but Blakeslee said on the third try the lost object popped up on sonar. Blakeslee said he’d like to expand into tourism with his ROVs. He’d wants to take people out and give them a look under the ocean surface.

The Haines Assembly is asking the University of Alaska to press pause on a proposed timber sale which has alarmed local residents.

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A couple weeks ago, the university put 400 acres of its Chilkat Peninsula land up for bid.

The timing of the sale was motivated by the threat of new local regulations.

At a recent special meeting, Assembly chambers were filled with residents who live out Mud Bay Road, south of Haines.

They were surprised that a timber sale of this this size could be allowed in their quiet neighborhood.

“It seems unbelievably clear that the intention and all the ordinance and code around it is not to have this kind of resource extraction or commercial use of the land in this area,” Heidi Robichaud said.

But that’s the problem that triggered this 400-acre proposal.

Mud Bay zoning code does not explicitly allow or restrict resource extraction.

Borough attorneys say the general rule in regulating private property is that unless something is explicitly prohibited, it’s allowed.

Since discovering this apparent oversight a few months ago, the planning commission has brainstormed what restrictions, if any, to implement in Mud Bay code.

“The public testimony by and large thought that small-scale resource extraction was fine, people selling a few trees or a few truckloads of trees to support local businesses was fine,” planning commission chair Rob Goldberg said. “People were generally opposed to large-scale resource extraction.”

But as the commission moved toward regulations on resource extraction, the Alaska Mental Health Trust and University of Alaska objected.

Both agencies own significant acreage in the Mud Bay area. And the university’s board of regents took action. The group put 400 acres of land up for timber sale.

The university uses money from sales like this to fund student scholarships.

A couple Haines residents, including Andrew Gray, spoke in support of the university’s right to profit off its land.

“If you do attempt to restrict this, I want to remind you that it would be incredibly clear message to send to the state of Alaska when we are fighting for services, to deny one of the state agencies who is attempting to profit off an allowed use of their land,” Gray said. “I don’t think that bodes well in terms of us fighting for state services.”

But Assembly members agreed with the concerns of Mud Bay residents – the timber harvest seems out of character with that area.

Assemblywoman Heather Lende is one of several people who questioned whether the borough really needs explicit restrictions on resource extraction to prevent this type of sale.

Lende pointed to other parts of code which indicate the Mud Bay service area is intended to prioritize residential over commercial uses.

“An outside entity proposing a 400-acre timber sale, I don’t know how that fits in with the intent of rural residential,” Lende said.

The Assembly wants to have a conversation with the university about all of this.

The group voted unanimously to request an in-person meeting with both the university and the mental health trust. The Assembly also is asking the university to delay awarding a contract for the timber harvest until after this discussion occurs.

The timeline right now is tight. The university is accepting comments and bids on the sale until Oct. 23.

Assembly member Tom Morphet said there might be room for negotiation. He quoted from a letter written by university land manager Christine Klein.

“‘UA advertised its Chilkat Peninsula Competitive Timber Sale to protect out interests because the Haines Borough Planning Commission was not engaging us,’” Morphet read. “To me that suggests that the university is maybe not a in a big rush to log out there, but put forward this sale to a certain extent to get our attention.”

If the university doesn’t postpone the timber sale, the Assembly may consider legal action.

The group met in executive session with the borough attorney for more than an hour to discuss the issue.

Members did not say anything publicly about what they discussed with the lawyer.