Xtratufs, Bogs, Muck Boots — comfortable, waterproof footwear is pretty much a necessity here in Juneau. But not for the local some know as “the barefoot guy.”

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“Oh yeah, barefoot guy! What’s the story?” Juneau resident Michael Boyer said. “Is he a hobbit? Is he into New Age spiritual stuff? Don’t his feet get cold?”

Boyer lives in the neighborhood above Juneau-Douglas High School. As he’s out walking his dog or with his kids day-to-day, he’s noticed a certain walker who also frequents the area.

“Rain, shine, 10 degrees, 70 degrees, uh, never any shoes,” Boyer said after submitting his question to KTOO’s Curious Juneau. He wanted to know more about the mysterious man whose bare footprints crisscross the neighborhood.

One 30-degree day, I had my own sighting downtown near the State Office Building. The ground was slick with ice, and across the street, a bearded man in cargo shorts was walking — without shoes.

I introduced myself and he laughed in a “not again” kind of way.

I met Ezra Strong on a sunny day in late March for a hike along Dredge Lake Trail. Several inches of snow were on the ground. He wore shorts, a light pullover and, of course, no shoes.

Strong grew up in Tenakee Springs, the youngest of six kids. He’s 29 and works in IT for the Juneau School District, where he has to wear sandals.

Strong’s brought a book with him for the hike, just something he pulled off the shelf at home. He often reads while he walks.

As we set off, I noticed pretty quickly that Strong seemed to fair better than me in a lot of the slushy spots.

“Stuff like this, I’m probably better off than most people in shoes,” Strong said. “Actual real ice? Not so much.”

Strong said he would love it if they made micro spikes for bare feet, but he makes do.

Gravel sticking to his feet is probably the most annoying thing he deals with.

Of course, the main question is why go barefoot at all?

“My right foot is defective. I was born with a birth defect, apparently,” Strong said. “I think it has something to do with the shape of the arch.”

One of his older brothers had the same issue.

Doctors told their parents the solution was to break the foot and reset it.

Doctors did that for the brother, but by the time Strong came along, his mom hesitated.

“I guess she didn’t want to have to put another kid through having his foot broken, so they just never did it to me,” Strong said. “So, getting stuff that fit me was a pain.”

Strong’s right foot is abnormally wide. And people with weirdly shaped feet just don’t have a lot of options.

As a kid growing up in a rural community, running around without shoes was no big deal.

Strong moved to Fairbanks for college. Winters were colder and he didn’t have a car.

For the first time, his feet started drawing attention.

A reporter for the student newspaper at the University of Alaska Fairbanks did a story on him.

Then the questions really started up.

“Facebook and that sort of thing were just becoming a thing,” he said. “I started getting these weird emails from people on the East Coast who had read this.”

Strong doesn’t understand the fascination with his feet.

For him, it’s always been about comfort.

Strong experimented with different sizes, styles and brands, but nothing works. He owns a pair of 15-year-old running shoes — They’re about two sizes too big, and the sides are almost worn away.

“The shoes hurt pretty bad too, but it’s better to have the shoe pain for 15 minutes to go jogging than it is to deal with having a shattered callus for the next three days,” Strong said.

He’s experienced mild frostbite, cuts, infections and cracked heels. He uses over-the-counter products like Flexitol, a cream with shea butter and aloe, to help heal.

But it’s not as easy as it used to be.

“As I get older, my theory, again, is my body takes a little longer to recover and to repair,” Strong said. “It’s been getting worse.”

Not long ago, he reached out to a California startup company that 3-D prints shoes.

Their custom-sizing model seemed promising. But they told him they’re in the middle of a transition period and not accepting orders.

Strong said he’s hopeful technology will eventually catch up to his feet.

In the meantime, it’s not all bad.

“I have to say, I love being a bad influence for children,” Strong said. “The idea to these children that you don’t have to wear shoes for your entire life seems to startle them and I have seen more than one child, when they see me pass, sit down on the sidewalk or the beach and start trying to pull off their own shoes.”

This week we’re hearing from Victoria Petersen in Anchorage. Petersen is our intern this spring, and next week she’ll be launching the print version of her hyperlocal news blog, The Spenardian.

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PETERSEN: I was born and raised on Spenard, and I know that neighborhood very well, and I wanted to know my neighbors better and I wanted to know my place better. And I think the best way to do that is to completely immerse yourself in the neighborhood and report the stories you think are important for those people and let those people report on stories that are important to them as well. Giving them a medium to do that has been really satisfying.

It’s important for the people who live there, that they know what’s going on with their community council. Different resolutions that they’re passing, different things that are opening up or shutting in their neighborhood are things that people that live there are always gonna wanna know first.

The history is my favorite part about Spenard because it’s just wild. So the city of Anchorage was built as a railroad town to start building the railroad, developing Alaska and Spenard was just on the outskirts of that. They didn’t have the same liquor laws, or any laws really, in Spenard. So all the bootlegging that went on there… there’s tunnels to this day that still run under the streets of Spenard that were for bootlegging or… God knows what.

It’s a very interesting, secretive, kind of Wild West history that we have going on in Spenard.

I think, generally, people look down on it or think it’s a shady part of town. It’s Anchorage’s old red light district, and it’s always gonna be Anchorage’s red light district, but it’s not that anymore, necessarily. Not necessarily changing the way people think about the neighborhood, but inviting different perceptions of that, and showing them what is really going on.

I think it’s really a catalyst of community for… it’s a community effort, for sure. Because it’s not just me anymore; it’s other people helping. It’s hard, especially in this journalistic climate and this economic climate today. But, we have people that are really passionate about it and I do it out of my pocket, and I barely even sometimes. But it doesn’t matter because I love it, and I would do it for free forever because it’s just something I care about.

Dozens of U.S. and allied warplanes are assembling at Eielson Air Force Base in preparation for an upcoming round of Red Flag training exercises. But F-15s from the state of Israel will not be participating, reportedly because of rising tensions in the region.

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An Eielson Air Force Base spokesman says Israel will for the first time be participating in a Red Flag training exercise. But Lieutenant Kitsana Dounglomchan confirms that Israeli F-15s that were scheduled to take part in the exercise that gets under way later this month won’t after all.

“The Israeli Air Force will not be sending F-15s to Red Flag-Alaska 18-1, which occur from 26 April to 11 May,” Dounglomchan said in an interview Wednesday. He says he can’t say anything about why Israel decided against dispatching the warplanes to Red Flag, nor how many of the fighters the nation had intended to send.

Israeli media, which first reported the story, say national leaders decided to keep the F-15s home due to rising tensions in the region in the aftermath of Israeli military strikes against Iranian proxies in Syria. According to the media accounts, the Israel Defense Forces have placed its ground and air elements on high alert in case Iran launches a counterattack.

The accounts vary in their estimates on how many of the warplanes Israel had intended to send, ranging from a handful to more than a dozen.

Dounglomchan says the Israeli military will, however, take part in Red Flag.

“Despite this change, we’re still looking forward to hosting the Israeli contingent that will be participating in Red Flag-Alaska 18-1,” Dounglomchan said.

Dounglomchan says he can’t offer any details on how the Israeli Air Force will be participating. Media outlets say Israel will send personnel and other aircraft to Red Flag, including a KC-135 tanker variant, similar to those used by the Alaska Air National Guard’s 168th Air Refueling Wing that’s based at Eielson.

More than 60 aircraft from U.S. and allied units will take part in the upcoming Red Flag exercise, according to the Pacific Air Forces, the Alaskan Command’s higher headquarters that directs Red Flag. The aircraft will be based at both Eielson and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, and most operations will take place in a simulated combat environment in the skies above the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex.

An unknown volume of diesel fuel has spilled in Savoonga. That’s according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC), which has been dealing with more fuel spills than usual this spring.

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The trouble started over a month ago at the Savoonga Native Store tank farm. During the transfer of fuel from a large storage tank to a smaller tank, human error caused the release of 22,000 gallons of diesel heating fuel. At the time, it was believed the spill was contained and no fuel had escaped the sealed area.

But Tom DuRuyter, state on-scene coordinator for ADEC, says unfortunately that’s not the case.

“Fuel did get out of the secondary containment area,” DuRuyter said. “We don’t know exactly how it got out yet, and we don’t have a volume of how much fuel did get out.”

One thing that is certain, DeRuyter says, is that this complicates what would have been a relatively simple cleanup:

“First of all, we need to get a relative idea of how much area has been impacted, recover any oil that can be recovered out in that area, and then, we’re going to have to look at springtime cleanup activities,” DeRuyter said.

That means figuring out how to recover the spilled fuel from the snow and earth — and then what to do with the contaminated soil.

An ADEC responder will return to Savoonga soon. But first, he’s checking in on a few spills in Nome. In the last few weeks, ADEC has received reports of two home heating oil releases and a leak in the fuel supply line to the State Office Building.

DeRuyter says he’s seeing more fuel spills this spring than in an average year, and he has an idea of why that might be: an extra snowy year.

That snow builds up on rooftops throughout the winter, and when it slips off in the spring, it can break fuel lines.

DeRuyter says he wants people to know that kind of spill is easily prevented:

“We work on these spills, a couple, 2-3 of them a year, and they’re always very, very difficult and expensive to get cleaned up, and the solution to it is relatively simple, and that’s to move your tank away from your roof line where the snow slides off,” DeRuyter said.

Cleanup is ongoing in Savoonga and Nome.

After two hours of testimony and debate on Tuesday night, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly approved a five-year contract for a large timber harvest in the Trapper Creek area. Under the contract timber will be cut, trucked to Port MacKenzie and shipped to China.

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More than a dozen Trapper Creek residents and property owners turned out for the meeting, and nearly all of them shared concerns over the contract. While almost everyone testifying says harvesting the timber could be a good thing, they also believe that the road infrastructure, specifically Oilwell Road, is simply not up to the task. Chris Wood lives on Oilwell Road, and says its construction was one of expedience in the oil drilling days.

“They cut trees down, laid them across a road on top of frost heaves, and put dirt on top of it. If the trucks didn’t sink through, they moved to the next spot,” Wood said. “That is Oilwell Road; 105,000 pounds isn’t going to fly.”

That figure is the estimated gross weight of a loaded timber truck. In addition, those trucks will need about twelve feet of space to maneuver safely down the road. In many places, Oilwell Road isn’t much wider than that, making passing difficult. While there are plans for turnouts and clearing to increase visibility, that plan has not yet been made public. The public process in general is also a cause for criticism for some in the area of the timber harvest. Donna Massay, who serves on the Trapper Creek Road Service Area advisory board, says the locals should have been a bigger part of the process for the new contract.

“Why can’t we have a public hearing in our community with the community council—be listened to?” Massay asked. “If it had happened at the beginning of this, we would not be there tonight. It would have been solved on a local level. You would have had a good process. This is not a good process.”

A third source of criticism is what happened last time Chijuk Creek was leased. Ronnie Bell, who owns property on Oilwell Road, says evidence of poor execution of the last timber contract is right out in the open as you travel the road.

“You’ve seen all the logs laying out there, all the waste, and it’s still laying there,” Bell said. “Is this going to be a summary of the next thing? It’s going to happen again?”

Not everyone spoke against the contract. Don Dyer, head of the Mat-Su Economic Development Corporation, says revenue from the contract, particularly to Port Mackenzie, is very important.

“A million dollars a year of revenue to this borough, revenue that supports the lifestyle in Trapper Creek and Talkeetna,” Dyer said. “For the rest of the borough, it pays for our schools.”

The public testimony had a clear impact on the borough assembly. Assembly Member George McKee says he supports the concept of the contract, but that there are too many unanswered questions.

“It has been fast-tracked, and there are real problems that could have been addressed and should be addressed. The transportation problem is something that has to be addressed,” McKee said.

While the contract is now approved, it won’t go into effect until the borough’s planning department approves a transportation plan. After a lengthy debate over whether that approval should rest with the assembly instead of staff, a promise from Borough Manager John Moosey to report on the public feedback regarding the plan before its approval was enough to sway all but Assembly Members George McKee and Jim Sykes.

Once the borough releases the proposed transportation plan, the public has thirty days to comment.

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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Israel pulls warplanes from Red Flag training exercises due to rising regional tensions

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

Dozens of U.S. and allied warplanes are assembling at Eielson Air Force Base in preparation for an upcoming round of Red Flag training exercises. But F-15s from the nation of Israel will not be participating, reportedly because of rising tensions in the region.

Cleanup continues for fuel spills in Savoonga and Nome

Zoe Grueskin, KNOM – Nome

An unknown volume of diesel fuel has spilled in Savoonga.

Mat-Su Borough Assembly approves Chijuk Creek timber contract

Phillip Manning, KTNA – Talkeetna

After two hours of testimony and debate on Tuesday night, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly approved a five-year contract for a large timber harvest in the Trapper Creek area.

State renews Pebble land use permit

Avery Lill, KDLG – Dillingham

The Alaska Department of Natural resources made two announcements yesterday related to mineral development in Bristol Bay.

Fairbanks students need parents’ permission to participate in walkout, district says

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

Today, students organized across the country in solidarity with national high school walkouts expressing alarm over gun violence, including in Fairbanks.

Washington State ferries to look harder at diesel to electric conversion

Tom Banse, NNN – Oregon

Now that electric cars are a common sight on the nation’s highways, and prototypes exist for electric trucks and airplanes, could electric ferries be next?

Alaska ferry officials consider fuel alternatives

Ed Schoenfeld, CoastAlaska – Juneau

Alaska officials have no plans to convert state ferries to electrical power. But they’re installing engines that could use natural gas as well as diesel.

Alaska Airlines sets new limits on emotional support animals

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The policy change, which starts May 1, includes requiring a signed affidavit that the animal is trained to behave in public and that the owner accepts liability for its actions. Passengers with emotional support animals will also now have to provide all documentation to Alaska Airlines at least 48 hours before their flight.

AK: What’s the deal with Juneau’s barefoot guy?

Adelyn Baxter, KTOO – Juneau

Xtratufs, Bogs, Muck Boots — comfortable, waterproof footwear is pretty much a necessity here in Juneau. But not for the local some know as “the barefoot guy.”

49 Voices: Victoria Petersen of Anchorage

Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

This week we’re hearing from Victoria Petersen in Anchorage. Petersen is our intern this spring, and next week she’ll be launching the print version of her hyperlocal news blog, The Spenardian.

Wilderness, pasture, human habitat, wildlife habitat — what if we combined all those functions?  What if we called “invasive” species “successful” species instead? Scary? You bet! But doesn’t climate warming and over-population already have us scared? On the next Talk of Alaska, we’ll continue hearing controversial arguments for re-aligning how we think about the human-altered environment.

HOST: Steve Heimel

GUESTS:

• Chris D. Thomas – Professor of Conservation Biology, University of York, author of “Inhertors of the Earth, How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction”
• Mark Nelson – Chairman of the Institute of Ecotechnics, crew member of the two-year closure of Biosphere 2, 1991-93, author of “Pushing Our Limits, Insights from Biosphere 2.

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, April 24, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

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

When people think of Alaska seafood, salmon and halibut come to mind. But the state also produces a lesser-known fish product sought after all around the world: surimi, the base for imitation crab.

Now the guy who helped establish surimi in America — more than 30 years ago — is on a mission to improve how it’s made.

Tyre Lanier is a food scientist at at North Carolina State University, where he’s been since the 1970s. He has a background in the science of hot dogs.

So, working on seafood initially was a bit of a stretch for him.

“I started off trying to make hot dogs out of fish believe it or not,” Lanier said. “Then I heard about surimi.”

Or as Lanier refers to it, “the hot dog of sea.”

For thousands of years, surimi seafood has been part of Japanese cuisine. Sometimes referred to as kamaboko, it comes in a variety of flavors and shapes.

You probably know it as the fake crab meat in most California rolls. But until just a few decades ago, you could scarcely find surimi seafood in the United States.

Lanier says there were a few reasons why early 1980s America seemed ready to adopt a version of the food. One of them was the king crab fishery in Kodiak was on the verge of collapse, and the food industry was in a race to supply an alternative.

“So they said, ‘OK, here’s this imitation that looks very much and taste very much like king crab. We can’t get king crab. Let’s bring this stuff from Japan and flood it into that market.’” Lanier said.

There was also huge potential to produce surimi domestically from pollock in the Bering Sea. But first, the state’s fisheries would have come on board. Lanier visited Alaska to talk about the possibility.

Surimi didn’t get a warm reception.

“It was basically like ‘what is that stuff?’ and ‘we’ll never do that in the United States’,” Lanier said. “And I knew that is was going to be done here because we were buying all this imitation crab from Japan and it was taking off like a rocket.”

Eventually though, companies came around to Lanier’s way of thinking. And the first surimi processor opened in Kodiak in 1985. Lanier credits the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation for taking an early lead.

And now, decades later, Lanier has another big idea for Alaska. He says surimi plants are losing profits down the drain, literally. Around 40 percent of the soluble protein — from the surimi making process — winds up in the water.

“Whether it’s good or bad for the environment, I’m not qualified to say,” Lanier said. “But whether or not it’s good for food waste? It’s terrible.”

Lanier says that wasted product could account for upwards of $60 million dollars of savings each year.

Then, there’s the impact on the ocean. According to Alaska Sea Grant, the surimi wash water can form an “oxygen-depleted goo” and “smother marine life.”

“You can look at Google Earth and look down on the vicinity of any surimi plant, and some of these are quite large, and on a given day you’ll see a big white cloud in the water,” Lanier said.

So, to reduce waste, he helped develop a technology to recapture the solids.

“Imagine making cheese. You make cheese and you get curds and whey, like Little Miss Muffet” Lanier said. “Well, we’re doing the same thing. We basically have surimi whey.”

And that “surimi whey” can be turned into a lower-grade surimi product. Lanier says the water that filters into the ocean would run crystal clear.

Trident Seafoods has already shown interest.

Lanier thinks, for surimi producers, this technology is a win-win.

“It solves many problems and it creates much more product for them,” Lanier said. “For the same amount of fish, the same amount of money they’ve spent catching those fish, they can now make more product.”

Lanier doesn’t think America’s love affair with imitation crab will go away anytime soon, and now there’s now a more efficient way of getting it to market.

Homer has a housing problem. Like many rural Alaskan communities, finding a place to live can be a challenge. But the growing tourism industry may be making it more difficult for year-round residents to find long-term housing. With just a handful of hotels in town, visitors have been relying on Air B&Bs and other vacation rentals. That demand may mean fewer rental options for Homer residents to choose from.

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Anna Vanbuskirk is on the hunt for housing during the worst time of year to be looking for a rental in Homer, but after moving to town two years ago, she’s use to the scramble every spring.

“The first year I didn’t find anything really, and I ended up living in a 1978 tour bus on a gentlemen’s property because I couldn’t find housing with my dog and I,” Vanbuskirk said.

Vanbuskirk has moved four times since then, and she has just two weeks to find another place for the summer. Situations like hers seem to be more common. Daniel Yager with Homer Property Management said several people come in with the same story every spring.

“They showed up in the offseason, they found a nice vacation rental that was going for a decent market price. When they talk to the owner, they expressed great interest in long-term tenancy, and those owners told them whatever they needed to hear,” Yager explained. “At the end of the six-month term, the tenant basically just got the notice that the lease agreement isn’t extending and they must move out by this day at this time.”

Vanbuskirk said she moved into her house knowing it was just for the winter, but others are moving unexpectedly. Kelli Parker moved into her current house last fall with a six-month lease and the promise that she could sign on for a full year come the spring.

Parker signed a year-long lease at the beginning of April, but couple days later, she was told her landlord had not signed the lease because he plans to list the house on Air B&B.

“I signed the lease and handed it back to him, not thinking I needed to have him sign his part right then,” Parker recalled. “After so many confirmations over the winter by email and then a personal one-on-one confirmation, I just didn’t see it as that important. I just took him at his word.”

Gina Pelaia at Bay Reality said she’s been getting more calls every year from frantic renters like Parker.

“I know sometimes when I first answer the phone they say, ‘This isn’t a seasonal place, is it? We aren’t going to have to move out in May are we?’” Pelaia said.

Pelaia said more vacation rentals are making the long-term rental market incredibly competitive.

“This time of year, I’d say we’re closer to a 1 percent vacancy rate. More in the winter, we’re looking at probably less than a 5 percent vacancy rate,” Pelaia added. “I manage about 150 properties, and I think I have two available apartments right now.”

More property owners are capitalizing on the demand for vacation rentals in the summer. According to data Air B&B shared with KBBI, the number of listings in the Homer area have grown over 500 percent since 2014, with 160 hosts listing 250 properties. Almost all of those are either apartments or complete houses.

What seems to be driving the growth is profit.

“On a monthly rental, the three properties, you bring in around $30,000. On a vacation rental, you can bring in about $60,000,” Kit Barnett said.

“And it’s definitely worth the work,” Barnett’s wife Phyllis chimed in.

Both Barnetts are retired teachers and they say they need the supplemental income. They listed the upper and lower levels of their duplex on Air B&B and other sites four years ago after one of their long-term tenants moved out. After that filled up consistently, they converted their small house next door from a traditional rental to an Air B&B as well.

Phyllis Barnett said she knows plenty of people are jumping into the market, but doesn’t think it’s anywhere near being saturated.

“I haven’t heard anybody complaining about their bookings,” Phyllis said with a chuckle. “I don’t know everybody, but nobody I know is complaining about it.”

Phyllis Barnett does think vacation rentals will eventually become less profitable as competition grows, but she said if that happens, she’ll turn her properties back into long-term rentals, which would be welcome relief for renters on the housing hunt.

For hundreds of years, animals and people have been buried in the frozen ground in the Arctic. Now, that permafrost is thawing and it’s exposing those bodies, and whatever killed them, to the outside world.

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Michael Bruce is a public health physician and medical epidemiologist based at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Anchorage. He told a crowd last week at the Bear Tooth Theater in Anchorage that infectious diseases are a growing threat throughout the Arctic.

“I think Louis Pasteur was right when he said “it’s the microbes that will have the last word,” Bruce said. “Or is it, it’s the zombies that will have the last word?”

Bruce spoke at length about the zombie apocalypse that could be happening in the Arctic. But, it turns out he didn’t mean the “shuffling around, eating brains, making zombie noises” kind of apocalypse.

“I think my analogy to zombies was more the ability of infectious diseases to come in and wreak havoc on populations and the planet,” Bruce said. “Not so much, reviving dead bodies to come back to life.”

Still, there are some very real threats locked up in all of that ice and frozen permafrost.

In Russia, for example, an anthrax outbreak two years ago killed one 12-year-old boy and sickened dozens of other people.

That outbreak has been linked to the region’s reindeer herds and melting permafrost.

“What happened is reindeer herders in the Yamal Peninsula were grazing their reindeer over reindeer that had died of anthrax decades or centuries ago,” Bruce said. “And they then  contracted anthrax because of this and were exposed to it because it melted out of the permafrost.”

Bruce also said that anthrax is a very resistant organism. Once it gets into the environment, it can be hard to kill. Other types of infectious diseases might be more difficult to spread.

“That’s kind of the big question, I think, is whether those bacteria and viruses survive intact,” Bruce said.

Research is showing that there are some that survive intact, but Bruce said most of them don’t appear to be causing diseases in human beings.

Still, a warming Arctic could cause Alaskans to be sickened in other ways. Bruce said there are more ticks coming into the state. The pests can hitch rides on pets or wild birds.

Bruce said the ticks do better in a warmer climate and they may be able to migrate into the state, survive and spread diseases.

The Togiak herring fishery, the state’s largest sac roe herring fishery, opened Sunday morning with a windy start.

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Gusts over 30 mph posed a challenge for fishermen, area management biologist Tim Sands said.

“The seine fleet is over there, and it’s pretty tough conditions today because of weather,”  Sands said. “I know some fish is being taken, but I don’t think a lot.”

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game surveyed the district Saturday and concluded the enough herring had arrived to meet the threshold — 35,000 tons — to open the fishery.

The combined purse seine and gillnet quota for the Togiak District sac roe fishery is 24,042 tons, slightly larger than last year’s quota.

Mostly seiners are participating. Fish and Game expects only one gillnetter to be a part of this year’s fishery.

As herring swim into the waters near Togiak, it can take some time for them to mature enough for their spawn to be marketable.

“I’ve heard reports that it’s mixed at this point. Some are mature, but not all of them,” Sands said. “And that’s typically what we see the first couple days of the fishery. There’s not a lot of mature fish around, but it takes them a couple of days to ripen up once they come into the shallow water.”

Herring fishing in Togiak is open until further notice. Fish and Game will close fishing when the fleet takes close to the quota.

The Sitka sac roe herring fishery shut down earlier this year, falling 8,330 tons short of this year’s guideline harvest level.

This is the fourth time in six years the herring fishery has shut down before meeting the quota. Early closures also happened in 2016, 2013, and 2012.

Eva Tcheripanoff — the last person born in the traditional village of Kashega — has died.

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Tcheripanoff grew up in the small Unangan community on Unalaska Island and spent the 1930s hunting foxes, eating dry fish and playing with homemade stone dolls.

That all changed during World War II, when Kashega was evacuated and never resettled. But she came through the upheaval and lived a long life of 90 years.

Eva Tcheripanoff was in her late 70s when she sat down for this interview with historian Ray Hudson.

TCHERIPANOFF: (In Unangam Tunuu and English) “I was born in Kashega and I used to play around.”

HUDSON: “Eva, when were you born in Kashega?”

TCHERIPANOFF: “1928.”

HUDSON: “And who were your parents?”

TCHERIPANOFF: “My mother was Sophie …”

Sophie Borenin was an accomplished basket weaver from Chernofski. Her father, Alec Kudrin, was a Kashega hunter who died shortly before she was born.

“We lived with my uncle,” Tcheripanoff said in the interview with Hudson. “Nobody had running water except us.”

Tcheripanoff’s Uncle William fixed up the family home with a tin sink and flush toilet, but they still lived pretty traditionally. The family spoke Unangam Tunuu. They stored their fish in bags made from sea lion stomachs. And Tcheripanoff’s mom even sewed her a kamleika from seal gut. She wore the waterproof parka while paddling around in skin boats, which were just being usurped by metal skiffs.

TCHERIPANOFF: “I used to ride in the baidarkas.”

HUDSON: “Did you?”

TCHERIPANOFF: “Yeah. I tipped over one time in the lake. I was just hollering and hollering! Finally, somebody took a baidarka and picked me up.”

Tcheripanoff was the only kid in Kashega, so she had the run of the place until 1942. That’s when the Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor, some 30 miles across Unalaska Island. After the bombings, the American government evacuated Unangan people from the Aleutian and Pribilof region, including about 20 at Kashega.

“There was no time to take anything, because we can’t wait for those planes to come back. They might bomb us, you know? That was terrible,” Tcheripanoff said in the Hudson interview.

That was also the last time Tcheripanoff saw her home. The Unangax spent the rest of the war in internment camps in southeast Alaska — and after the fighting was over, Kashega was never resettled. Tcheripanoff eventually moved to Unalaska in search of a new home. It was hard to do, but it helped that she brought her new husband with her, as she explained to Kay Deffendall on “Eye on Unalaska.”

DEFFENDALL: “Hi! This is Kay Deffendall here for another segment of ‘Eye on Unalaska.’ And this week, we’re here with John and Eva Tcheripanoff. Hi, guys!”

TCHERIPANOFFS:  “Hi.”

In this interview, on their 50th wedding anniversary, Tcheripanoff explained how she met John at the Ward Lake internment camp. He was originally from Akutan.

DEFFENDALL: “You never knew each other and then you met down in Southeast?”

TCHERIPANOFF: “Yes, we did.”

DEFFENDALL: “And fell in love immediately?”

TCHERIPANOFF: “Yeah. So we got married, and then I had my kid the same month. My oldest daughter. Fast work!”

The Tcheripanoffs had 10 children during their time together, and Eva joked that she loved her husband so much she married him three times. Once, before a judge. Again, before a priest. And finally, at a vow renewal.

DEFFENDALL: “You’ve done a lot of things in your life. You’ve seen a lot of changes out here. So are you looking forward to another 50 years?”

TCHERIPANOFF:  “Sixty years!”

When her husband died in 2000, Tcheripanoff moved from their Unalaska home to the senior center. Her daughter Julia Dushkin says it was another difficult transition.

“She missed my dad so much,” Dushkin explained.

Dushkin says Tcheripanoff made a point of being out in the community, staying active and spending time with her wide circle of friends.

“She didn’t care much to be home alone or anything like that,” Dushkin said. “She wanted to be out with friends. You know, go here and go there. Get her nails done.”

While life in modern-day Unalaska was different than Tcheripanoff’s childhood in Kashega, Dushkin says some of her favorite memories of her mother can help keep the old ways alive — at least a little bit.

“I asked her to teach me how to braid seal gut with the meat and the fat,” Dushkin said. “She took yarn and put it in my fingers. ‘Go like this. Go like that.’ It just tangled up my fingers and I couldn’t. I can’t, you know? [But] I can always remember her telling me, ‘Go this way. Go that way.’”

Eva Tcheripanoff died in Anchorage on March 22. Only a few Kashega-born Unangax are still alive today. Their home community has been uninhabited for almost 76 years.

Alaska State Troopers intercepted 56 grams of heroin in Togiak on Friday. According to law enforcement, the street value of that amount of heroin in Bristol Bay is at least $56,000.

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Troopers contacted 32-year-old Patrick Einhellig of Dillingham when he arrived at the Togiak airport. Investigation revealed that Einhellig was allegedly carrying the heroin on his person.

The investigation is ongoing. An arrest has not been made, but Einhellig is charged with misconduct involving a controlled substance in the second degree, which is a felony.

The Fairbanks area has the worst fine particulate pollution in the United States according to the American Lung Association.

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The national non-profit released its annual State of the Air Report last Wednesday, and Fairbanks tops the list for year-round fine particulate pollution. The community ranked 17th last year, and Rick Hinkey, with the American Lung Association in Fairbanks, attributes the area’s movement to the top of the list to more accurate air quality monitoring.

”It’s good news and bad news kinda wrapped in the same coin,” Hinkey said. “Because good news, we have better data, we had more accurate information. Bad news is it’s been worse than we realized.”

The assessment is based on local air quality monitoring in the Fairbanks North Pole area for the years 2014 through 2016. Hinkey says the three-year average which reflects emissions from wintertime wood, coal and oil burning, as well as wildfire smoke, moves the community ahead of large cities in California for year-round PM 2.5 pollution. Fairbanks ranks 4th on the ALA’s list in terms of short term fine particulate pollution.

A bill that would use bonds to pay off the state’s debt to oil and gas companies for tax credits has raised a question from lawmakers: are the companies interested?

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Revenue Commissioner Sheldon Fisher provided the House Finance Committee an answer Monday, saying most of the companies are on board with the idea.

“So far, no one has informed us that they do not intend to participate,” Fisher said. “They’ve either informed us that they want to participate – which is far and away the majority – (or) there’s a handful of companies that have said they’re still thinking about it and want to get back to us.”

The state owes the companies more than $800 million in tax credits.

House Bill 331 would allow it to pay them off quickly.

The state would receive a discount of roughly 10 cents on the dollar, to cover the cost of issuing the bonds.

State payments for the credits slowed as oil prices fell. But companies have said the delayed payments have hurt development.

One company that is especially interested is Caelus Energy. It has $180 million in tax credits owed it.

Caelus Vice President Pat Foley said it would be a win for the state and investors if the bill passes.

“We do have loans against a substantial portion of that,” Foley said of the credits. “We’d be in a position to pay off those loans and most importantly we’d be in a position to attract additional investment … to allow us to go ahead with full speed at Nuna and hopefully we’d be in position to drill an additional appraisal well out in Smith Bay.”

Lawyers for the state have different opinions about whether the bill would withstand a legal challenge.

The Department of Law said the bill is constitutional. But an attorney who advises the Legislature has questioned its constitutionality, because the constitution limits how the state can issue bonds.

The House Finance Committee will hear public testimony on the bill Tuesday.

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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No oil companies oppose bonds for tax credits, commissioner says

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

State payments for the credits slowed as oil prices fell. But companies have said the delayed payments have hurt development.

Air Force to host meeting to unveil plan to provide potable water to Moose Creek

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

Air Force officials will host an open house meeting Monday to talk about proposals to provide drinking water to Moose Creek residents whose well water has been made unpotable due to groundwater contamination.

Fairbanks ranks highest nationwide for year-round particulate pollution

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

The Fairbanks area has the worst fine particulate pollution in the United States according to the American Lung Association.

Undead Arctic microbes feel the heat, unleash disease

Rashah McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

A CDC doctor in Anchorage lays out the zombie apocalypse that could happen in the Arctic.

Haines Mining and Water Forum draws dozens, critics question objectivity

Daysha Eaton, KHNS – Haines

The Palmer Project, a potential hard-rock underground mine was the focus of a forum on water and mining attended by dozens of residents at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall in Haines on Wednesday.

Study finds Mt. Hunter has been melting faster 

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

An Alaska Range glacier melted faster last century than it did in the previous three hundred years. That’s the finding of a study that analyzed ice cores drilled on Mt. Hunter.

Troopers intercept 56 grams of heroin in Togiak

Avery Lill, KDLG – Dillingham

Alaska State Troopers contacted Patrick Einhellig, 32, of Dillingham when he arrived at the Togiak airport on Friday. Investigation revealed that he was carrying heroin worth at least $56,000 in Bristol Bay.

Homer’s annual flood of tourists may be eroding its long-term rental market

Aaron Bolton, KBBI – Homer

Homer has a housing problem. Like many rural Alaskan communities, finding a place to live can be a challenge. But the growing tourism industry may be making it more difficult for year-round residents to find long-term housing.

Togiak herring fishing gets windy start

Avery Lill, KDLG – Dillingham

The Togiak herring fishery opened Sunday morning with a windy start. Gusts over 30 mph posed a challenge for fishermen during the state’s largest sac roe herring fishery.

Kashega elder Eva Tcheripanoff dies at age 90

Laura Kraegel, KUCB – Unalaska

Eva Tcheripanoff — the last person born in the traditional village of Kashega — has died.

Air Force officials will host an open house meeting tonight to talk about proposals to provide drinking water to Moose Creek residents whose well water has been made unpotable due to groundwater contamination.

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Officials with the Air Force Civil Engineer Center will unveil a plan to build a water pipeline from the North Pole water-treatment plant to Moose Creek during Monday’s meeting, which begins at 6 p.m. at the Moose Creek Fire Station.

But Eielson Air Force Base spokesman Lieutenant Kitsana Dounglomchan says the officials also will talk about alternative proposals at the meeting.

“The Air Force Engineer Center has determined that this first alternative is the best alternative,” Dounglomchan said. “However, the point of having this open house/town hall is to allow Moose Creek residents to make their public comments on it.”

Dounglomchan says engineering center personnel believe building a 5-mile pipeline from North Pole to Moose Creek is the best of seven alternatives they’ve developed to provide potable water to the community. The area’s groundwater has been contaminated with two types of perflourinated compounds that came mainly from a type of firefighting foam used at Eielson in years past. But he says if residents think one of the other alternatives would work better, they can comment on that at the meeting.

“And based on those comments,” Dounglomchan said. “The Air Force might decide to alter or change its decision, if it’s like, ‘Yeah, we see where you’re coming from there, and it makes sense to move to one of these other alternatives.’ ”

Those other alternatives include piping water from Eielson’s water-treatment plant, and installing tanks and delivering water to each home or business in the community.

The preferred plan to build the pipeline from North Pole is estimated to cost just over $25 million. Dounglomchan says if that’s the alternative the public and the agency agree on and the decision is made final this summer and funding appropriated this year, water could be flowing within five years.

“We would expect the project to be completed by around 2022 or early 2023,” Dounglomchan said.

Dounglomchan says more information about the Interim Proposed Plan for Long-Term Water Supply for the Moose Creek is available from the Eielson public affairs office.

The Alaska State Legislature passed a resolution on Monday urging Congress to take action to protect the ability of Alaska Native artists to sell work made from legal ivory. The resolution asks Congress to pass federal legislation that would explicitly allow possession and trade of products made with legal walrus, mammoth and mastodon.

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The resolution takes aim at state laws like those in New York, California, Hawaii and Washington. Those states have passed broad anti-ivory laws in an attempt to combat the poaching of African elephants.

The laws have had unintended consequences for Alaska Native artists, who say the bans make it difficult to sell art made from legal Alaska ivory.

Copies of the resolution will be sent to President Trump, Vice President Pence and Congressional leaders.

U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan introduced a bill back in October that would limit state powers to ban walrus and mammoth ivory.

The Palmer Project, a potential hard-rock underground mine was the focus of a forum on water and mining attended by dozens of residents at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall in Haines on Wednesday.

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They were there largely because they hoped to learn more about a how the project, still in the exploration phase, might affect water and salmon in the Chilkat and Klehini rivers, if it is developed.

But not all stakeholders believe the forum has the community’s best interest in mind.

The ANB Hall was packed with people eager to learn more about how the nearby mineral exploration could impact water and salmon.

“Why do we as a company do water quality sampling?” Liz Cornejo, Vice President of Community and External Affairs for Canadian company Constantine Metal Resources Limited, said. “One, we have to do it for assisting the permitting process and compliance to ensure that we are maintaining water quality for everyone.”

Cornejo is also co-chair of the recently formed Chilkat Valley Mining Forum Committee, the group that organized the event.

“The Palmer project is still in the exploration stage,” Cornejo said. “We are getting more advanced and we are doing more in-depth studies. And, we are hopefully in the next few years, working towards feasibility. And that information will help answer that question of: is it going to be a mine?”

The prospect was discovered in 1969 by local prospector Merrill Palmer, its namesake.

Constantine is leasing the claim and partnering with a Japanese company called, Dowa, which is supplying 49 percent of the exploration funds. That partnership has been going on for several years.

Exploration shows the sites, located on steep mountainsides above a glacially fed river, are rich in copper, zinc, barite, gold and silver.

The economy of the region is largely reliant on fishing and tourism and many are concerned that a large mine could interfere with the existing economies.

Meredith Pochardt, Executive Director of Takshanuk Watershed Council, helped organize the event and was one guest at the forum. She talked about copper’s effect on fish if too much gets into the water from mining.

“Fish are much more sensitive than humans are to copper,” Pochardt said. “And it impacts a lot of their homing migration, their predator avoidance and their ability to navigate and find food.”

Allan Nakanishi with DEC talked about the value of public comment in the permitting process.

“When we go out to public notice on a permit, the local community may have fairly in-depth knowledge that wasn’t apparent or available on the application,” Nakanishi said.

Besides the mining company, Takshanuk and the DEC, the forum also included a representative from the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, who talked about their water testing programs.

Two local stakeholder groups decided not to participate in the forum. One was the Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan.

“We are a community that literally relies on the return of the salmon,” Tribal President Kimberly Strong said. “All five species run through the Chilkat River. That’s why our people, the Tlingits, survived and thrived over the past thousand or more years in this valley.”

Strong says her community had participated in a forum held last fall, but decided against it this time around.

“There was concern that if it is being chaired by the mining industry, we wanted our name off to make it clear that we were not part of the group at this point,” Strong said.

Elsa Sebastian, Executive Director of Lynn Canal Conservation, says her group also decided not to participate. She says the group was undermined by the fact that “two of the voting members on the forum hold a direct interest in the mine and one of these members represents a Canadian company that is in Haines solely for their financial interest in the mine.”

Those two members are the co-chair, Liz Cornejo, who works for Constantine—and a member of the Palmer family.

Donald “J.R.” Churchill, a commercial fisherman who recently organized the Haines Fishermen’s Alliance to advocate for salmon and its habitat also stopped working with the forum.

“The original intent was a good one. As things moved on, it was decidedly weighted to the mining side of that,” Churchill said. “I get why they pulled out. They didn’t want to be attached to a group that was decidedly pro-mine.”

Cornejo with Constantine says co-chairing the 10-member group that organized the forum is a lot of work. But she would be happy to step aside if someone thinks her interest in the mining company is problematic and if someone else is elected to the position by other members of the group.

“The Chair does not really have a larger say in anything, it is still one voice in the 10-group committee,” Cornejo said. “We just do a lot of the administrative work in the background to help facilitate the committee work.”

But for now, Cornejo says they would like feedback about the most recent forum so they can plan future events.

An Alaska Range glacier melted faster last century than it did in the previous 300 years. That’s the finding of a study that analyzed ice cores drilled on Mt. Hunter.

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Lead author, Dartmouth College research assistant Dominic Winski says the glacial ice cores provide a unique high altitude temperature record for the North Pacific region.

“So, this sort of provides the first window in what’s going on in the upper atmosphere, over Alaska,” Winski said. “And it’s even more rapidly changing than what’s going down in the lowlands.”

Winski says Hunter provides an ideal location to gauge the affect of climate change at high altitude.

”Any sort of winds or precipitation that come off the Pacific wind up being deposited in the front of the Alaska Range, right near where we set up on Mt. Hunter,” Winski said. “And, more specifically, we needed a site that had the right topography and the right glaciology to be able to recover a nice ice core.”

Each glacier exerts unique forces that compress ice, but Winski says even before computing those effects, evidence of faster seasonal melting was apparent in the ice cores, telling a story of climate change.

“Before the 20th century, these melted ones were extremely rare, and sometimes you’d go for decades or more and it would never melt,” Winski said. “And that was obvious initially when we were counting all of these layers, and then we spent the next few years making all these corrections and really convincing ourselves that the trend that seemed so obvious was, in fact, a real trend.”

Winski says the increased melting corresponds with more frequent El Nino conditions in the equatorial Pacific. The ocean warming forces warm air into the upper atmosphere, where it flows toward the poles, running into high peaks like Mt. Hunter. In an effort to gain a longer term perspective, Winksi says the research team hopes to analyze even further down the Mt. Hunter ice cores.

”This ice core that we drilled on Mt. Hunter actually goes back at least 1,200 years, but potentially thousands more,” Winski said.

Winski says if the team can interpret the ultra-compressed ice, it will provide better context to the last centuries warming relative to a much longer time span. Dartmouth College, and the Universities of Maine and New Hampshire collaborated on the National Science Foundation funded research. It’s published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.