First it was chip sealing that damaged Petersburg vehicles.

Now it’s messy road paint on some of those same roads.

Motorists are complaining about the state of Alaska’s road painting job this week, with bright yellow line paint smeared along several state roads.

The paint has also stained some vehicles and spread in yellow footprints and tire tracks.

The Petersburg Police Department directed questions on the striping to the Department of Transportation. The DOT announced the paint was taking a long time to dry and that DOT crews were investigating why that was.

Motorists were advised to follow suggestions from the manufacturer for removing the paint.

Cones were placed on the new yellow lines. A sign was up Thursday on Haugen Drive warning of wet paint and motorists were asked to avoid driving on the lines.

Petersburg Borough Assembly member and former city mayor Jeff Meucci said he had yellow paint on his mirror, running board and bumper and was able to scrub off some of that Wednesday night.

“You know as I went home I stopped at my neighbor’s house,” Meucci said Thursday. “She was out scrubbing the heck out of her car and it wasn’t coming off. I hope DOT is a little proactive, other than telling to get out there and seeing what your manufacturer suggests. They should have some kinda, little better, I think it’s all over the place. It’s tough.”

Meucci said he was moose hunting Thursday on Mitkof Island and it looked like the crews had a hard time driving in a straight line while painting Mitkof Highway.

Petersburg isn’t the only place with problems from state road painting.

The Ketchikan Daily News reported on complaints there last month, with the mayor of the Ketchikan Gateway borough ending up with yellow paint on his car too.

“First, I’d like to apologize for any inconvenience,” Lance Mearig, the DOT’s Southcoast Region director, said. “We have been testing a new painting system both equipment and doing the work ourselves instead of using contract painters. It is the same equipment and materials that we used in Ketchikan.”

Mearig said the paint the DOT is using is not drying as fast as it should.

“This paint that we are using is designed for low temperature applications,” Mearig said. “It is the first time we’ve used it in Southeast Alaska this year. We’ve had more success in summer and as we’ve pushed painting into the fall, we’re not sure why but it’s certainly not drying as fast as the manufacturer’s literature would have led us to believe.”

It’s the second round of problems from a DOT project in Petersburg this year.

This summer the state fielded claims in Petersburg over new chip sealing on state roads that led to cracked windshields and chipped vehicle paint jobs. That chip sealing covered up old street markings and led to the painting this fall.

DOT painting crews also are scheduled to do work in Juneau after Petersburg, although Mearig said they may use a different paint for that work.

Motorists can find instructions on removing this paint from vehicles here.

Those who aren’t successful can call Jack Albrecht at the Division of Risk Management at 907-465-2183.

Ketchikan is home to plenty of supernatural phenomena. That’s the theory, at least, behind a new venture: Ketchikan Ghost Tours.

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On a dark and misty night, ghost-tour guide Kelli Klees leads about a dozen people to some of downtown Ketchikan’s haunted spaces.

“Do you ever feel like someone is watching you?” Klees asked.

We start on Creek Street, the city’s historic and rather shady red light district built along the shores of Ketchikan Creek.

Klees explained that in its heyday, Creek Street boasted more than 30 brothels. And this was during prohibition. So, many of the houses had trap doors to bring in bootlegged liquor for their male clientele.

“A lot of those men also found themselves being thrown out of those trap doors,” Klees said. “So part of the history of this creek is there were an awful lot of dead salmon and dead bodies.”

Klees said when she first arrived in Ketchikan, she was warned to never walk on Creek Street alone at night. She didn’t heed that warning.

“I’m from Chicago, I’ve got a knife, we’re fine,” Klees said, recalling her reaction at the time. “So, I proceeded to walk down Creek Street alone at night one night and I’ve never been more scared in my life. Because there were about three different people that came out of nowhere. They might as well have gone, ‘Boo!’ There’s shadows everywhere; there’s a weird energy happening in this place.”

For example, Klees said there are reports of ghostly shadows and noises inside Dolly’s House. That Creek Street home, now a private museum, belonged to Dolly Arthur, Ketchikan’s most well-known sporting woman.

Other former brothels on the creek, now shops, reportedly are home to ghosts that move displays around during the night.

As we walk along the boardwalk, a light suddenly flickers.

“Ghost,” Klees said. “Light just came on. Ghost.”

Or, maybe, a motion-activated security light?

“You gotta open up your imagination on a night like this,” Klees said. “What’s real? What’s not? What’s ghosts? What’s automated lights? You never know.”

The ghost tour is the brainchild of Diane Fast, a musician who recently moved to Ketchikan. She said she had taken ghost tours in other cities, and always had fun.

“I just noticed how many people enjoy ghost tours,” Klees said. “And I enjoy them myself and I was like, ‘Wow, you could totally do one here.’ And that spawned the idea for an entire walking tour company.”

Some of the other walking tours Fast offered over the summer got more interest from tourists. But the ghost tour appealed mostly to local residents. And that’s who was on the tour with Klees.

The next stop after Creek Street is Ketchikan’s original hospital, next to the Episcopalian church on Mission Street. That 100-plus-year-old building was vacant for a long time and fell into disrepair, but now is under renovation by Historic Ketchikan.

Klees said people don’t like to go upstairs alone.

“There’s an energy in there,” Klees said. “The quote is, ‘You could cut it with a knife.’”

As Klees finishes up her story about the old hospital, a woman on the tour tells her own story about the former Bon Marche building across the street, where she worked in the late 1990s.

She didn’t want to give her name, but said it was OK to use the story.

“(A) couple of us would work after hours and would hear kids running,” the woman said. “More than once, we came upstairs — because we worked belowground. More than once, we came upstairs trying to see who got into the building. To the point where nobody worked after hours by themselves.”

Another stop for a future ghost tour.

Fast said she’s not absolutely sure ghosts are real, but she is sure there are things in the world that we don’t or can’t understand.

“I’ve had experiences that I can’t really quite explain,” Fast said. “I don’t know what it is, but I don’t know what it isn’t. I don’t claim to know if it’s an actual person that’s haunting a place or just residual energy like when you take a Polaroid photograph. I have no idea. But it’s fascinating and people are interested in it.”

One of the last stops on the ghost tour is the Gilmore Hotel, where there are reports of actual ghostly people. Klees said a man in a top hat and a woman make regular appearances, not at the same time.

“This top-hat man is apparently pretty friendly, but likes to creep people out in one specific room. I believe it’s 208,” Klees said. “He just sits there very peacefully. There’s another woman who sits in a chair very peacefully.”

Klees said it’s not clear who the Gilmore ghosts were. They’re in good company, though, with all the other ghosts haunting Alaska’s First City.

This week we’re hearing from Mia Kinard in Anchorage. Kinard moved to Alaska from South Carolina a little over a year ago.

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KINARD: I came her e for change and to give my boys a different environment to live in, to shut them off from so many things that they had access to in the Lower 48.

I met a great, I’m talking about an awesome, group of nurses and care team at the Alaska Heart Institute and over at Alaska Regional Hospital. They took really good care of me, and they did things that wouldn’t get done in the South.

I kept having chest pains and I made a request for a stress test and they said, because of my age I guess, they were saying they only request stress tests when there’s a red flag for it. Well, when I came here and I requested, they did a bunch of tests. Before I left the ER, they were calling me to schedule the stress test. That was the awesome part too because they didn’t waste time and weeks to call me. They were calling me before I left the emergency room.

But I made it into the stress test, I started having a heart attack. In South Carolina, they would’ve just sent me home. They kept sending me home, telling me to eat a lot of oranges and bananas, take an iron supplement. So my life was saved by coming here, and that’s the most to be grateful for.

Just to see different faces… I feel like in the Lower 48, down South, we see a lot of Mexican, Black, White and Asians. But you come here, you have the other cultures, the Indians, the Natives and the Samoans — they shocked me, I liked seeing them. So yeah, I feel like we got the whole thing in a box.

But the thing that I like the most is that right around, I see the mountains. It’s a beautiful sight. It’s like every shot looks it belongs in a picture frame.

What I don’t like about it is not having much to do. I’m not an outdoorsman person, ’cause I couldn’t see going into the wood. You’ve got moose and bears, mhmm. (laughs)

The Environmental Protection Agency was in the remote community of Iliamna on Thursday for the second of two public hearings on whether the agency should roll back its Obama-era proposal to impose restrictions on the Pebble Mine.

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Despite pouring rain, over 50 Alaskans from across the region filled seats in the Old Crowley Hangar at the Iliamna Airport and spoke directly to EPA officials.

Unlike the hearing the day before in Dillingham — where public input was unanimously against the proposed Pebble Mine and EPA’s new course — the reaction in Iliamna was more mixed.

Representatives from Pebble Limited Partnership and the Alaska Miners Association spoke in favor of pulling back from imposing Clean Water Act restrictions on the mine. Several local residents also spoke in support of EPA’s new course, saying they hope for more job opportunities in the region.

That included Iliamna resident Margie Olympic, who has been employed by Pebble for 11 years.

“I take pride from where I come from and what I was taught growing up,” Olympic said. “But I also know the value of having a job and supporting my family at this age. Fishing does not and could not support me and my family 12 months out of the year.”

Olympic and others urged EPA to allow the project to begin the normal permitting process.

But many speakers criticized EPA for considering rolling back the restrictions, voicing fears about the mine’s potential impact on the Bristol Bay salmon fishery.

“The only true economy with longevity is a renewable economy, and we have that,” Everett Thompson, a commercial fisherman from Naknek, told EPA officials. “It is scary to keep investing into the fishery with an ever-looming threat of Pebble Mine. Please do what is right, do not withdraw your Clean Water Act proposed determination.”

Several speakers also criticized EPA administrator Scott Pruitt for making the decision to settle with the Pebble Limited Partnership this spring without public input from local communities.

“I’ve been involved in the Pebble debate since longer than I care to remember,” Nanci Morris-Lyon said. She owns a sport fishing business near King Salmon. “Since the debate began, I have raised a daughter. She became a full-time fly-fishing guide this summer….These things take a very long time. Much longer than it took Director Pruitt to decide that all the time we committed to scientific study proving why Pebble Mine should not happen in Bristol Bay was not worth reviewing.”

EPA will take comment on its proposal until October 17.

The state has re-couped nearly $600,000 in legal fees from a 2012 lawsuit with the Bureau of Land Management over an Eastern Interior river. According to U.S. District Court documents, the state sought a million dollars in fees after prevailing in a suit to gain title to the Mosquito Fork of the Forty Mile River.

The parties argued over the river’s navigability, as the state is entitled to ownership of lands underlying navigable waters. A state press release said after fighting the case for several years, the BLM abandoned claim to the river.

The state sought attorney’s fees, accusing the BLM of acting in bad faith by arguing points that had already been rejected in previous cases. The court agreed and the BLM recently withdrew an appeal of the fee order, and paid the state $593,000.

Several Bering Sea storms have hit the coast of Southwest Alaska hard this past week. For the village of Port Heiden on the Alaska Peninsula, that has meant accelerated erosion, an issue the village has been dealing with for years.

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Trained monitors in the village measured six feet of erosion in some places from the most recent storms. Within the last year, they have measured twenty to one hundred feet of erosion along different sections of their coast line. Jaclyn Christensen is the village brownfield coordinator. She said the shoreline seems to be eroding more quickly than it used to.

“It seems more rapid nowadays because I think we have bigger tides,” Christensen said. “We have a lot more water volume, and we have a lot of pumice in our soil. It’s like tooth decay or a cavity. It eats a lot quicker because it’s porous material, and water could just unearth it so fast and easy. A lot of that is accelerated by the storm.”

It’s a fight Port Heiden has been waging for decades, to stay above water. They started building homes on higher ground away from Meshik, the old village site, in the 1980s. The last person moved out of the old village in 2008.

But the solution is not as simple as abandoning the old town.

First there’s the issue of what to do about the old buildings. Left alone, they would be washed into the sea and the debris will end up on Port Heiden’s beaches. Last year, before the road washed away too much to drive heavy machinery on it, the village deconstructed most of the buildings.

“It’s a very hard thing to do. We’ve gotten a lot of backlash about it because it’s emotional, because it’s letting go of your home that you grew up in,” Christensen said. “But what other alternative do we have? We can’t stop the force of nature, but we can do something about leaving less of a foot print to our ecosystem by not polluting it.”

Then there’s the loss of safe harbor. John Christensen Jr. is the tribal council president and a commercial fisherman.

“Our safe harbor for our boats is down past the old village,” John Christensen Jr. said. “Once the erosion reaches the lake down there. It’ll cut off a line. We won’t have no more road to go down there, so we’re going to have to figure out a different place to park our boats.”

Finally there’s the continued erosion, even in the new town. While the homes where people live now, the village office and the village store are currently on stable ground, to get from the bluffs where the town lies to the beach where barges land and residents subsistence fish, the village has to regularly reconstruct beach access roads with a loader.

More worrisome, erosion is getting to the roads near the school.

“Maybe three years ago there was flooding so bad by the school that the school bus had to take the school kids from the school to the flooded area because there was like a river channel of water on the road and then carry the kids, walk them across the water,” Jaclyn Christensen said. “And then the other school bus was on the other side of the road, and they took the kids from there to their homes.”

Port Heiden’s fuel tank farm was relocated fewer than two years ago due to erosion concerns. But Jaclyn worries that its new position by the school might not keep it safe from erosion for long. Even as the village continues its march inland, she said that there isn’t a lot of talk about why the erosion is happening.

“We don’t really use the word “climate change” around here,” Jaclyn said. “We just know things are changing. We just know high winds are becoming more frequent. We know that bad weather is hanging around a lot longer. I don’t really hear the elders or the local people talk about climate change or ocean acidification, or global warming as much because it seems like a foreign factor that we’ve never really had to understand before.

Whatever the cause, Jaclyn Christensen is optimistic that the community will stay motivated and find solutions.

A former Alaska resident who now lives in northern California is waiting to learn if his home will survive the wild fires. Clark Mishler, a professional photographer lived and worked in Anchorage for more than 40 years. Two years ago Mishler and his wife moved to Calistoga to be near their daughters and grand-kids. Mishler said Calistoga is the northern most community in the Napa Valley. He said it’s a small agricultural community of under 6,000, filled with hard working people. He said they had to evacuate Tuesday night.

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MISHLER: It’s completely deserted. There are maybe ten people in the entire town who are there, patrolling. And so far, there have been no structures burned within the Calistoga city limits. This week is going to be very critical though, due to the fact that they’re expecting some very high velocity winds. So, this whole thinking can change in hours and it could go from “We’re okay” to “Oh my God! Everything’s on fire in all directions.”

TOWNSEND: You’re a photographer and you were taking photos before you left Calistoga. Tell us about some of what you captured.

MISHLER: I stuck around town photographing people as they prepared to leave. So I photographed the people at the old folks home, and they took them out pretty early on Monday, and I got photographs of them leaving there. So of them were in tears, not sure of what’s going on, and that was kinda sad. But then I came across other people in the community who had pretty much the same attitude that I did which was, “Hey. You know, we’re alive. We’re able to pack up our cars.” That’s a lot better than some people. There are stories of people who were woken up by this fireball that came through Santa Rosa. And they basically were awakened when they realized that their whole house was lit up inside from the fires outside the house. They literally ran out the front door in their pajamas — no shoes, no cell phone, no wallet — hopped in their cars and drove off to try to and out-speed these fireballs.

TOWNSEND: You also mentioned that there were a lot of folks helping out, a football team helping out with emergency relief. What was going on there?

MISHLER: We’re down here in East Bay and yesterday we went over to Costco and we bought a bunch of supplies. And we took them over to a collection center in Vallejo. And the Vallejo high school football team was there, along with a whole bunch of volunteers. And they were doing all kinds of triage on these things — all these paper towels in one pile, water in another pile and all the campers in another pile. And these volunteer trucks were rolling up, and they were filling up these trucks with supplies. And then these trucks were taking off for Santa Rosa, and they were dropping the supplies off at the various centers where people were waiting at the evacuation centers.

TOWNSEND: Clark, what have you been told about when you may be able to go back? What’s happening with containment efforts?

MISHLER: It wasn’t until today that they now feel that they’ve got ten percent to a high of 27 percent containment on some of the fires. There’s a number of major fires burning in the area, some of them have zero containment. So, this weekend is going to be real critical. We’re expected to have some more winds which are really the problem here. As long as the winds don’t come back, they can surround these fires, they can do some back burns and they can stop the progression. But if they don’t know which way the wind is going to be blowing, nor do they know the velocity, they don’t know how large to make that fire break. And so that’s the problem. If you get that winds at the speeds that we had Sunday night, there’s really no stopping it.

On Friday, the Defense Department announced changes to military recruiting that will make it harder for legal immigrants to enlist and qualify for citizenship.

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The new policy effectively ends the expedited track to citizenship for green card holders who enter the military, eliminating the incentive many had to join. Another change is an end to the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI) program started under the Obama Administration in 2009. Margaret Stock is the founder of the now-suspended MAVNI.

“Its an immigrant recruitment program,” Stock said.

Stock is an Anchorage-based lawyer who practices immigration, citizenship and military law. Last year, she ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate as an Independent. She’s also a retired Army lieutenant colonel and a MacArthur fellow — the prestigious so-called “genius grant.”

The MAVNI program was intended to attract immigrants with high-value skills such as language and cultural proficiency that aid in military operations abroad. According to Stock, recruitment of foreign nationals has grown more restrictive since tighter green card standards were put in place in 2003. Friday’s policy change furthers that trend.

“It hurts our national security,” Stock said. “It means we’re not going to have enough people who are qualified to serve in our nation’s military. We need people who speak foreign languages and have cultural expertise, and can blend in with local populations. And now we’re not going to have that. So, it’s a bad day for national security.”

Stock said a number of new background screenings are being added for immigrant enlistees, on top of those already required for green card eligibility and to qualify for military service. This comes at a time when there’s a backlog for completing security clearances at the Office of Personnel Management, according to the Defense Department. Green card holders entering the military could wait up to a year for the clearance process to be finished and be eligible to start their service.

That means it is now faster for immigrants seeking citizenship to just remain civilians, Stock explained.

In its release, the Pentagon said the changes ensure higher security among prospective service members and potential citizens. According to Stephanie Miller, the Defense Department’s chief of accessions, the change will affect some current personnel who weren’t finished with security screenings when they began to serve. Certifications that counted towards citizenship for those individuals will be nullified.

A number of Alaskans stand to be affected by the change, according to Stock. Some immigrants who have lived in Anchorage have been among those to join the military through the MAVNI program. They include Specialist Susan Tanui, a native of Kenya and former All-American runner at UAA, who was the first-place female finisher in the Army’s 10-mile race in Washington, DC last weekend.

Just last month Premera announced it would drop its health insurance rates on Alaska’s individual market by more than 26 percent. But the drop may not be quite that steep after all, at least for one type of plan. The new factor is President Trump’s decision Thursday night to stop paying Cost Sharing Reductions.

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CSR is a type of subsidy under the Affordable Care Act. For certain low-income households, CSR lowers what they have to pay out-of-pocket when they see a doctor.

Premera, the sole insurer on Alaska’s individual market, said it will still provide the out-of-pocket discounts to eligible customers, as required by law. But to cover the cost, it will raise monthly premiums for the silver plan.

Alaska Insurance Division Director Lori Wing-Heier said if the government eliminates the CSR payments, the rates for a silver plan in 2018 will go up five or six percent from what they would have been.

Most people who buy on the individual market qualify for a subsidy to help them pay their monthly premiums. They may not feel the increase, because the premium subsidy goes up as the premium goes up. But those who earn too much to get the subsidy will have to pay more to remain on the silver plan.

Also, Trump’s move could widen the federal deficit. The Congressional Budget Office said ending the CSR payments, while continuing to subsidize premiums, would actually cost the government $194 billion over 10 years.

Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was harshly critical of the Iran nuclear agreement in 2015. He said then lifting sanctions would fuel the economy of a country that sponsors terrorism.

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“Billions are likely to be used to pump up the terror machine around the world and target American citizens,” Sullivan said on the Senate floor in 2015.

Now, President Trump has mandated that Congress decide what to do with the agreement. Sullivan still doesn’t like the arrangement. He said it’s too lenient on Iran. But Sullivan said the U.S. should not back out of the deal.

“I think a better way to deal with it right now is to vigorously enforce it,” Sullivan said Friday in a phone interview.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other top security officials say Iran is in technical compliance. Sullivan said Iran has violated the letter and spirit of the deal, similar to what President Trump said in a speech Friday. Sullivan said the U.S. should give Iran time to change its ways.

“And then we should undertake what President Obama and Secretary Kerry said we would do, which is apply snap-back sanctions,” Sullivan said.

In 2015, though, Sullivan mocked that as an unworkable solution when the Obama administration proposed it.

“I know what we’ve heard from the administration,” Sullivan said in 2015. “‘Don’t worry. If there’s a violation of this agreement these sanctions will just snap back into place. They’ll snap back. No problem. Piece of cake.'”

At that time, Sullivan said it can take years to impose sanctions and get companies and other nations to divest.

One reason Sullivan gives for staying with the agreement now is to retain America’s leadership position with allies who also signed the deal. He said several European countries are more interested in doing business in Iran than they are in containment.

It’s not a number to celebrate, but the consistently high rates of domestic violence and sexual assault in Alaska need discussion and attention. Why does Alaska stay at or near the top in the nation for these terrible statistics? What’s being done to combat family violence, and how can everyone help address it?

HOST: Lori Townsend

GUESTS:

• Abused Women’s Aid In Crisis (AWAIC) staff
• Standing Together Against Rape (STAR) staff
• 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 17, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

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

Last Monday, a radio engineer in Juneau loaded four nondescript black cases into a truck and drove it to air cargo.

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It was one of three emergency radio broadcasting kits of its kind, designed in Southeast Alaska. On Thursday, it arrived in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria wrecked communications infrastructure.

Rich Parker helps keep Southeast Alaska public radio stations on the air (including KTOO).

Part of Parker’s job as an engineer working on broadcasting infrastructure means maintaining the emergency radio kits – and he prepped Juneau’s for the Puerto Rico Public Broadcasting Corporation.

The emergency broadcasting kit has everything an engineer needs to set up a small radio station in less than a half-hour. Sitka and Ketchikan have similar systems.

“This is what’s called a Radio to Go,” Parker said. “It’s a kit with studio components: mast with an antenna, a small transmitter and mic and other equipment you need to set up an emergency studio.”

The kit has flexible power options. The audio equipment can be powered by a vehicle using an inverter, and the transmitter can even operate at reduced power by wiring together car batteries.

CoastAlaska built the kit. The organization pools business, overhead and staff among a group of Alaska public radio stations, including KTOO.

Mollie Kabler, the executive director of CoastAlaska, said the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had heard about the kit and contacted her.

“Since it’s a custom built piece of equipment, I didn’t have anywhere to send them to get one,” Kabler said, “but I said ‘we’ll send it.’”

An engineer from public radio station WNYC met the kit in New York and took to WIPR in Puerto Rico. The kit will help the station stay on the air during the hurricane recovery.

Igiugig is more than half way through their local foods challenge. The village decided to try eating only locally produced food for six weeks when the students read about a similar project in Australia. They also incorporated a traditional hike into the experiment.

Big Mountain, 23 miles east of Igiugig, is a customary meeting place between people from Igiugig and Kokhanok. 15 adults and students from elementary to high school braved the four-day hike in the wind and rain. No dehydrated camping food lightened their packs. Since the walk was a part of the food challenge, their menu included moose, dry fish and fresh produce.

“It was tough because some of us had to carry apples and heads of lettuce and stuff like that instead of just packing Mountain House [freeze dried food],” eighth-grader Kaylee Hill said.

All seemed to agree that one part of the trip was most difficult — swimming Belinda Creek.

“That was our biggest obstacle,” Tate Gooden, one of the adults leading the trip, said. “After walking most of the day along the beach that was flooded due to the wind, so we were walking through waves, we were already wet. Then at the end of the day, we had to swim across a frigid creek. It was a little daunting, but everybody rose to the occasion.”

The first group that swam across got a fire going so everyone could dry out quickly. It provided an opportunity for the adults leading the hike to talk with the students about preventing hypothermia.

The sun came out on Saturday for the final stretch of the hike. The hikers celebrated with a traditional foods feast at Big Mountain. People who stayed behind in the village brought the meal by skiff. After the meal, because there is a runway at Big Mountain, everyone was able to fly home.

“Part of the goal was to connect to the landscape that we inhabit and then also connect more to our bodies, and I think we did that. I think at the end everyone was empowered by the fact that we made it,” Gooden said.

Back in Igiugig the local food challenge continues. Moose meat dipped in seal oil, bone soup, dry fish and berries are just some of the foods Igugig has been dining on for the last few weeks. Many have made accommodations, participating in the challenge with differing degrees of rigor. Some have decided to eat only foods produced in Alaska. Some have resolved to stick with minimally processed whole foods.

Hill has made eating whole foods her goals. She said pizza is the food she misses most. But almost four weeks, into the challenge she feels the benefit of eating well.

“I feel like I’m getting a lot more sleep than I used to get,” Hill said.

Her father, Karl Hill, is the only one in Igiugig sticking to the most rigorous version of the challenge, eating only foods produced within a 100 mile radius of the village. He too has noticed that he is getting better sleep.

“One of the main things I’ve taken away is that it just takes a lot of preparation to be able to eat this way,” Karl Hill said.

Overall, he noted that the communal nature of the project has kept people motivated.

“I think doing it as a whole community is key to having more people stick with it at one level or another. We have different levels of participation, but I think everybody is having a positive experience of it,” Karl Hill said, adding with a laugh, “We do talk about food a lot.”

The six-week project wraps up on Oct. 28. Residents of Igiugig have been taking their weight, blood sugar and heart rate every month during 2017. When they finish the food challenge they will compare the results to see what affect their participation had on their health.

The first full day of the 34th annual Elders and Youth Conference kicked off in Anchorage this morning. The gathering of more than a thousand people from across Alaska takes place just ahead of the Alaska Federation of Natives convention each fall. It aims to promote indigenous identity and share cultural knowledge between generations.

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The event is organized by the First Alaskans Institute. In opening remarks, FAI vice president Jorie Paoli spoke of this year’s theme: “Part Land, Part Water – Always Native.”

“Alaska is, always has been, and always will be a native place,” Paoli said. “And Alaska is better because we’re here.”

The crowd heard remarks from both Governor Bill Walker and Lieutenant Governor Byron Mallott, both of whom then took questions on a range of topics. Multiple times, the two mentioned a forthcoming administrative action on climate change, but did not elaborate on specifics or a timeline. Walker said he’s been moved to act on the issue, particularly since visiting subsistence communities across the state.

“When I was at Kivalina and I saw what was happening there with the erosion, uh, this is not in theory, this is not in theory, this is real life, day to day, issue,” Walker said. “Some of the discussion, some of the whaling has changed because thickness of the ice, you can’t pull a whale up onto the ice because the ice isn’t as thick as it was before. These are life changes that will change the life of Alaskans, of Alaska Natives. We need to make sure that we’re at the front lines because we are as a state at the front lines.”

Walker and Mallott also spoke of the state “not doing enough” on public safety in rural communities, even referring to the issue as a “crisis.” The men also touched on the importance of protecting subsistence resources, although on that topic the youth keynote speaker brought the room to its feet with applause and cheers.

“I am Agragiiq Chris Apassingok, and as you see in the pamphlet, I am the son of Daniel and Susan Apassingok.”

The 17-year-old whaler from Gambell on St. Lawrence Island delivered the first part of his speech in Siberian Yupik. He then switched to English to recount his education in subsistence hunting, starting with mice, squirrels and birds, all the way up to the bowhead whale he struck on a hunt with his family this past spring. The incident caused a backlash against the teen on social media when a radical animal rights activist criticized Apassingok online – an event the young man said strengthened his resolve to keep practicing traditional hunting.

“We must never be discouraged by any accident or anybody that may threaten us. I am part land, I am part water, I am always Native,” Apassingok said to the crowd, drawing applause. “Will you stand with me as I continue my hunting? Will you stand with me as we all continue our subsistence activities.”

And the crowd did stand, giving the young man an ovation. Elsewhere in his speech, Apassingok talked about how even in his own short lifetime he’s seen hunting conditions change, with less sea ice and rougher seas hampering traditional hunting.

The Elders and Youth conference continues through Wednesday at the Dena’ina convention Center in downtown Anchorage.

The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation has another deadline looming.

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Corporation Senior Vice President Frank Richards told lawmakers in Anchorage on Monday that the corporation’s board is operating under a December 31, 2017 deadline to find a customer for Alaska’s natural gas.

It has been ten months since the state took the lead on the mega-project that would transport natural gas from Prudhoe Bay to Cook Inlet, then ship it to buyers in Asia.

Members of finance and resources committee in both the state House and Senate met to hear a quarterly report on the progress of the project. Corporation President Keith Meyer was not at the meeting, Board Chairman Dave Cruz said he is in Asia marketing the state’s gas.

So, Cruz started the meeting. And he began by asking lawmakers to consider the impact that their discussions with members of the media can have on the corporation’s efforts to market the project.

“The world is watching us. This is not just some little project in Alaska that the world doesn’t know about,” Cruz said.  “And every local news story that is picked up by our industry and world press it places a great challenge on our team when they have to first defend the project against the negative comments before being able to sell it on its merits.”

For the next hour, lawmakers peppered Cruz and other members of the corporation’s executive board with questions about project finances, employee turnover and how much money the state expects to make on its share of the project.

Sen. Natasha Von Imhof, R-Anchorage, and Sen. Anna MacKinnon, R-Eagle River, both accused employees of evading questions on the project’s finances.

Von Imhof said she met with employees at the corporation last week and they “danced around her questions,” on how fast the corporation is burning through the roughly $102 million it has budgeted to spend on building a gasline project. She said she spent the weekend digging through documents and determined that it has about $70 million left to spend.

That is a fraction of the roughly $45 billion needed for the project to be built. Richards said the corporation is currently spending about $3 million a month, though the board has authorized it to spend more than $6 million monthly.

Lawmakers also asked about deadlines. Last year, Gov. Bill Walker gave the project until September, 2017 to generate enough activity to justify continuing to spend millions on the project.

The state corporation held an open-season asking potential customers and investors to show formal interest. And while it did not result in any firm commitments, Walker said he is encouraged by how well the state has engaged with potential buyers .

But, Walker stopped short of saying the state should put more money into the project.

When lawmakers asked Richards if the corporation plans to come to the legislature for more money during the next session — he said it all depends on whether it finds a customer.

The state is closing the book on a Dalton Highway fuel spill that occurred four years ago. State Department of Environmental Conservation on scene coordinator Tom DeRuyter said clean-up and remediation was fairly extensive after an Alaska Petroleum Distributing tanker truck trailer rolled in May 2013, spilling 3,000 gallons of diesel along the highway near milepost 81. DeRuyter said the effort addressed soil contaminated around a ditch dug to collect the fuel, as well as treatment of nearby forest.

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“It was deep into the moss that was in that area,” DeRuyter said. “And they had to put in some collection trenches.”

DeRuyter said soil frost limited deep contamination, noting that a sheen did form on a small nearby pond, which had to be skimmed. He said the clean-up and remediation occurred over about two months following the spill, but follow up sampling dragged out, due a problem with the trucking company’s insurance provider.

“Using another state consultant that was not familiar with Alaska or our regulations and we went through most of a field season without getting the samples that we really wanted,” DeRuyter said. “But we got the site re-characterized this past year and are heading toward closure with it.”

Results of sampling conducted in August will be evaluated by the DEC by year’s end to make a final determination on closure of the project.

Smoked salmon is popular across Alaska and the world. For those who want to learn more about the process of making it, there’s an annual two-day workshop in Kodiak. It’s open to novices and masters and shows them how to produce the savory treat on a commercial scale.

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Students of Alaska Sea Grant’s Smoked Seafood School are skinning fillets of sockeye salmon at the Kodiak Seafood and Marine Science Center. They’re preparing the meat to become smoked jerky. Richard Wilson is showing some of his fellow students how he skins fish.

“I usually leave a little bit of meat on the tail, just so you can grab it. Take it and go down and then you go down and just starting pulling it against your blade,” Wilson said. “If you have a sharp blade you’re just going to go ‘schweeep.’”

Wilson and his wife came to the workshop from Naknek, in Bristol Bay, where he works as a fisherman.

“We have a little family operation called Tulchina fisheries and just small just small family thing,” Wilson said.

Smoking salmon isn’t new to Wilson. He’s done it for years, but only for personal use. The annual two-day workshop will teach him and the other students techniques that could help them produce smoked fish commercially. Which is why Wilson’s here, to get information that’ll help him expand his business.

“Oh, we’re coming in here wide open,” Wilson said. “We want to learn it all and see what it takes to actually do a product that’s legal and that’s safe and sellable.”

This year, there are about a dozen students who’ve come from all over the country to attend. That’s not uncommon. Skill levels usually range from backyard enthusiasts to professionals from the seafood industry.

Chad Beatty came all the way from Seattle. He said he’s worked in “technology” for 17 years, but now wants to make the jump to selling smoked seafood. He describes himself as a sports fisherman and said smoking fish isn’t a new concept.

“Yeah, I have some secret recipes and ingredients that way for sure,” Beatty said. adding that making this career change will “marry my passion with my profession.”

The class covers a lot in two days. It includes preparing and producing smoked fish products, teaching safety regulations, and getting up to speed on different machines.

Chris Sannito is a Seafood Technology Specialist at the Kodiak Seafood and Marine Science Center. He’s also one of the instructors at the workshop. He said teaching the class is one of his favorite things to do. Sannito loves smoking fish and the creativity that goes along with it.

“It’s kinda like winemaking,” Sannito said. “There’s hundreds of different techniques and everyone’s uncle makes the best-smoked salmon, and  we’re trying to just lay out what is considered a safe product, and let people have the flexibility in creating their own methods too.”

Sannito said he’s learned a lot teaching the workshop over the years. And helping people learn how to make safe and delicious smoked fish is really fulfilling.

“You know we’ve been doing it for thousands of years and this is kind a putting the modern twist on it,” Sannito said.

This year’s batch of students worked on salmon jerky, the cold and hot process of smoking, and smoking herring. Sannito said all the students should leave at the end of the class with their arms full of the smoked fish they helped make.

Commercial salmon fishermen across the state have had a “banner year.”

Last week, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) released a preliminary harvest summary that estimates fishermen caught 224.6 million wild salmon this year and earned $678.8 million selling the fish to processors.

That’s a 66.7% increase from last year’s catch value. According to Forrest Bowers, Deputy Director of ADF&G’s Division of Commercial Fisheries, there are a couple reasons for the jump: fishermen caught more salmon in 2017, and they were paid higher prices for the fish.

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Bowers said Alaska wild salmon is a strong brand in a market that includes farmed salmon from around the world.

“I think Alaska has done a great job with marketing wild salmon,” Bowers said. “Alaska fishermen have made a lot of improvements in their product handling and product quality, and I think processors have taken a number steps to come out with new product forms that appeal to consumers.”

According to the summary, the statewide chum salmon harvest hit an all-time record high this year, and the harvest of sockeye salmon — the most valuable species — exceeded 50 million fish for the third year in a row.

Bowers said these numbers are encouraging.

“I think the main thing that it indicates is that Alaska’s salmon management program is successful,” Bowers said. “You know we have really pristine habitat throughout the state. We’re looking at a long-term approach, so that we can harvest sustainably without impacting future returns in a negative way.”

With strong community support for salmon throughout the state, Bowers is optimistic the good luck will not go away, especially in Western Alaska.

“In Norton Sound, three out of the last four years have been really strong,” Bowers said. We’ve had good fisheries up there, and I expect that trend to continue.”

ADFG will release their final figures for the 2017 harvest next spring.

One the state’s top prosecutors said repealing the entire law that overhauled criminal justice last year is the wrong move.

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“A full repeal of SB 91 is dangerous,” Deputy Attorney General Robert Henderson said in a House Judiciary Committee meeting Monday at the Anchorage Legislative Information Office.

Some Alaska lawmakers said they want to repeal last year’s Senate Bill 91, which allowed some low-risk offenders to avoid jail time. Lawmakers including Eagle River Republican Rep. Lora Reinbold. She cited the number of thefts in Anchorage.

“They’re calling it GTA — grand theft Anchorage — right now,” Reinbold said. “It’s outrageous, what’s going on in the city that I love.”

This year’s Senate Bill 54 is scheduled for legislative debate next week. It would scale back SB 91. Last year’s law was based on research that said that longer jail terms are no more effective than actively monitoring offenders outside of jail. In some cases, longer sentences may actually increase the risk of repeat offenses.

Henderson noted that last year’s law hasn’t been fully implemented. The provisions of the law that haven’t gone into effect allow for increased supervision of people who have been arrested before they have trials. Those provisions are effective on Jan. 1.

Capt. Sean Case is Anchorage’s acting deputy police chief. He said the city’s police department fully supports the Legislature passing Senate Bill 54.

Case said police officers have years of experience putting offenders in jail.

“And when the rules are changed, that creates some disenfranchisement. And we’re seeing that,” Case said as a member of the Alaska Criminal Justice Commission, which advises the Legislature. “But I’ll also say that I don’t think that means that the traditional model of policing or criminal justice in the state of Alaska has to remain the same.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Matt Claman said he held the meeting to give Anchorage residents a chance to hear information about Senate Bill 54 in person. The committee is one of three that would have to pass the bill before the full House can vote on it. The Senate has already passed it.

Gov. Bill Walker put Senate Bill 54 on his call for the special session that begins Oct. 23. The bill would increase the minimum penalty for first-time class C felonies from up to 18 months of suspended sentences to up to one year in jail. Another change would increase the penalty for thefts of goods valued at less than $250. And a third change would increase the penalty for people who violate their conditions of release.

Chefs and bartenders from Anchorage and the Mat-Su area prepared plated desserts, dessert cocktails and edible centerpieces for judges and participants to sample and vote for. Anchorage residents put their sweet tooth to good use at the second annual Sweet Rivalry event, a baking competition that raised around $30,000 for Alaskans who experience intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Nine competitors each had 60 minutes to create a work of dessert art on a plate. Each group was given a secret ingredient to work with: maple pecan.

Some chefs kept it simple, like a chocolate hazelnut cake from Glacier Brewhouse. Others were more creative. Kaladi Brothers and Phat Kid Food Truck presented a beet sponge and potato funnel cake with charcoal gelato. Yes, real charcoal. Bee pollen, edible flowers and butterscotch were used as garnish.

The dessert that won was from Dipper Donuts. Co-owner Laura Cameron took first place for salted brown butter donut holes with dark chocolate creme brulee and a port wine poached pear on top. Cameron was happy to gain attention for her shop, which is opening in November.

“We just want customers to be able to taste our donuts, and so far it’s going pretty well,” Cameron said.

Then, there was the edible centerpiece competition, where Lindsay Kucera, sous chef of Rustic Goat, and her team made an Alpenglow Napoleon that won first place. Their dessert had layers of homemade puff pastry, with cardamom and labrador tea marshmallow fluff, filled with cranberry fluid gel and a crab apple butter with chai spices. Kucera said she used local ingredients.

“All the crab apples, the cranberries and the labrador tea was all picked by me here in town,” Kucera said. “There’s competition, but it’s so friendly. Everyone is rooting for each other, because it’s for such a great cause. And you get to do something that just has enough pressure that you feel a little bit under the gun but it’s exciting and it just makes it so much more rewarding.”

Part of the proceeds from the event go towards The Arc of Anchorage’s studio and gallery, Sparc. The gallery provides a space for individuals with sensory issues or other challenges to learn ceramics, painting, beading and even cooking.