“March madness” usually means basketball. But a different form strikes Congress every year. This month, like every March, Alaskans were among the thousands of constituents who flood Capitol Hill, aiming to persuade their members of Congress to vote for a bill, take up a cause, or just hear them out.

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The group in orange scarves? That’s YWCA. Red and white scarves? The Diabetes Association. If you see lab coats, that can be osteopaths or pharmacists. But on one recent day at the Capitol, it was medical students wearing the white coats as the lobbied for a bill to provide services to the homeless.

“We wanted to look official,” one of them said. “We went to see Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the 8th District. That’s because he’s my actual rep. ”

And that’s the idea of the Hill visit: you come to Washington for a convention or conference. Then you go to the Capitol and reach out to your own representative and senators. (March is high season for it, maybe because a lot of conferences are timed to coincide with the cherry blossoms.)

A cynic would say politicians only grant access to donors or lobbyists. Pay to play – that’s the conventional wisdom. But Kerry Howard of Juneau couldn’t believe her luck. She was in a basement cafeteria at one of the House office buildings. It was early afternoon, and she had completed the Alaska trifecta, in just half a day.

“We’ve already had lunch and met with all three of our offices,” Howard said. “All three of them!”

Howard came to advocate for Parkinson’s research. She was with Rocky Plotnick and Plotnick’s husband, Mike Singsaas, of Anchorage.

“So we saw Sen. Murkowski, Sen. Sullivan and Congressman Young’s staffer,” Plotnick marveled.

Neither Howard nor Plotnick are Republican campaign donors. In fact, Plotnick has contributed to candidates running against Murkowski, Sullivan and Young.  When the battle is Parkinson’s disease, she said none of that matters. Plotnick feels like she had great access.

“It’s not like there’s the bad guys or the good guys on this. It’s a very nonpartisan universal issue,” Plotnick said.

A key point of their visits is to personalize Parkinson’s disease to the congressional delegation.

“Well, it’s to give a face to the disease and to let them know they do have constituents who love Alaska and want to stay in Alaska, in spite of this challenge,” Howard said.

Howard was diagnosed two years ago. Singsaas has had Parkinson’s for more than a decade.

That’s just the kind of thing a constituent visit can do – put a face on an issue. University of

Maryland political scientist Kris Miler wrote a book about what House members and their staff picture when they think about the people they represent.

“You know, who comes to mind more readily and how does that then shape what they say on the floor, what they do in terms of bill sponsorship and voting and so forth,” Miler said.

What she found is that, yes, phone calls, letters and certainly office visits make a lasting impression.

“The kind of subgroups of constituents that come to mind more quickly do tend to be those that make themselves known through contact,” Miler said.

Whether a Hill visit can change a lawmaker’s position, that’s beyond the scope of her book. But sometimes, a Hill visit will change a senator’s priorities.

“So many of you know, when you meet with constituents and you hear from them and you see these issues, that it can have a huge impact on you, and I’m seeing that,” Sen. Dan Sullivan told the Alaska Legislature in his 2016 annual address.

Sullivan credits a Hill visit for opening his eyes were opened to the opioid crisis. Eight women from Juneau traveled to Washington for an anti-addiction rally in 2015 and called on his office.

“It was probably the most impactful meeting I’ve had as a U.S. senator,” Sullivan said the next year.

By the end of their visit, Sullivan has said there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. He heeded their call to support the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, and they inspired him to hold a “wellness summit” in Palmer two years ago. The opioid crisis remains one of his top domestic issues.

Sullivan tries to meet with every Alaskan who makes the trip to D.C. But so many arrive in March that he’s started holding constituent coffees, to meet with several Alaska interests at once.

Alaska PTA President Candy Jo Bracken arrived at one when the doors opened at 8:15.

Bracken was one of 700 PTA representatives on the Hill that day, from all states. Hundreds of postal workers were also making their hill visits at the same time. Bracken said it’s an annual convergence, the PTA and the letter carriers.

“Yeah, we end up staying at the same hotel. Every year,” Bracken said.

While she waited for Sen. Sullivan to arrive at the morning meeting, she had time to discuss her main issue, school safety, with his chief of staff, Larry Burton. Other members of Sullivan’s staff saturated the room. When Sullivan arrived, he talked to each Alaskan while aides took notes. It was a Kodak moment for representative democracy.

Alaskans are few in number and may have better access than most Americans. But don’t be too quick to throw out the conventional cynicism about Capitol Hill in general.

A pair of graduate students conducted a field experiment in 2013 to test whether money buys access. They found that when people seeking appointments are identified as “active political donors” they are three times more likely to get a meeting with their Congress member or a senior staffer, compared to those identified as “concerned constituents.”

On the day President Trump signed a massive spending bill in Washington, D.C., Paul Charles and George Carl of Newtok sat down in a hotel conference room in midtown Anchorage to take stock of an event they still couldn’t quite believe was real.

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The budget bill included $1.3 trillion in spending and was more than 2,200 pages long. But for Newtok, there’s just one page that matters.

That’s page 458. It doubles funding for the federal Denali Commission, giving the agency an extra $15 million. The commission said last week it plans to spend that money to help Newtok relocate, accomplishing a goal that’s been out of reach for more than two decades.

Carl, Newtok’s village council vice president, said the decision is life-changing.

“It’s like saving our people in that small village,” Carl said. “I’d like to thank who made this possible…Thank you very, very much.”

Newtok is rapidly losing land to a combination of erosion and thawing permafrost and residents expect they’ll have to abandon their homes within a matter of years. The village first decided to move in 1994. It acquired a new site several miles away in a land trade with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2003. Ever since, the village has been trying to piece together enough funding to move.

The $15 million in this year’s spending bill is just a fraction of what Newtok needs. The cost of moving the entire village is estimated at well over $100 million. But village council president Paul Charles said this is the crucial seed money that will make everything else possible.

“It’s not that the whole village is going to relocate all at one time, but $15 million is a lot of money to build [homes],” Charles said.

The relocation plan is unconventional: The village plans to retrofit old military barracks from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage and barge them out to the new site. Engineers estimate that will be cheaper than building new houses from scratch, helping to avoid some of rural Alaska’s high construction costs.  If all goes well, the new funding plus existing grants could go toward the construction of 28 houses at the new site, said village relocation coordinator Romy Cadiente. His goal is to have people living there full-time by the fall of 2019.

At that point, Cadiente said the new site, Mertarvik, would be a permanent community. He hopes it would have enough residents to be eligible for traditional infrastructure funding, including money for a school, an airport and water and sewer systems.

“We hope to attract additional agencies with the message, ‘This is not a conceptual design anymore,’” Cadiente said. “‘This is a real, active project. Can you please help us?’”

Charles, Carl and Cadiente said the funding was the result of work by many people, from the Alaska congressional delegation and the Denali Commission to the village council’s relentless attorney, Mike Walleri, and countless federal and state officials.

But Cadiente pointed out that the $15 million is a one-time funding stream. Several other Alaska villages are considering relocation, and even more need help dealing with erosion if they’re going to stay in place.

They can’t all rely on a special act of Congress. Cadiente said ultimately, the country needs to find a different way to fund climate-related issues like coastal erosion.

As for Paul Charles, he had a message for other villages facing a similar situation:

“Don’t quit what you are working for,” Charles said, speaking in Yup’ik. “To accomplish what we are striving for, we go through difficulties, we keep working through the problems. We accomplish our goal when we keep working toward it.”

Julia Jimmey at KYUK in Bethel contributed translations from Yup’ik to English for this report.

The Alaska Marine Highway System will not have to shut down in April.

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Gov. Bill Walker signed a supplemental appropriations bill Tuesday funding the ferry system through the end of the current fiscal year in June.

The gap would have left an 11-week hole in the system’s budget. April 16 was set as the shutdown date.

Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman represents many of the Southeast communities most dependent on the ferry system.

“I think that’s great. We can get the marine highway through the first of July and then have a fairly flat schedule going forward, with a few little improvements for the next year and continue to try to move the marine highway forward instead of backwards,” Stedman said.

The supplemental bill provides about $24 million for the ferry system.

The shortfall was caused by an earlier spending bill meant to fund Medicaid if it ran out of money. It called for that money to come from the ferry system. Those terms were not widely known.

Stedman sounded the alarm about the shortfall in September. He called it “skullduggery and downright sleazy.”

“It’s not how we should do budgets or how we should deal with the public purse. So I think the negative press from those type of actions goes a long way to keep them from recurring” Stedman said.

The $110 million fast-track supplemental bill also funds gaps in state Medicaid and prison programs.

Ferry funding for the budget year beginning in July still needs to be approved by the full Legislature. So far, it’s passed the House but not the Senate.

A new, life-saving service has just been added to some medevac aircraft in Southeast Alaska. Airlift Northwest is now offering blood transfusions on two planes stationed in Juneau.

Airlift Northwest has performed more than 200 mid-air blood transfusions in the Pacific Northwest. But just last week, the nonprofit service did its first in Alaska. The patient was at Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital.

“We’ve had patients we really don’t think would have survived had we not had blood on our aircrafts,” Chris Martin, the executive director of Airlift Northwest, said. “So for us and a lot of patients it’s been life-changing.”

Their aircraft only carried regular IV fluid before. Now, each aircraft carries two units of O negative blood, the universal blood type, and two units of plasma.

“If you give someone just regular fluid, it doesn’t have the oxygen-carrying capacity like blood and plasma do. Plus, it doesn’t have anything in it to help the body clot, which blood and plasma have,” Martin said. “So it’s all about clotting and all about oxygenation.”

Martin says military trauma medicine has encouraged this change in practice.

Other medevac operators in Alaska, such as LifeMed, also perform transfusions. But they don’t carry their own blood on the planes at all times. Instead they pick the blood up from the hospital every time a patient would require it.

Airlift’s blood and plasma are transported from Seattle to Juneau, and exchanged twice a week. Airlift partnered with Alaska Airlines for this.

If the blood is not used in a few days, it is sent back to Seattle to Harborview Hospital’s Trauma Center, where someone is likely to need it.

“What that does is not allow the blood to go to waste so it gets put back into the system to be used,” Brenda Nelson, Airlift’s chief flight nurse, said.

Martin says Airlift will spend $35,000 a year to transport those fluids.

Airlift is affiliated with the University of Washington’s medical program, which also operates Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center.

As Anchorage cunducts  its first-ever election through mail-in ballots, residents are being asked to vote on a long-list of measures — including a controversial bathroom ordinance, the complex sale of a utility, as well as several bond and tax proposals.

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And at the top of all that is the choice for the city’s next mayor. While the two major candidates are focused on the same central issues, they have divergent stances.

Though there are technically nine people who have filed paperwork to run for mayor, only two have raised significant sums of money and mounted visible campaigns: Incumbent Ethan Berkowitz and challenger Rebecca Logan, both of whom recently appeared on Alaska Public Media’s television program Alaska Insight.

Both Berkowitz and Logan have framed crime and the economy as the campaign’s main issues. Berkowitz is casting a potential second term as a continuance of policies he’s pursued the last three years. In her campaign, Logan has differentiated herself by running further to the right, offering a more hard-line vision for policing, including tougher treatment of lower-level crimes like petty theft, shop-lifting and vandalism.

“That’s what’s seeming to cause, I think, the most fear with people, because that’s what an Anchorage citizen on a daily basis is subject to,” Logan said, referring to property crimes. “So you have to have a zero tolerance policy there. Meaning arresting those people and keeping them in jail.”

Berkowitz has made expansion of the Anchorage Police Department a central policy of his tenure, and he says the administration’s recruitment targets are one piece of a long-term strategy.

“Are we getting as far as we need to go as quickly as we can? No,” Berkowitz said of the city’s progress handling several years of rising crime. “But there’s also a recognition this is not just a law enforcement problem.”

Berkowitz points to a multitude of public safety factors all at play in the city’s struggle with crime: Diminished state resources, the impacts to local departments from the criminal justice overhaul in Senate Bill 91 and the opioid epidemic. He believes the city’s approach to substance abuse needs to include expanded treatment options by collaborating with private and non-profit partners.

Logan disagrees. In one of their biggest policy differences, she does not support expanding drug treatment, saying the majority of people addicted to opioids are engaged in criminal activity, and thinks rehabilitation should be part of incarceration.

“What’s happening is people get arrested for committing a crime, they’ve got a drug problem, and there’s never a break in the cycle because they’re getting out on bail. They aren’t even spending any time in prison,” Logan said. “I think that people need to have rehabilitation and treatment as part of a sentence, and that it’s mandatory.”

On the local economy, Logan believes the administration’s policies should emphasize businesses that are currently in Anchorage without over-taxing or over-regulating them. In a question on municipal finances Logan criticized the size of the current administration’s budget, but offered no specific programming cuts or alternative revenue models.

“We’ve got to be really careful about our spending level and making sure we keep that under control so that we don’t go straight to the property-tax payers looking for taxes,” Logan said.

Berkowitz defended his administration’s work to shore up city finances as state funds have retreated the last few years.

“Our focus has been on finding new revenue sources, which includes things like diversifying the income stream, reducing the tax-burden on property-tax owners,” Berkowitz said. “We’re also looking for ways to raise revenues from enterprises. That includes the sale of ML&P to Chugach.”

A question over that utility sale is on the ballot and needs voter approval before a final deal can be negotiated and finalized.

Though the mayor’s race in Anchorage is technically non-partisan, the two candidates’ fundraising disclosures are filled with familiar players in the state’s party politics.

In the latest round of filings, Berkowitz, a former democratic state representative, had raised $221,001, more than twice the $88,973 Logan brought in. Among his donors are several Political Action Committees for organized labor and public safety unions, several current and former Assembly members, many state and municipal employees, as well as prominent individuals aligned with the state’s Democratic party. Almost half of that money has been spent down in just the last month, much of it on media buys, ad placement and polling.

Logan is the CEO of an oil and gas industry support group. Her donors include many individuals from the resource development sector, prominent conservative activists, Republican groups, as well as former Anchorage mayor Dan Sullivan. As of Tuesday March 27, her campaign had just $3,296 left on hand, with a week left before the election ends — a final stretch when many campaigns spend aggressively to get their message before voters.

Both candidates expressed general support for the city’s inaugural election conducted by mail-in ballots, though Berkowitz noted nobody is quite sure what it will do to voter turn-out and demographics.

“I didn’t anticipate being part of the guinea-pig election,” Berkowitz chuckled.

“Yeah, I didn’t either,” Logan added.

Both candidates say they will vote against Proposition One, the proposal to modify the city’s existing laws in order to regulate public bathrooms and changing facilities according to biological sex at birth rather than a person’s self-identified gender.

The last day to cast ballots is April 3rd.

More information on the ballot measures, candidates, and vote-by-mail system can be found on the Municipality’s elections website.

The American Bald Eagle Foundation Raptor Center and Natural History Museum in Haines will build a new aviary.

The Raptor Center houses three bald eagles and is a tourism attraction for the Southeast Alaska town of about 2,500.

The center is home to three American bald eagles: Arden, Vega and Bella.

Raptor program manager Stefanie Jenkinson, is in charge of the food, the husbandry and the enrichment for the birds that live there.

“Their job is to educate people,” Jenkinson said.

Against a painted backdrop of an Alaska mountain scene and through wire mesh two bald eagles, Arden and Vega, do their daily training, hopping from their perches up high onto platforms down below where handlers reward them with morsels of moose meat.

Vega, the oldest bald eagle at the center is in her mid-20s. Eagles can live a long time, into their 40s.

Vega is one of the reasons why they’re overhauling the aviary.

When Vega is kept with other eagles, handlers say she tends to out-compete and steal food from the two other younger, smaller eagles.

The eagles and their handlers have been practicing their routine for cruise ship season in Haines, which brings thousands of people to see them.

The Raptor Center is at the heart of tourism here and their building is right in the middle of town between the post office and the police station.

Passengers from cruise ships line up each summer to see the eagles and other raptors up close.

The center’s mission is the conservation of the bald eagle and its habitat.

One of the largest congregations of eagles in the world takes place about 20 miles from here, each fall along the banks of the Chilkat River, where the birds come to feast on spawned-out salmon.

The Raptor Center opened in 2010.

But Sidney Campbell, the education and development manager at the center, said the existing spaces where the largest birds live are less than ideal.

“Our three bad eagles really should not be housed together, but we only have the space now to allow us to keep one separate and two who are housed together,” Campbell said.

These birds of prey normally have large territories and they’re opportunistic feeders.

Housing the eagles together can cause problems, Campbell said.

“Our largest bald eagle, Vega, is older and wiser and definitely larger than the other two and she’s much better at competing and because bald eagles are scavengers and they like to steal food, she’s really good at stealing it from the other two,” Campbell said.

Having three separate rooms for the eagles is part of the plan for the new aviary.

Plus it also includes a weathering yard where birds can perch, sun themselves, and where outdoor training can take place as well as a walking path so guests can connect with the birds in a closer setting.

“We want them to be able to do the job to the best of their abilities. Not only are we building larger spaces, we’re building spaces that are more enriching,” Campbell said. “We are demolishing a building that is currently blocking a lot of light to some of the existing aviaries. This way rather than having the birds kind of staring at each other all day, we will have them looking at their surroundings. They’ll be able to look at the wildlife that is nearby. There’s lots of bird watching, lots of squirrel watching that is really enriching.”

The idea is to give the eagles more room and some of the stimulation they would have in a wild setting and to give visitors a better experience, Campbell said.

“Currently, we can’t open the aviaries to the public,” Campbell said. “We lead a tour through there every day in the summer, but that is capped at 15 people, so very few of our guests actually get to see all of the birds because some of them don’t come out and do glovework.”

Besides the bald eagles, the Raptor Center is also home to two red-tailed hawks, a Eurasian eagle owl, an eastern screech owl, a peregrine Falcon, a lanner-saker hybrid falcon and a merlin.

“By building the two new structures and tearing out the existing structure, we’re going to open it up and people can kind of go on their own self-guided tours,” Campbell said.

After the new aviary is complete, Campbell said, hopefully, the eagles and the people who come to see them will have a much more authentic experience at the Raptor Center.

The center has raised more than $50,000 for the new aviary, through a GoFundMe to page. But they need to raise more to reach their goal.

The groundwork for the project is scheduled to take place in April and construction is scheduled to be completed this fall.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is beginning work on a lease sale next year in Arctic waters, even though the larger plan for offshore leasing is still a draft proposal.

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BOEM announced Wednesday that it’s issuing a formal call for “information and nominations” about the Beaufort Sea. The agency is seeking comments on which parts of the Beaufort should be open to drilling and which areas are sensitive or important to subsistence activities.

The Beaufort and most other American waters were included in the draft of the five-year offshore leasing plan the Interior Department announced in January. But the plan has not been approved yet. Environmental groups say the Trump administration is taking a shortcut on the public process.

“This is not how the federal government is supposed to work,” Lois Epstein, Arctic Program director for The Wilderness Society, said.

The public comment period for the five-year plan just ended, and Epstein pointed out there’s a lawsuit challenging the removal of the Obama administration’s ban on offshore Arctic drilling.

“They’re pre-deciding the outcome of what they’re going to find when they carefully evaluate all the comments and when they carefully evaluate the results of the litigation,” Epstein said.

The agency says each lease sale takes a great deal of advance planning. BOEM spokesman John Callahan says it’s routine for the government to begin work on any sale expected in the first year of a five-year plan before the plan is actually approved.

Reporter Elizabeth Harball contributed to this story.

Before getting in to who’s drilling there and why, let’s make one thing clear about this oil field: the state of Alaska thinks it’s a very big deal.

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“Literally, if you line up the big fields up on the North Slope, this probably ranks third behind Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk,” Alaska Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Andy Mack said.

Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk, of course, are the giant oil fields responsible for making Alaska the oil state it is today. And on a chunk of state and native owned land west of Prudhoe Bay called the Pikka Unit, one company thinks there might be over a billion barrels of recoverable oil. Mack said the oil in this area alone could reverse the long-term decline in the amount of oil flowing down the trans-Alaska pipeline.

“If all goes well, it could lead to not only flattened production, but also increased production,” Mack said.

So last fall, when a company a lot of Alaskans hadn’t heard of moved to take over developing this oil field, it got people’s attention.

Oil Search is a company based in Papua New Guinea, a country just south of the equator and just north of Australia, where it also has offices. An oil project in the Arctic may seem like an odd leap for a company from an island nation in the South Pacific. But in a recent interview, the newly-minted president of Oil Search Alaska, Keiran Wulff, said the company is serious about its new venture.

“We see Alaska as a place of enormous opportunity,” Wulff said.

Wulff said its first planed development in Alaska could represent a significant investment for Oil Search — in the range of $4 billion to $6 billion. The company bought a significant stake in the project last year from its main partner, Denver-based Armstrong Oil and Gas, with an option to take over the rest of Armstrong’s stake if all goes well. (The Spanish oil company Repsol continues to own a significant percentage.)

Last week, Oil Search officially took over as operator of the field. That means when it comes to actually getting an oil development off the ground, Oil Search is in the drivers seat.

Sitting in the conference room of the company’s new offices in downtown Anchorage, which it now shares with Armstrong, Wulff makes it clear Oil Search is gearing up for what could be something big.

“We’ve just taken the whole floor here — we’re actually expanding so that we can fit over 120 people on this floor, and the majority of them will be Alaskans,” Wulff said.

So why did Oil Search come to Alaska? The company operates all the producing oil fields in Papua New Guinea. But the bulk of what it’s invested in there is gas  — it’s a partner in a major LNG project there — so the company decided it needed to balance its portfolio. True to its name, Wulff said Oil Search came to Alaska searching for more oil.

“Gas projects — as the state’s finding out right now — often take many years to come to fruition, whereas oil projects are a lot quicker to market, so it’s very important for any company to have a balance between oil and gas,” Wulff said.

It might not seem like Papua New Guinea and Alaska have much in common. But Wulff said his company sees a lot of similarities.

“Papua New Guinea is one of the most challenging places to work on the planet. It’s very remote, very mountainous, there are no roads, there is no infrastructure to speak of. And everything has to be brought in on helicopters and such,” Wulff explained.

Beyond logistics, Wulff said Oil Search has experience negotiating with local communities living near where the company wants to drill. Wulff thinks in some ways, communities in Papua New Guinea and communities on the North Slope have similar values.

“[They are] very passionate about their environment, very passionate about their way of life. And so an important part there — and a strong analogy between Papua New Guinea and Alaska — is the commitment and passion of the local community to their areas, and that’s something you’ve got to respect and be very cognizant of,” Wulff said.

Wulff said Oil Search’s discussions with Nuiqsut — the community closest to the company’s first planned development — are still in their infancy. Kuukpik, the village corporation for Nuiqsut, has spoken in favor of the development, but records from public meetings show that some in the community have concerns about the project’s potential impacts.

“We’ve been doing a lot of listening,” Wulff said.

And that’s not the only remaining issue. Oil Search wants to drill a few more appraisal wells to get a better idea of how much oil it’s actually sitting on.

“Look, I think it’s still a long way to go before people understand how big this field is,” Wulff said. “Our company is quite a conservative company. We don’t over-promote and we don’t over-promise. Our style is much more to under-promise and over-deliver.”

Depending on whether and how all the details come together, it’s possible that by 2023, a Papua New Guinea company could begin producing from one of the biggest oil developments in Alaska’s history.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @aprn

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BOEM seeks input on Beaufort leasing; plan still pending

Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is beginning work on a lease sale next year in Arctic waters, even though the larger plan for offshore leasing is still a draft proposal.

Why a Papua New Guinea company is taking over one of Alaska’s biggest oil fields

Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

An oil project in the Arctic may seem like an odd leap for a company from an island nation in the South Pacific. But in a recent interview, the newly-minted president of Oil Search Alaska, Keiran Wulff, said the company is serious about its new venture.

The state budget is stuck in House over majority division

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

Since the majority couldn’t  agree on the dividend, it can’t agree on the overall size of the budget. The added dividend money would cost $892 million.

In Anchorage mayor’s race, divergent stances on same set of topics

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The race’s two major candidates have put crime and the economy at the center of the election, but disagree on the best policies for the city.

Alaskan Brewing Company unsure how steel, aluminum tariffs will affect manufacturing

David Purdy, KTOO – Juneau

As the Trump administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs take effect, the Alaskan Brewing Company is unsure what effect they’ll have – if any. The company employs about 100 people making beer in Juneau.

New state Forest Service leader has Alaska experience

Ed Schoenfeld, CoastAlaska – Juneau

“We spent 23 years together in Alaska and just having an opportunity to come back and re-engage with folks and work on Alaska issues has just been a dream of mine,” said incoming Regional Forester David Schmid.

The Cost of Cold: Staying warm in Nome

Elizabeth Jenkins, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

As the Bering Strait becomes more accessible, the mayor of Nome says there’s an upside to less sea ice.

In Nome, people stay warm in a variety of ways. They collect driftwood along the beach in the summer months, shipping pallets are burned in stoves and heating fuel arrives by barge in the summer and fall.

In 2012, an early storm prevented an oil tanker from making that delivery. But as the Bering Strait becomes more accessible, the mayor of Nome says there’s an upside to less sea ice.

Richard Beneville spends $250 dollars heating his house every month of the year with diesel.

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The Cost of Cold is a series from Alaska’s Energy Desk about how Alaskans around the state heat their homes. Reporter Elizabeth Jenkins produced this story in Nome.

The Alaska House hasn’t taken any action on the budget since Monday. That’s when the body more than doubled the size of the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend.

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The House voted 21 to 19 to set the PFD at roughly $2,700. The vote split both caucuses.

It was a particularly difficult split for the majority.

Since the majority couldn’t agree on the dividend, it can’t agree on the overall size of the budget. The added dividend money would cost $892 million.

The split has opened up the majority to criticism. House Minority Leader Charisse Millett, an Anchorage Republican, questioned the majority’s capacity to act.

“The three Republicans organized with the Democrats and independents because they had the plan. They had the votes. They were all aligned on Alaska’s future. And we’re seeing now that that alignment is not there,” Millett said. “Unfortunately, when you are in leadership and you are the speaker, it’s your obligation with 22 people to get a budget passed with 21.”

House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham Democrat, said the majority is working to come to a consensus on both the size of the budget and the PFD.

Edgmon voted to increase the PFD amount. But he said the closeness of the vote shows a growing sense that PFDs will have to be lower as part of a broader budget solution.

“I count it as being historic, because a couple of years ago … that vote easily could have been 35 to 5 as opposed to 21 to 19, if it had even come to the floor at all,” he said. “So, things are changing in Alaska.”

Edgmon said the House will send the budget to the Senate “soon,” but he didn’t say exactly when.

The Alaska Senate passed a resolution Wednesday calling on the federal government to take steps to increase the harvest of sea otters in Southeast Alaska.

Senate Joint Resolution 13 is sponsored by Sitka Republican senator Bert Stedman.

It asks the federal government to transfer management responsibility to the state government or National Marine Fisheries Service, instead of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

It also urges federal agencies to work with the state and other interest groups to produce a management plan for otters, recognizing their impact on crab, clams, urchins and other sea creatures.

Stedman was glad Wednesday to see his resolution pass in the Senate.

“I think it’s reflected across the state that we’re getting impacted on the coast with sea otters, in particular Southeast but even beyond that and other members of the Senate want to help try to get some balance in the system, which we don’t seem to have right now,” Stedman said.

Otters are a protected species under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Only coastal Alaska Natives are allowed to hunt the animals and sell products made from their pelts that are “significantly altered.”

The resolution asks for changes to the federal law to expand the definition for Alaska Natives to qualify to hunt otters and relax restrictions on sale and export of their pelts.

The federal law already permits transfer of management to states, but only under certain conditions.

Stedman hopes the federal government takes notice of the state resolution and takes steps to change the law.

“And particularly working on the definition of significantly altered and allow folks to sell and trade full hides that are cured or tanned, and also relax some of the enforcement dealing with other modifications that are required,” Stedman said. “Otherwise we’re gonna continue to see either a stagnant or further decline in harvest rates (of otters).”

Commercial fishing organizations and the communities of Petersburg and Wrangell support changes to the law because of otter predation on commercially caught species.

Others oppose state involvement in the management of otters. The resolution has drawn opposition from the Organized Village of Kake along with the Alaska Sea Otter and Stellar Sea Lion Commission, a statewide group formed to protect traditional uses of those animals by Alaska Natives.

Otters in Southeast were hunted to near extinction by the fur trade but reintroduced by the state in the 1960s.

A population of 400 animals moved to the Southeast Panhandle has grown to number more than 25,000.

Eleven other senators signed on with Stedman to sponsor an amended version of the resolution. It passed the Senate by a 20-0 vote. It goes on to the House next for consideration.

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The state is about to go to work responding to Bethel’s pothole predicament. Starting Thursday, the Department of Transportation will begin repairing Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway. The warm winter has wreaked similar havoc on highways across Alaska.

They’ll start by ripping down into the Bethel highway’s most heavily damaged areas between City Hall and Brown’s Slough.

“What we’re going to do is mill it up; we’re gonna shape it and get it in good shape. It’ll be more of a gravel/recycled asphalt product,” Shannon McCarthy, Department of Transportation spokesperson, explained.

The road will stay in that condition with the city grading the product until the entire highway is repaved next summer in 2019. DOT will fill the rest of the highway potholes with recycled asphalt. The DOT has a small stockpile of the material in Bethel and has brought it indoors to thaw.

The road’s destruction happened quickly.

“We’ve been trying to keep up with the potholes, and obviously they’re forming faster than we can keep up,” McCarthy said.

Over the past month, Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway has crumbled into a cratered moonscape. It’s the same story all over the state. The problem is how warm this winter has been. Instead of temperatures dropping below freezing and staying there, they’ve been fluctuating above and below that point for months.

“We didn’t used to get that freeze/thaw [in] November, December, January, February. And we’re getting more of that,” McCarthy said. “And unfortunately, that contributes to that potholing that we get in the spring.”

This issue has been escalating for years as winters have grown warmer, forcing the state to spend more money on road maintenance. The DOT is paying for the Bethel repairs with a $70,000 emergency procurement. Even so, the DOT expects more potholes to form once they’re done. The roads are still wet; there’s plenty more snow to melt; and the freeze/thaw cycle is continuing.

Last week KYUK reported that the DOT’s webpage for reporting potholes did not list contacts for any Western Alaska communities. This week the DOT is adding an email address for anyone in the state to use to report a pothole: dot.potholes@alaska.gov

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is preparing an Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Pebble mine, and the Walker administration is asking for more time to comment on it.

The proposed gold and copper mine would sit upstream from Bristol Bay. Gov. Bill Walker has said he doesn’t support the mine and believes the priority should be on the region’s salmon.

The Corps announced a “scoping” period that would last the month of April. During those 30 days, the Corps plans to identify the areas and concerns it will focus on in its environmental study.

Alaska Natural Resources Commissioner Andy Mack is asking that the scoping period be three or four months.

In a letter to the Alaska commander of the Corps of Engineers, Mack said a 30-day scoping period isn’t adequate for the scale of the project. Mack described it as “an open-pit mine, a mile across, near the headwaters of the most prolific salmon fishery in the world.”

The Pebble Limited Partnership says it’s committed to minimal impact and says its latest design incorporates new environmental safeguards.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @aprn

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Walker admin says Corps moving too fast on Pebble

Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Washington D.C.

The proposed gold and copper mine would sit upstream from Bristol Bay. Gov. Bill Walker has said he doesn’t support the mine and believes the priority should be on the region’s salmon.

Reactions to Vote By Mail mixed as deadline approaches

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

As Anchorage residents test out the city’s first Vote By Mail election, reviews are mixed. The system is not without kinks so far. But the experiment is proceeding steadily toward its April third deadline.

Bethel highway repair begins as warm winter destroys state roads across Alaska

Anna Rose MacArthur, KYUK – Bethel

Starting Thursday, the Department of Transportation will begin repairing Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway. The warm winter has wreaked similar havoc on highways across Alaska.

Palmer police expansion would be costly, as Valley grapples with crime

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Thousands of people in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough just outside the city limits of Wasilla and Palmer are not covered by city police and rely solely on overworked Alaska State Troopers.

Seattle-based medevac operator adds life-saving service for Alaskans

June Leffler, KSTK – Wrangell

A new, life-saving service has just been added to some medevac aircraft in Southeast Alaska. Airlift Northwest is now offering blood transfusions on two planes stationed in Juneau.

Alaska Senate passes Stedman’s sea otter resolution

Joe Viechnicki, KFSK – Petersburg

The Alaska Senate passed a resolution Wednesday calling on the federal government to take steps to increase the harvest of sea otters in Southeast Alaska. Senate Joint Resolution 13 is sponsored by Sitka Republican senator Bert Stedman.

Southeast island man charged with shooting at herring boat

Associated Press

A resident of a remote southeast Alaska island has been arrested on charges of firing shots at a fishing vessel.

Army begins decommissioning Fort Greely’s Cold War-era nuclear power plant

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

Army officials have begun the years-long process of decommissioning Alaska’s first and only nuclear power plant, located at Fort Greely.

Haines Raptor Center plans new aviary

Daysha Eaton, KHNS – Haines

The American Bald Eagle Foundation Raptor Center and Natural History Museum in Haines houses three American bald eagles: Arden, Vega and Bella. But the existing spaces where the largest birds live are less than ideal, and so the center will build a new aviary.

As Anchorage residents test out the city’s first Vote By Mail election, reviews are mixed. So far, the system is not without kinks. But the experiment is proceeding steadily toward its April 3rd deadline.

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It’s been more than two years since the Anchorage Assembly approved a measure in December of 2015 that set the wheels in motion for a mail-in voting system. Since then, the city clerk’s office has steadily tried to raise awareness about the big change in how residents exercise their civic duty.

But that doesn’t mean everyone is on the same page about the switch.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” Alex Jorgensen said outside the student union at the University of Alaska Anchorage campus.

“I do think it is an absolutely terrible idea for our city,” Sterling Emmal said at the midtown Barnes and Noble.

“I mean if it works it would be great,” Kim Branson said standing outside the same book store. “A lot more convenient than having to hunt down where your voting place is.”

“It makes it easier, but doesn’t necessarily mean better,” Victoria Anderson said in midtown. “I’m going to miss meeting up with my neighbors. I like going to vote, I kind of look forward to seeing people I only see there.”

Ballots were mailed out to residents in mid-March, allowing for about three weeks before they need to be sent back in or dropped off at secure locations. That is, if the mailing address on file was correct. Around 18,000 ballots were sent back to the Clerk’s office because of outdated voter information.

For Garrison Theroux, who lives in town, the new system generated a more minor headache.

“I’m sure it’s convenient for a lot of people, but I actually get my mail out in Eagle River at my parents’ house,” Theroux explained. “So I have to drive out to Eagle River and then drive back to vote.”

Security has been a very public concern. 46 ballots were stolen from mailboxes and found in the snow earlier this month in Chugiak. The incident was quickly handled by election officials, but it embodied many residents worries that a general city-wide issue with mail theft could affect election results.

The clerk’s office says it has taken many precautions to ensure a secure vote. That includes placing locked drop boxes across town, and opening five centers spread throughout the municipality to handle ballot issues.

Some residents though, contend that the election shouldn’t rely on the mail system.

Josiah Nash believes that because the return envelopes require a first-class stamp, it amounts to having to pay money just to vote.

“I think it really hinders the accessibility of voting,” Nash said outside the UAA student union. “Especially for people who are poor, or do not have access to a car. Vote By Mail you have to have a mailbox and you have to buy stamps.”

Nash says the new system may even violate residents’ civil rights. As of yet, that’s not a point that has swayed the American Civil Liberties Union in Alaska. A spokesperson for the group, Casey Reynolds, wrote in an email that they are monitoring the new election system and has some concerns, but nothing that currently rises to the level of a potential lawsuit.

Supporters of Vote By Mail say that it streamlined a lot of work that goes into running polling stations on election day, and gives voters more time to learn about the candidates and issues.

Even though she was put off by needing postage to return her ballot, Cheyenne Mathews doesn’t think the old way of doing things was perfect, either.

“At first I was like, ‘Oh well, that’s a new and unfortunate system if you have to pay to vote,’ but then I guess the theory behind it is, if everyone already in the past had to go to a registered voter station and actually be there, it’s really very similar to saying you have to go to a registered voter box and just drop it off there,” Mathews said.

One of the biggest reasons for switching to Vote By Mail was to try and increase turnout among registered voters in Anchorage, which can be abysmally low in local elections. In 2013, just 20 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

As of Wednesday night, the Clerk’s office had received 35,054 ballots — that’s 17.7 percent of the 198,000 mailed to the city’s qualified voters, with almost a week remaining until the April 3rd deadline.

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Thousands of people in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough just outside the city limits of Wasilla and Palmer are not covered by city police and rely solely on overworked Alaska State Troopers.

As residents of the ever-growing borough grapple for solutions to spiking crime, one idea is expanding the cities’ police service to those outer areas. But, at least in Palmer, city officials say that would be expensive, difficult and unlikely to happen any time soon.

About 7,000 people live inside Palmer city limits. It would nearly double the police department’s budget — adding an estimated $3 million every year — to provide police service to another 6,500 people in unincorporated areas nearby, according to a study compiled by the police department at the city’s request.

The idea has come up at recent town hall meetings in the area, Palmer City Manager Nathan Wallace said.

“It’s not going to be easy or quick, whatever happens,” Wallace said.

The Palmer City Council took up the issue this week with a brief discussion on the study. They found that an expansion would likely require the annexation of outlying areas or a contract with the borough to pay for more police officers, Wallace said. Either idea might be unpopular and increase property taxes, he said.

“It’s not something that we would just go out and say, ‘OK, we’re going to provide some police services, thank you very much.’ It’s something that has to start really at the citizens’ level, (those) that live outside the cities,” Wallace said.

The talks in Palmer are just one part of a broader discussion on crime and policing in the surrounding Mat-Su Borough. A recent study by the University of Alaska Anchorage Justice Center shows staffing of Alaska State Troopers in the region is one trooper per 2,000 residents, less than a third of the national average.

In a letter to the Alaska Legislature and Gov. Bill Walker this week, Borough Mayor Vern Halter described the situation in one subdivision just outside Wasilla as “a public safety emergency.” Halter said the state needs to fund more trooper positions in the borough.

Alaska Seaplanes recently announced that they will add a new flight between Juneau and Whitehorse. This is a big deal for travelers in Southeast Alaska because it opens up international travel directly from the capital city, which hasn’t existed for some time.

Alaska Seaplanes General Manager Carl Ramseth says he hopes his company will begin flying to Canada’s Yukon Territory soon.

“We are very excited about this flight. We look forward to being able to announce the days of the week and the times of day,” Ramseth said.

Ramseth says the company is still waiting for authority from Transport Canada to receive their foreign air operator’s certificate which will allow Alaska Seaplanes to operate scheduled flights into Whitehorse.

Ramseth says the company has been working on the Juneau-Whitehorse route since 2015.

Zoe Morrison is a Whitehorse resident who used to live in Juneau and travels back and forth for recreation.

“People from Juneau love going to Whitehorse. And people from Whitehorse love going to Juneau,” Morrison said.

Morrison usually drives to Skagway and takes the ferry, but she says she is really looking forward to the time-saving flight.

“I’m very excited about it. It’s a two-hour drive from Whitehorse to Skagway and then it is a seven-hour ferry trip and it takes all day, and it is lovely traveling by ferry, but the flight, I understand it is going to be 45 minutes long,” Morrison said. “It’s going to really improve your ability to travel to one of the communities for the weekend.”

Morrison is betting that flying will be around the same price as driving, then taking the ferry.

Passengers will travel the 169 air miles aboard a Pilatus PC-12, which seats nine.

The Swiss-built, single-engine, turbo-prop plane is fully-pressurized and can travel 300 miles per hour and climb 2,000 feet per minute. It can fly at altitudes close to 30,000 feet.

Scott McMurren is an Anchorage Daily News travel columnist. He also publishes the Alaska Travelgram, an email travel newsletter, and the Alaska Tour Saver travel discount book. He says the plane will offer the most luxurious ride in the region.

“It is a nice plane,” McMurren said. “It is just one and one, every seat is an aisle and a window. It is not crowded, but it really is a comfy seat and a comfy ride. It has got the little air things and the little overhead lights just like a regular—it’s basically your own private executive plane.”

Juneau and Whitehorse are sister cities and McMurren says the flight could open up all kinds of new exchanges—economic, educational and cultural.

And the flight also improves air travel times and costs between Anchorage and Whitehorse. Currently, passengers have to fly from Anchorage to Vancouver, BC then on to Whitehorse and vice versa.

McMurren adds that the flight could also provide a new gateway for Alaskans to European travel. Condor Airlines has a weekly flight direct between Whitehorse and Frankfurt, Germany.

Typically, cholera is associated with tropical destinations. But recently, the bacteria that can cause the disease was found in subsistence herring eggs in British Columbia, and the Canadian Department of Fisheries issued an emergency closure.

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There are no easy answers about what caused the outbreak. But as Southeast Alaska tribes get ready to gather herring eggs, it’s left some people wondering about the future.

Jeff Feldpausch thinks it’s only a matter of days until the herring will spawn in the bay. He’s taken measures to make sure the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, where he works, doesn’t miss out.

A few hemlock branches are already in the water, ready for the herring to deposit their eggs.

Feldpausch thinks it’s a food best eaten fresh, and he’s not the only one.

“I have to remind my staff, as we’re pulling the branches out of the water, that they need to leave some, because they’re sitting there eating them,” Feldpausch said with a chuckle. “They need to leave some for distributions.”

The Sitka Tribe gives out the distributions to elders and the community through its traditional food program.

Spring is an important time for First Nations people in Canada, too. Herring eggs are a beloved subsistence food. But as of March 23, there were at least three confirmed cases of people feeling ill after eating them near Vancouver Island.

The lab results that came back were unusual. Disease-causing Vibrio cholera doesn’t typically originate in developed countries, like Canada.

Feldpausch says the news about the herring eggs came as a surprise.

“It’s something I haven’t heard of before,” Feldpausch said. “It initially got me thinking, ‘is this something we’re going to see region wide?’”

According to the First Nations Health Authority, the bacteria was “likely limited to the area.” Still, seeing the words “cholera” and “herring eggs” together is pretty alarming.

Kate Helfrich — with the Alaska Department of Epidemiology — says in this case, there’s still a lot we don’t know.

“If you google search ‘definition of cholera,’ what you’re going to come up with is ‘it’s a gastrointestinal illness that creates crazy epidemics.’” Helfrich said. “But really, we don’t know yet if we’re talking about cholera.”

So, to backup a little, Vibrio is basically this big category of bacteria. It’s naturally occurring in the waters of Alaska and Canada. But some species of Vibrio can cause human infections, and warmer water temperatures can cause it cause it grow.

In Alaska, people have gotten sick from consuming it in uncooked shellfish, like oysters.

What was discovered in the herring eggs in British Columbia was Vibrio cholera, a sub category, which can seem scary.

“But within that species of Vibrio cholerae, there are more that 200 sero groups.” Helfrich said.

Helfrich says only two of those groups are commonly associated with what you might think of when you think of cholera. So far, health agencies in Canada haven’t been able to pin that down.

It’s usually linked to fecal matter contaminating the water.

“We don’t know yet if it’s the cholera scourge illness that we think of in epidemic settings,” Helfrich said.

Helfrich says it’s impossible to speculate what conditions caused this rare type of bacteria to pop up. Warmer ocean temperatures can play a role.

Whether that was a factor with the herring eggs in Canada, she says it’s “tough to say.”

“I know when I think of climate change, researchers predict climate change is going to cause a variety of changes in our ecosystem,” Helfrich said. “And increasing temperatures can affect the incidents and it can impact the spread.”

In Sitka, Jeff Feldpausch says he feels safe harvesting herring eggs this year.

“I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t be unless the results come out in Canada that it’s something a little farther reaching other just a localized incident,” Feldpausch said.

In an emailed statement, Vancouver Island Health Authority said an investigation was underway.

This week we’re hearing from Mary Ellen Frank in Juneau. Frank is a doll maker and director/curator of Aunt Claudia’s Dolls a local Museum.

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FRANK: There was something about the Native culture that I was really interested in. I took a doll-making workshop up here with an Eskimo artist, Dolly Spencer, and after I did that, I kinda just expanded what I did. I ended up doing an apprenticeship in Tennessee with a doll-maker for a period of time and studied with her. That was kinda the end of my state job and the beginning of my working as an artist.

You know, there’s a lot of my work in this doll museum. These are some that I’m working on right now, I’m just about finished with. These are two dolls of a local woman, Helen Watkins. One shortly before she died. This is of her slightly earlier and these are commissioned pieces. And then this is a woman, Maggie Kadanaha, from Klukwan.

This whole area here is dolls that I made, and a lot of these have been commissioned by other people but then loaned back to the museum.

You can see so much about a culture from looking at these dolls. Also, I’ve learned so much. I’ve always wondered why did they have fish skin bottom soles to mucklucks or even fish skin mucklucks, but then when I saw the Icelandic dolls had fish skin shoes, Russian dolls have basketry shoes and Sami or Norwegian dolls have reindeer fur on the bottom of their shoes. It started to come together for me that there would be great traction from all of those elements in snow and ice.

So you know, you kinda learn stuff by looking at the clothing that dolls provide. People don’t wear a lot of this clothing anymore, but you know, you get a picture of where it came from.