During Eielson visit, Defense Secretary Mattis highlights Alaska’s strategic military role
Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks
Mattis spoke at a news conference this morning at Eielson Air Force Base, after a tour of the missile-defense facility at Fort Greely.
Kodiak-based Coast Guard intercepts illegal Chinese fishing vessel
Daysha Eaton, KMXT – Kodiak
An illegal fishing vessel was intercepted off the coast of Japan with 80 tons of chum salmon and one ton of squid onboard.
Hundreds of fisherman urge President Trump to get involved in Pacific Salmon Treaty negotiations
Emily Kwong, KCAW – Sitka
Over 200 fishermen and supporters gathered at Eliason Harbor in Sitka on Sunday with signs and voice raised. They made a direct appeal to President Donald Trump to get involved with Pacific Salmon Treaty negotiations.
Gov. Walker signs bill to help villages run background checks on police
Krysti Shallenberger, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Bethel
The bill allows the Alaska Police Standards Council to work with villages to conduct background checks for future police officers. But for village police officers, it will be voluntary.
Report: Tsunami response system has flaws in warning of disasters
Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
A magnitude 7.9 earthquake off the coast of Alaska rattled the state in the early morning hours of January 23rd, setting into motion a series of various emergency warnings and tsunami evacuations. In the end, a destructive tsunami never materialized, but the response revealed some flaws in how Alaskans get warned about possible disasters.
Two Alaska projects selected for federal marine energy innovation grant funds
Ravenna Koenig, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Fairbanks
The grant money comes from the Department of Energy and is part of a larger award to support innovation in marine energy generation.
Guiding peers on the path to recovery from addiction
Anne Hillman, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
The path to recovery from drug or alcohol addiction can be long, arduous, and isolating. Now people in the Mat-Su Valley have a new place to start the journey — and guides to help them along the way.
A magnitude 7.9 earthquake off the coast of Alaska rattled the state in the early morning hours of January 23rd, setting into motion a series of various emergency warnings and tsunami evacuations. In the end, a destructive tsunami never materialized, but the response revealed some flaws in how Alaskans get warned about possible disasters.
After digging into pages and pages of various agencies’ internal reports, Juneau Empire reporter James Brooks found “technical glitches, deliberate action, and human error.”
James spoke with Alaska Public Media’s Casey Grove today about his reporting.
DEC Contaminated-Site Specialist Danielle Duncan says she thinks it’s unlikely the DDT and chlordane present a threat to human health, because it’s been re-buried and because so far only residues of the toxins have been found. (Eielson AFB file photo)
The Army Corps of Engineers last fall halted cleanup of fuel-tainted soil near Birch Lake, about 60 miles south of Fairbanks, when workers uncovered buried junk that included barrels with residues of a different contaminant – the banned pesticides DDT and chlordane.
Cleanup project manager Beth Astley says contractor workers discovered the junk while excavating soil contaminated by leaky fuel-storage tanks in an area that’s now part of the Birch Lake State Recreation Site.
“We ran into some trash, some buried metal, some drums that were empty,” Astley said. “And when we got to some rusted-out cans of insecticide that were labeled as containing DDT, we stopped.”
Astley says Anchorage-based Bristol Environmental Remediation Services had to stop excavating the site because its contract called for removal of soil contaminated by fuel.
“That’s a different contaminant than we thought we were removing, which is petroleum,” Astley said. “So we stopped, we sampled, and at that point, we decided to terminate the removal effort until we could determine the full extent of this buried debris that may contain pesticides.”
The Birch Lake cleanup is one of several the Corps has conducted in recent years along the old Haines to Fairbanks Pipeline, a 626-mile, 8-inch line built by the military in the 1950s and shut down in 1973.
Astley and other Corps officials talked about the discovery of the toxins last week at a public meeting in Delta Junction.
“The pesticide contamination is different,” Astley said, “Because it requires us to ship soil out of the state for disposal, because there’s no permitted landfills in the state of Alaska that will accept this soil contaminated with pesticide.”
Astley says workers found the debris about three feet below the surface in an area between where two large above-ground tanks were located. She couldn’t say exactly how much of the debris is buried at the site. She says a geophysical survey the Corps conducted at the site last month may help agency officials estimate the amount of excavation that’ll be needed to remove the junk, which includes some crushed 55-gallon drums that may have been used to mix the pesticides.
The fuel- and pesticide-contaminated soil and junk is located in a military-personnel recreation area built by the Air Force when it was managing the Birch Lake Tank Storage Site that was part of the old Haines-Fairbanks Pipeline. (Alaska Department of Fish and Game)
“So we have a better idea of the area that contains this buried waste, which includes mostly crushed drums,” Astley said. “But we don’t know how much of that might contain residue from pesticide drums that were crushed and disposed of.”
Astley says the DDT and perhaps the chlordane were being used to kill mosquitoes. That was a common use for DDT from when it was developed in 1940s until it was outlawed in 1972. It’s categorized it as a carcinogen, and tests have shown other health impacts.
Chlordane was used as a pesticide from 1948 until it was banned in 1988 after tests linked it to neurological and reproductive systems disorders. But Astley says the toxins shouldn’t present a health threat now that the junk has covered with a plastic liner and re-buried with clean fill.
“And so now the next step is to go back and to investigate the extent of this buried debris and to remove any hazardous debris or soil remaining at that site,” Astley said.
Astley says once that analysis is done, Corps officials will develop a new contract would to remove the junk and contaminated soil. She says if all goes well the work could be done in the summer of 2020.
Astley’s state counterpart agrees the junk shouldn’t threaten human health, both because it’s been re-buried and because it appears there were only small, residual amounts of the pesticides in the crushed drums and cans.
“This isn’t something that’s on the surface – this isn’t something that if you were to be on-site you’d encounter,” Danielle Duncan, a contaminated-site program specialist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said. “So, as far as an immediate threat to human health and the environment, that’s not the case.”
Duncan, who’s been working with Astley on the cleanup projects, says the Corps’ tests showed the presence of the pesticides in soil around the buried junk, but she thinks it’s unlikely to have seeped into the groundwater or the lake’s surface water. She says DEC will, however, likely conduct tests to confirm that.
“That is on our radar, as is groundwater (testing),” Duncan said.
Astely says the Corps has finished its cleanup of the Birch Lake site and another near Quartz Lake. She says the Corps officials now plan to study another lesser-known site near Tenderfoot Creek, just north of Shaw Creek, where the pipeline burst in 1971 and spewed fuel into the creek.
In a written statement, the Yukon Quest says a panel consisting of a musher, a veterinarian, and a community member considered evidence presented by Neff and race officials during two days of hearings earlier this month. It says the panel concluded Neff did not provide “clear and convincing evidence” to overturn a censure, which bans him from the 1,000-mile sled dog race for two years.
Neff’s dog Boppy died of aspiration pneumonia at a remote cabin before the Quest’s halfway point in February. Neff later scratched from the race.
A necropsy found that the dog was in poor health: suffering from stomach ulcers, intestinal inflammation, worms, skeletal muscle necrosis, severe weight loss and muscle wasting.
Neff, who could not be reached for comment today, has characterized the censure as a personal attack.
The censure bans him from entering the Yukon Quest in 2019, and requires him to complete the shorter Quest 300 before entering the 1,000-mile race in the future.
Neff, who has based out of Tok in recent years, won the Quest in 2012 and 2016.
President Trump and Sen. Lisa Murkowski spoke at the White House today. He boldly predicted the controversial King Cove road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge will be finished soon. It hasn’t begun. Murkowski made a plea for bipartisanship.
Ex-Alaskan charged with nearly 150 felonies in PFD fraud case
Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
State prosecutors have charged a former Alaska resident with nearly 150 felony counts for an alleged Permanent Fund Dividend fraud scheme.
Airplane with 2 on board missing south of Fairbanks
Associated Press
A search is underway for a small airplane headed to McCarthy with two people on board.
Yukon Quest upholds censure of Hugh Neff over dog death
Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks
The Yukon Quest is upholding the censure of two-time past champion Hugh Neff, related to the death of one of his dogs in the 2018 race.
Seabirds washing up dead in Western Alaska; scientists investigating
Zoe Grueskin, KNOM – Nome
Seabirds have once again been found washed up on beaches in Western Alaska.
Lava flows in crater of Alaska volcano; warning level raised
Associated Press
The Alaska Volcano Observatory says lava has flowed into the crater of at the top of an Aleutians Island volcano.
Corps of Engineers halts cleanup after workers discover buried DDT-tainted junk
Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks
The Army Corps of Engineers last fall halted cleanup of fuel-tainted soil near Birch Lake, about 60 miles south of Fairbanks, when workers uncovered buried junk that included barrels with residues of a different contaminant – the banned pesticides DDT and chlordane.
Alaska Aerospace Corporation schedules launch at Kodiak facility
Kayla Desroches, KMXT – Kodiak
President and CEO Craig Campbell said a commercial company will conduct the launch sometime July 14-20. He says the site will be closed for certain hours during those days.
Girls on Ice: an all-female science immersion course on top of a glacier
Ravenna Koenig, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Fairbanks
“I think it’s just so empowering, just that as women, alone, we can do this,” said glaciologist Jessica Mejia. “We can do great science, we could be on a glacier by ourselves, we could do anything.”
The Human Genome Project, and how it could change modern medicine
Lori Townsend, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Dr. Eric Green, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health says the project’s signature accomplishment was reading out the three billion letters that make up the human genome sequence. Dr Green gave the keynote address at a Southcentral Foundation conference in Anchorage last week.
President Trump on Tuesday asserted the controversial King Cove road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge will be finished soon. It hasn’t begun. Sen. Lisa Murkowski made a pitch for bipartisanship. With cameras rolling, they spent two-and-a-half minutes politely talking past each other.
With Republican members of the House and Senate appropriations committees gathered around a large table at the White House, Trump asked Murkowski about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Trump: Senator, how’s ANWR doing? OK?
Murkowski: We are moving on ANWR.
Then Trump asked about the King Cove road.
Murkowski: Well, we are moving along incrementally. Not as fast as either you or I would like. But we recognize —
Trump: But it’s almost ready.
Murkowski: We recognize that process is going to be important here, and we are standing by the process. Thank you for asking.
Trump: Good. This was a road that was — I guess it’s been — they’ve been trying to build it for 30 years. We’re going to get it done very quickly. It’s almost completed.
Not quite. In January, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke agreed to exchange land in the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge for the road corridor. But that’s about as far as it’s gone. Conservation groups are suing, saying the land exchange has to undergo environmental review.
In the next breath, Trump seemed to acknowledge there is a pre-construction process yet to go.
“We’re going to get it done. I’d say within the next couple of months it will be complete, and they can go ahead and build,” Trump said.
While the land exchange is pending, the environmental review for the road itself hasn’t begun, at least not under the Trump administration. For controversial projects, the process can take years.
Pleasantries out of the way, Trump invited Murkowski to say a few words. She spoke about the need for “regular order.” That’s where Congress passes spending bills rather than just passing a big package at the last minute to keep the government from shutting down. The Senate has just passed its first set of appropriations bills for 2019, and Murkowski said that was an accomplishment.
Murkowski: But we have got to be able to work with our colleagues on the other side, sometimes as hard as that is. So thank you for encouraging us to do that because I think that that makes a difference.
Trump: It’s been a very terrific group of people to work with. I have to say that. It’s not — we’re not finished. But it’s been a great group of people.
When Murkowski said “our colleagues on the other side,” she meant Democrats. Murkowski was telling the president, and her colleagues, they need to cooperate with Democrats to pass bills.
When Trump referred to “a very terrific group of people to work with,” he was looking around the room and did not seem to be referring to Democrats, none of whom were invited.
Several times during the meeting Trump painted Democrats as uncaring about America’s security and obstructionist.
“Their whole campaign is based around ‘resist’ — the word ‘resist,'” Trump said.
Alaskans file their Permanent Fund dividend applications in downtown Anchorage in March 2016. (Photo by Rachel Waldholz, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage)
State prosecutors have charged a former Alaska resident with nearly 150 felony counts for an alleged Permanent Fund Dividend fraud scheme.
An arrest warrant for 44-year-old Sheila Mary Rose McMahon was issued after last week’s grand jury indictment, which includes 15 pages just listing the charges against her. But it’s unclear where McMahon actually lives now. She was still on the loose as of Tuesday.
McMahon is accused of making false statements on multiple PFD applications for three years’ worth of dividends and theft of the money she allegedly received. According to the indictment, McMahon provided fake documents, including employment information from abitoblarney.com.
Abitoblarney.com appears to be an online Irish gift shop. State records show McMahon registered it as a business with an address at a Midtown Anchorage apartment building. The website itself only lists locations in Atlanta, Georgia and Dublin, Ireland.
In a written statement, state prosecutors said fewer than 15 of the 71 applications McMahon filed were for real people, and the rest of the identities were either partially or wholly fabricated. She allegedly received more than $17,000 dollars of the nearly $80,000 she tried to get from the permanent fund.
National Human Genome Research Institute Director Dr. Eric Green (National Institutes of Health photo)
Before the current popularity of looking for your ancestors through websites that offer DNA testing, there was a large scientific undertaking called the Human Genome Project. It started in the mid 90s and wrapped up in 2003. It was controversial in some communities because people feared it was an effort to steal their genetic information, or worse, create bio targeted weapons.
Dr. Eric Green, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, says those fears were unfounded. He says the project’s signature accomplishment was reading out the three billion letters that make up the human genome sequence. Dr Green gave the keynote address at a Southcentral Foundation conference in Anchorage last week.
He spoke with Alaska Public Media’s Lori Townsend and said the sequencing was successfully completed in 2003, but he says that was really just the start of understanding the blueprint of human DNA:
GREEN: We’re interested in each of our genome sequences and in particular we’re interested in how we differ. It turns out that if we lined up our genome sequences we differ about one out of a thousand letters — we’re 99.9 percent identical. We are very different in many things about our health, our well-being, features, etc. And so, it’s all of those differences, or most of those differences are coded in that .1 percent of the letters that are different between it. And so the real interest is not so much how are we the same. The real interest is how are we different. In particular, I can tell you as a physician, and particular working at the National Institutes of Health with a health focus, we’re particularly interested in which are the differences amongst peoples’ genomes that play a role in their health and influence on human disease.
TOWNSEND: So talk a little bit about that. What was learned or what is still being learned from this undertaking, and how does it help in the understanding of disease?
GREEN: So the journey to understand the human genome began 15 years ago when we had in front of us the first sequence. That journey is far from complete by any means, but we’ve made a lot of progress in 15 years. Most importantly we’ve gotten extremely good at being able to read out genomes now much more cost effectively. I’ll give you some numbers. That first human genome sequence generated by the Human Genome Project cause something like a billion dollars. Now the cost for sequencing the human genome is down to just a little over a thousand dollars. It’s a million fold reduction. What that has allowed us to do is to go out and sequence literally hundreds of thousands of people’s genomes and catalog all the differences.
TOWNSEND: And is it, at its most basic, the trying to better understand what — I guess normal human biology is probably inadequate — but just a deeper understanding of individual biology?
GREEN: That’s absolutely right. You know, when genomics is being used in research to understand disease, it’s giving us brilliant insights about what’s broken when you have a patient with hypertension what’s broken in the pathways that lead to diabetes, but when we talk about genomic medicine, that’s that’s not just biological knowledge that’s knowledge about an individual. So much of our differential drug response is scripted in our genomes in subtle spelling differences in what turned out to be the pathways that metabolize drugs. And so either, it’s there’s certain medications that you’re better or worse to take or at least the dosage might be higher or lower depending. So there’s a big word for this pharmacogenomics. It’s just pharmacology and genomics. It is not making new medicines for each patient, but rather picking the best medication off of a list of possible medications and using that or adjusting the dose based on that. That’s not hypothetical that’s here and now for a handful of medications. I predict that list will grow because we’re learning more and more every day about the genomic variants that influence drug metabolism and how that influences the best choice of medications that’s here and now.
TOWNSEND: I’m so glad you raised that because I wanted to ask a question about a friend of mine who is going through treatment for cancer and has transitioned from chemo and radiation to immunotherapy. Is that part of what you’re talking about? Is immunotherapy informed by genomics.
GREEN: It can be informed by genomics. Immunotherapy is slightly different in that it’s basically harnessing your body’s natural immune tools to basically go out to cancer and there’s some spectacular exciting advances. But if you take a step back from that, what we’re starting to use genomics for is to take each patient’s individual cancer and instead of just trial and error will try this and we’ll try this, what we’re hoping will come out of it, by doing genomic studies of that tumor, from that patient, better knowing upfront, based on the unique genomic changes that have taken place, whether this therapeutic option or that therapeutic option is the most effective way to go.
TOWNSEND: Dr. Green, you’re giving the keynote address at the annual Southcentral Foundation’s conference on the NUKA system of care. What do you plan to focus on in in your talk?
GREEN: So I think the overarching goal of my talk is to really just describe this journey, and actually it’s plural it’s journeys. It’s my professional Journey that as I was just laying out of sort of going from a freshly-minted physician scientist, and then training in pathology and then having this ability to walk down this path of genomics, which is turned out to be a remarkable remarkable adventure. But then the journey of genomics and seeing it go from something that once upon a time had some skepticism around it, to now, in a very short period of time, delivering on its first major promise: the Human Genome Project. And now having the herculean task of trying to change something as complicated as medical care.
Part of the “Girls on Ice” team starts their climb up Gulkana Glacier in Alaska. The program is a science and wilderness course, taught by female scientists and mountaineers for high school girls. (Photo by Ravenna Koenig/Alaska’s Energy Desk)
It’s not news that science has a gender problem. For years, there’s been a persistent gap, with significantly more men going into science and engineering careers than women.
One program called “Girls on Ice” connects high school girls with both science and mountaineering — another space that’s historically been dominated by men — by taking them out for a week to explore a glacier with an all-female team of scientists and mountaineers.
One of the “Girls on Ice” trips takes place in Alaska, on Gulkana Glacier in the eastern Alaska Range.
Mia Tucholke is a mountain guide and one of the leaders of the Gulkana trip. And on the day of the girls’ hike to base camp, she stands at the start of the Gulkana Glacier trail, surveying the group of 16- and 17-year-old girls as they struggle to pull on mountaineering boots and gaiters.
As they do, Tucholke reminds them that in a few hours they’ll be taking all the gear off to cross what she jokingly calls a “lovely warm river.” The girls groan, and one of them wonders how they’ll dry their feet without towels.
“We’re going to air dry them!” Tucholke said cheerfully to the long faces around her.
Some of the girls are already pretty familiar with the outdoors, but others have never hiked up a glacier, spent a night camping in the wilderness or crossed a freezing river with a pack on their back.
Now, they’re about to spend a week on Gulkana Glacier with Tucholke.
“I like to suffer a little bit,” Tucholke said. “And I like to show that suffering can be ok.”
Tucholke and a group of scientists will spend the week teaching the girls wilderness skills, glacier science 101, how to do field research and all the different ways you can make observations about the natural world — whether that’s as a mountaineer, a scientist or an artist.
Aurora Roth, one of the instructors, is a glaciologist from Fairbanks.
“Something we’re going to continue talking about for the rest of the week is: what is the line between art and science?” Roth said. “When is that blurred? Should they be these separate things? Are they the same?”
“I absolutely love ice,” Roth added. “I’m an ice nerd.”
Some of the girls participating in this program already know they want to go into science: everything from zoology to astrophysics to nursing.
Part of the “Girls on Ice” team starts their climb up Gulkana Glacier in Alaska. The program is a science and wilderness course, taught by female scientists and mountaineers for high school girls. (Photo by Ravenna Koenig/Alaska’s Energy Desk)
Lauren Smith is a high school senior from Portland, Oregon. She’s not sure exactly what she wants to do with science, but she does have one idea.
“My absolute dream would be to write about science in a way where it would be accessible for everyone,” Smith said.
Even though there are more women in science than there used to be, instructor Emilie Sinkler says that the relatively low number of women in science and mountaineering makes it harder for some girls to see themselves getting involved.
“There aren’t as many role models to look up to these days just because of the history of those fields being mostly male-dominated,” Sinkler said.
Under 30% of the science and engineering workforce is female. And while it’s hard to quantify how many women spend time mountaineering versus men, as of 2016 only 8% of guides in the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) were women. AMGA says that number is rising, but they don’t have more recent figures available.
So part of the goal of “Girls on Ice” is to just give girls exposure to women who scale mountains and do science and show that it’s an option.
“We want to give them extra confidence and experience in the outdoors and in science to see if those are the directions they might want to go, potentially,” Sinkler said.
Beyond that, instructors hope that spending a week braving the Alaskan wilderness with an all-female group will inspire the girls to take on whatever challenges they encounter in their lives.
“I think it’s just so empowering, just that as women, alone, we can do this,” Jessica Mejia, a glaciologist and one of the organizers of the trip, said. “We can do great science, we could be on a glacier by ourselves, we could do anything.”
Anything. Even, as so many of the girls were worried about, side-step with a heavy pack on your back through a tumbling glacial river so cold it gives you brain freeze.
ONC led a public demonstration against the proposed Donlin gold mine in Bethel on Friday, June 22, 2018. (Photo by Christine Trudeau/KYUK)
The Orutsararmiut Native Council held their first public demonstration against the proposed Donlin gold mine on Friday, becoming the first tribe to do so in Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The mine would be built in a region where many residents practice subsistence and would be one of the biggest gold mines in the world once completed.
Evon Waska, an elder who marched on Friday, says that the mine has no place in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
“The subsistence way of life is too important, and the Kuskokwim River provides us with food, and that Donlin gold mine is not the place to have it here on the Kuskokwim,” Waska said.
Waska joined 30 other marchers from the tribe and Bethel community who want to protect fish from what they say are the dangerous impacts of the proposed gold mine. ONC has voiced concerns through public comment for the mine for a couple of years, but plans to protest fell by the wayside with the death of its natural resource development director, Greg Roczicka, last year. Peter Evon, ONC’s Executive Director, says that the mine’s possible risks outweigh any potential benefits.
“Obviously jobs are very important in the region, but I don’t think there’s a risk we should take of any kind,” Evon said.
The proposed mine would increase barge traffic on the Kuskokwim River, which is the source of the Y-K Delta’s subsistence activities. Salmon and smelt, a smaller fish that comes in the late spring, could be significantly impacted by the increased traffic. Other concerns include the impact on water quality and possible air pollution from mercury released from rocks during mining operations. But Donlin has touted the job growth it could bring to the region, and has held multiple public hearings on the project as it goes through the permitting process.
Donlin spokesman Kurt Parkan says that the company has worked very closely with Calista Corporation and the Kuskokwim Corporation, which own the subsurface and surface rights respectively, to develop the mine responsibly. But individual tribes may not agree with Calista and TKC, and Parkan says that’s expected.
“That’s a tough question to answer because I think it’s not possible to get unanimous support on any subject in favor of something or against something,” Parkan said.
Walter Jim, the president of ONC’s board, didn’t attend the march, but he told KYUK later that his tribe’s responsibility is to protect its lifestyle from any threats, even if that threat could bring some economic relief.
“My belief is that every tribe’s responsibility is to protect that tribe, and part of those protections is the subsistence way of life. And we see Donlin’s development as a threat to the subsistence of the river,” Jim said.
Jim says that they are reaching out to other tribes along the Kuskokwim to join in the fight against Donlin. He says that there will be more demonstrations down the road.
Meanwhile, Donlin is plugging through the permits it needs to start the mine. The company says that it expects to get most of its major federal and state permits this year. The Army Corps of Engineers is expected to come out with its joint record of decision in mid-August.
A public comment deadline for a state water quality permit is looming; comments are due July 13. That permit basically ensures that any placement of fill or trash from mining will not degrade water quality in Crooked Creek. Parkan says that Donlin is not going to put fill or waste from mining into Crooked Creek. Tailings and waste will be placed in a tailings dam or waste rock facility.
Portage Lake, Afognak Island. (Photo courtesy Great Land Trust)
More than 3,000 acres of ecologically rich land on Afognak Island is now protected through a wildlife and recreation corridor.
“There has been some logging in the area, but it is fairly minimal,” Ellen Kazary, executive director of Great Land Trust, a conservation non-profit, said. “You are flying over these impressive lakes and streams. And I’ve seen bears just running around. When we land, it is just teaming with salmon. And the birds, you can’t even count them. It’s just jaw dropping. You feel like you are in a National Geographic special.”
Great Land Trust partnered with the Native Corporation Natives of Kodiak to conserve the land.
The Portage Lake Property includes 750 acres of wetlands, Sitka Spruce, salmon and blueberries, Kazary said.
“The Portage Lake project actually connects 180,000 acres of prime wildlife habitat on Afognak because it touches the Kodiak Island National Wildlife Refuge and Afognak Island State Park,” Kazary said. “It creates this brilliant corridor for wildlife and just increases their ability to survive and flourish.”
Natives of Kodiak CEO Jim Erickson said in a news release, “We are excited about the sale of this property because it conserves this land for future generations of Natives of Kodiak shareholders and others to enjoy.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identifies Afognak Island among the most productive habitats in the Gulf of Alaska.
The land was purchased with funds from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trust Fund and donated to the State of Alaska with a conservation easement held by the Bureau of Land Management.
Access to the land will be open to the public.
Natives of Kodiak was paid the full value of the land, benefiting its shareholders.
That’s a pretty commonly accepted trend, and in Western Alaska, it looks like a lot less sea ice.
But there are lots of details about how this affects marine life that we don’t really understand. And scientists are trying to figure some of those out.
For the past two summers, University of Alaska Fairbanks oceanographer Seth Danielson has led a team of about 20 scientists aboard the research vessel Sikuliaq, as they study the spring transition in the Bering and Chukchi seas.
“If you’re an ice algae that grows when the sun comes back in the springtime, and all of a sudden the amount of time that you have to do your thing is shortened by a month, how does that impact you as a community, or your role in the greater ecosystem?” Danielson said.
North Pacific Research Board funds the Arctic Shelf Growth, Advection, Respiration and Deposition Rate Experiments project
Danielson said the acronym, ASGARD, is actually a perfect nickname.
“Because if you remember your Norse mythology, Asgard is the homeland of the gods, and it’s the most productive,” Danielson said. “And here we are in the Bering Strait region, a really remarkable continental shelf, because it gets perhaps the biggest flux of nutrients of any inner continental shelf in the whole world.”
The currents through the strait are like a big balancing act for the world’s oceans: Excess fresh water from the North Pacific — which has a lot of nutrients — comes up into the Arctic Ocean and then across into the North Atlantic, which is much saltier.
A lot of scientists come to study Arctic waters in the summer, but Danielson says this project is here a lot earlier in the year.
“There are a lot of unanswered, very fundamental questions about how fast some of the early young stages of fishes and other critters are growing, and by being out here at this time of year, we can start to get a better handle on that,” Danielson said.
The ASGARD crew is taking a bunch of measurements — water temperature and salinity, wind and current speeds, solar radiation — over several years to answer those questions.
They also capture a whole range of small organisms like plankton, and take observations about larger ones like fish and marine mammals.
The team observed five dead seabirds this summer, which was more than expected but not quite as many as last year.
While the ocean surface was cooler in some places and warmer in others, Danielson says the sea floor was actually a few degrees cooler than last year.
“If you were to page back through the last decade or so, you’d see that the northern Bering Sea is one of the places in the globe that really hasn’t changed that much,” Danielson said. “There’s been this marine heat wave for a long time, probably since about 2013 or 2014.”
Nobody really knows how that heat wave will continue to develop and affect the Bering and Chukchi sea ecosystems, Danielson said.
So the ASGARD crew will be sifting through all the data and little marine organisms they’ve collected for years, trying to decipher the hidden messages of the sea.
A battery-powered rig for cannabis concentrates at a marijuana jobs fair in Anchorage in 2015. (Photo: Zachariah Hughes, KSKA)
In a surprising move, the Anchorage Assembly voted down a proposal to raise taxes on cannabis businesses. During a Tuesday night meeting, more than a dozen people from the local industry spoke against the proposed tax increase. And the testimony proved effective.
Two years ago, voters in Anchorage gave the Assembly the ability to increase taxes by two percent biennially on the new industry up to a ceiling of 12 percent. That’s on top of the taxes collected by the state. The ordinance discussed Tuesday would have been the first bump, from the current five percent up to seven.
Testimony was dominated by cannabis business owners and employees. No one from the public spoke in favor of the change.
Susan Nowland owns a retail cannabis shop in downtown Anchorage, and told the Assembly the industry is still in its infancy, struggling to get its financial footing. Nowland and others want more time before paying higher taxes on sales.
“I believe in taxation. It’s good for the industry. But I think it’s too soon right now,” Nowland said. “Give us a chance.”
Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’s administration hoped the tax increase would help boost revenues to the city above the $1.3 million it brought in last year, shifting a small portion of the municipal budget off of property owners.
But opponents say cannabis retailers in Anchorage are already paying several times more in taxes than it costs the municipality to regulate and monitor their operations.
The discussion scrambled the Assembly’s normal ideological splits.
“Clearly the industry has already paid for its costs,” Assembly member Amy Demboski said.
Demboski is a fiscal and social conservative who usually votes against measures favorable to the cannabis industry. But on this issue, she came out forcefully on behalf of businesses in opposing the tax increase.
“I don’t believe the administration has demonstrated a need. Nor do I think they have been the best stewards of tax-payer money, therefore I will not vote to give them more of it,” Demboski said, prompting scattered applause but cannabis supporters in the audience.
The resounding 8-to-2 vote against the proposal was unexpected by many.
Cannabis remains expensive to grow and sell in Alaska relative to other states that have legalized. However the tax rate on retailers in Anchorage is not outside the normal range of other hub cities, below Seattle on the high end, but above Portland on the lower side in the overall tax burden.
The Assembly also approved a change in how it clears unlawful campsites in the areas around public parks and trails.
In what could be a dramatic change in enforcement, Assembly members unanimously voted for a more aggressive policy that designates broad zones where camps have to be vacated along a faster time-line. The move is meant to address vocal and increasingly organized complaints from property owners that the city does not do enough to clear out large, sprawling improvised outdoor shelters scattered throughout the parks and green-belt.
The Assembly will provide campers 72 hours to leave areas that fall into the new prohibited zone category. Those include public lands near parks, trails, schools and other civic infrastructure. In those instances, the municipality will store people’s belongings in a city-run facility if they request it. Up until now, the policy on the books targeted individual campsites for clean up, which critics say just pushes the problem from spot to spot instead of expelling unlawful encampments.
EPA leader Scott Pruitt cited the Pebble Mine in a memo asking his agency to change how it uses the Clean Water Act to regulate projects. (US Environmental Protection Agency photo)
Citing the proposed Pebble Mine, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency wants to rein in his agency’s regulatory power.
In a sweeping memo released today, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt asked the agency to propose changes to how it uses the Clean Water Act.
In the memo, Pruitt wrote that the action would fit in with his larger aim to “ensure predictability and regulatory certainty and take actions based upon a comprehensive understanding of the facts.”
The proposal would eliminate EPA’s ability to preemptively or retroactively veto permits for waste discharge in waterways, restricting the agency’s ability to step in and regulate large projects. However, the proposal is far from final.
Under the Obama administration, EPA used its authority under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to propose restrictions on the Pebble Mine before the developer applied for a permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
That essentially halted the controversial project until last year, when EPA reached a settlement with Pebble under the Trump administration. Then in January, Pruitt suspended the agency’s move to reconsider the Obama-era proposal, saying Pebble may pose an “unacceptable” risk to Bristol Bay, home to one of the most valuable salmon fisheries in the world.
But in the memo released today, Pruitt wrote, “I am concerned that the mere potential of the EPA’s use of its section 404(c) authority before or after the permitting process could influence investment decisions and chill economic growth by short-circuiting the permitting process.”
Pebble Mine opponents condemned the memo.
“This is a reckless proposal that ignores the plain text of the Clean Water Act. If enacted, this would hamstring EPA’s ability to safeguard our streams and fisheries from the dumping of many tons of toxic waste,” Jon Devine, director of federal water policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.
Norm Van Vactor, a spokesperson for the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp., said in an email his organization is “very disappointed” by the news, adding, “this has not been an authority that has been misused in the past.”
But Mike Heatwole of Pebble Limited Partnership praised the memo, saying it would allow a “full, fair and rigorous” environmental review.
“We’re calling today’s announcement a strong policy decision regarding the many problems with preemptive and retroactive 404(c) actions,” Heatwole said in an email.
However, EPA indicated it’s too soon to say how the decision could affect the fate of the proposed Pebble Mine.
“It is premature to say how any changes to the existing regulation would impact current or existing actions,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement.
Pointing at Pebble, EPA leader looks to rein in agency’s veto power
Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage
The proposal would eliminate EPA’s ability to preemptively or retroactively veto permits for waste discharge in waterways, restricting the agency’s ability to step in and regulate large projects. Under the Obama administration, EPA used its authority under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to propose restrictions on the Pebble Mine.
Locals react to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows employees to opt out of union dues
Jacob Resneck, KTOO – Juneau
A U.S. Supreme Court decision released today dealt a blow to public sector unions. That will have big implications in Alaska, which has one of the highest rates of unionization in the country.
First Y-K Delta tribe marches against Donlin Gold in Bethel
Krysti Shallenberger, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Bethel
The mine would be built in a region where many residents practice subsistence and would be one of the biggest gold mines in the world.
Governor’s climate change task force adds science education to draft plan
Elizabeth Jenkins, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau
Governor Bill Walker’s climate change task force has been working this summer to nail down some clear draft policy objectives.
Assembly rejects pot tax hike, tightens unlawful camp rules
Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
In a surprising move, the Anchorage Assembly voted down a proposal to raise taxes on cannabis businesses.
Housing expert: Many Sitkans struggle to make rent
Rachel Cassandra, KCAW – Sitka
In Sitka, like many towns in Southeast Alaska, geographic isolation creates unique problems for affordable housing and homelessness. This week Sitka held a pair of town hall meetings with a visiting expert to look for ideas for solutions.
Excursion Inlet cannery ramps up frozen fish production
Henry Leasia, KHNS – Haines
Excursion Inlet’s fish-processing plant is gearing up for another season. Recently, seafood processor and distributor Ocean Beauty has been reducing its canning operations while ramping up frozen fish production.
Scientists study spring transition in Bering Strait waters
Gabe Colombo, KNOM – Nome
The Bering Sea is getting warmer. That’s a pretty commonly accepted trend, and in Western Alaska, it looks like a lot less sea ice. But there are lots of details about how this affects marine life that we don’t really understand.
Unionized state workers rally on the steps of Juneau’s State Office Building on February 28, 2013. A Supreme Court 5-4 decision made Wednesday says unions cannot force state workers to contribute to the union’s finances. (Photo by Casey Kelly/KTOO)
One of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions released Wednesday dealt a blow to public sector unions.
The court ruled 5-4 that employees of state and local governments who opt out of union membership won’t have to pay any dues.
It was the result of a challenge by Mark Janus, a state employee in Illinois who argued he shouldn’t have to contribute to a union he didn’t agree with. He argued that to force him otherwise violated his First Amendment rights.
“For the first time in decades, the Supreme Court recognized the First Amendment rights of public employees,” Price said Wednesday.
The ruling affects state and local government workers covered by collective bargaining agreements, or about 10 percent of Alaska’s workforce.
Before the ruling, many state and local workers had union contributions automatically deducted from their paycheck.
They won’t have to pay anything now, but will still have the same rights and benefits of those who do.
“It’s like asking a car insurance company to pay for your damages while you’re not paying premiums,” Abel Bul-Ito of United Academics AAUP-AFT said. The union represents about 1,200 faculty within the University of Alaska system. “It’s politically motivated, it’s very unfortunate, but I believe that we as a union will be stronger because the members will realize how important we are and the union leadership will no longer take membership for granted.”
About 20 percent of eligible faculty aren’t union members. Now they won’t contribute to the union’s finances.
The leadership of the state’s largest public sector union said it’s been bracing for this change for about two years.
“I don’t buy that it’s doom-and-gloom. In fact, I say bring it on,” ASEA Local 52 Executive Director Jake Metcalfe said. He said the union has been making its case directly to state workers that it’s in their best interest to join the union. “They’re not going to be better off in opting out,” Metcalfe said. “In fact, they’re going to lose out on their ability to participate in that negotiation process and have their opinion be heard.”
The ruling could affect Alaska’s economy.
Economists at the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development said the short-term effects are unclear.
“One of the things we’ll watch for, though, is what happens to wages,” Dan Robinson, the department’s head of research, said. “For example, less collective bargaining tends to mean lower wages. So that’s one of the data elements we’ll watch.”
On the political side, Gov. Bill Walker released a statement hours after the ruling expressing his disappointment with the conservative majority’s decision.
“This creates an unnecessary obstacle for working people to join behind a unified voice,” the statement said. “Still, I am confident that public employee unions will remain the backbone of our state for the foreseeable future.”
Editor’s Note:The original text of this article quoted Americans for Prosperity Alaska director Jeremy Price, a supporter of the decision, as saying the decision relieves non-union public employees from being forced to also pay for the union’s political activity. That was actually never the case. Before the decision, fees paid by non-union members only went toward collective bargaining costs, not political activities.
Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott chaired the inaugural meeting of Gov. Bill Walker’s climate change task force on Monday, Dec. 18, 2017. (Photo by Rachel Waldholz/Alaska’s Energy Desk)
Draft recommendations are coming together that could shape Alaska’s climate change policy in the future. Governor Bill Walker’s climate change task force has been working this summer to nail down some clear objectives.
The draft climate plan already includes statements on reducing carbon emissions and diversifying the economy. But task force member Mark Masteller encouraged the group to add another one: a policy statement on science education — addressing climate change.
“This affects everybody right?” Masteller said. “So that’s why I felt like it needed to be its own policy statement.”
Masteller says the task force is still working out the details of what this additional policy statement might mean.
So far, they’ve come up with some broad suggestions, like strengthening research at the university system and adopting a statewide plan to increase science education in K-12 schools.
Masteller compares this approach to anti-smoking campaigns.
“Without an education about the impacts of smoking, we wouldn’t be able to take action as quick,” Masteller said. “So the general education and awareness of the problem or the issue is kind of fundamental to all the other things in the plan.”
The task force will be holding their next in-person meeting in Anchorage in August, and they’re hoping to present the plan to the governor by September.
Brian Wilson, Executive Director of Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, addresses one of two town hall meetings he held in Sitka this week. About 55 people total attended. (Photo by Rachel Cassandra/KCAW)
In Sitka, like many towns in Southeast Alaska, geographic isolation creates unique problems of affordable housing and homelessness. This week, Sitka held a pair of town hall meetings with a visiting expert to canvas ideas for solutions.
Affordable housing has long been a concern in Sitka, and so has the connected issue of homelessness. Recently, a national report called “Out of Reach” quantified the gap in Sitka between a liveable wage and the average wage.
“If you look at the Alaska numbers, they calculated that an individual would have to make $24.80 an hour in order to afford a fair-market, two-bedroom rental,” Wilson said. “And this is problematic because they also calculate down to the community level how much an average renter is currently making per hour, so in Sitka, 44% of our households here are rentals and the average renter is only making $13.96 an hour.”
Wilson says this wide gap means Sitkans may not be able to afford other necessities besides rent and utilities. But the problem is not unique to Sitka: Out of Reach identifies no county in the U.S. where the local minimum wage affordably covers rent for a two-bedroom apartment.
About 55 Sitkans total attended the town hall meetings at the Sitka Public Library. Participants brainstormed homelessness actions. They included creating camping shelters and weaving sleeping bags and mats out of plastic bags.
Carly Collins, who spent the past five years homeless, says it’s important to live independently in a home, even if it’s very small and mobile.
“A couple of good ideas that I heard was the tiny house on wheels,” Collins said. “There’s not a lot of, I would say, land availability to park a house on wheels, the campgrounds in town, you can only stay for a few months. Somebody did just bring up an idea of taking abandoned boats and double checking, making sure they’re all right, and then having that as an accessible way for people who are homeless to have some kind of shelter, an independent shelter of their own.”
Sitkan Gayle Young is active in the struggle against homelessness. She is part of the Sitka Homeless Coalition, which hopes to build an overnight winter shelter. Last year, the coalition partnered with the First Presbyterian church, but those plans came to a halt when the church announced it was closing. Now the group is continuing its search elsewhere.
“We are looking now for a space. We are ready for a space,” Young said. “We would love to get these guys under cover this fall, if they choose, it’s just an option.”
Wilson warns, however, that shelters are a last-chance resort to address homelessness. He says that the issues need to be addressed on a systemic level, and that preventing homelessness is better than providing shelters.
A Salcha couple has been found dead in the wreckage of their small plane. Alaska State Troopers report that Art and Ann Ward were confirmed deceased at an unspecified crash site Wednesday afternoon.
The Wards had been missing since Sunday when they failed to show up at their McCarthy area homestead, after flying out of Salcha in their Super Cub, earlier in the day.
An extensive search for the plane, was conducted by the Alaska Air National Guard, National Park Service, Civil Air Patrol and volunteer pilots.
Troopers plan to go to the crash site today.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
A Haines skiier heads out into the backcountry. (Abbey Collins)
A new weather station is being developed to collect data for the Haines Pass. The Yukon Avalanche Association recently secured funding from the Yukon Government for the project. The association will partner with the Haines Avalanche Center to install the equipment by fall.
Erik Stevens and Jeff Moskowitz founded the Haines Avalanche Center in 2010. The goal was to establish a local avalanche forecast for the public and a platform for people to share data and weather observations.
Since then, Stevens and Moskowitz have been venturing out into the mountains around Haines to collect data on snow conditions for their website’s forecast.
Weather data for this region is sparse. Stevens said that when they first started there were hardly any resources for forecasting.
“Since then, it has grown quite a bit. We now have a SNOTEL station up on Flower Mountain. We have our own weather station that Haines Avalanche Center installed on Mt. Ripinsky. There’s a couple of other new stations that have gone online that provide mountain weather data. And that’s so crucial for us is having that real time weather data from high altitudes, not just the valley floors,” Stevens said.
In the winter, many skiers and snowboarders are eager to ride the slopes in the Haines Pass. There are numerous risks while riding in this region, from avalanches to rapidly changing conditions. Accurate forecasts are crucial, but this popular winter recreation area lacks a weather station.
Stevens said that the Haines Avalanche Center wanted to install a station there, but focused their efforts on Mt. Ripinsky because the pass is located on Canadian land.
Haines locals are not the only ones trying to scope out the conditions for that region. Kylie Campbell is the Interagency Director for the Yukon Avalanche Association. She said that many Yukoners need weather data from the pass as well.
“We want to try to make sure there is as much information for the public, and particularly in such a remote, data-sparse region like Haines Pass. For our community Haines Junction, this weather station is going to be vital whether or not you are even driving on the highway, let alone using the mountains that are accessible from the highway,” Campbell said.
Recently the Yukon Avalanche Association secured funding for a weather station in Haines Pass. The Yukon Government awarded the group $20,000 in Tier 1 Community Development funding. That will cover the cost of materials, installation and maintenance training for volunteers.
Campbell said that she has been working with the British Columbian government on land use issues because the pass is located in B.C. The Haines Avalanche Center and Haines Junction residents have also been working as partners on the project.
“It’s kind of an exciting project because it’s incorporating for us interprovincial and international relations for weather information that has never really existed from this region,” Campbell said.
The Haines Avalanche Center will help choose the location, install the equipment and maintain it over time. The station itself is a 10-to-15 foot-tall tower with instruments to collect data for temperature, humidity, wind, rainfall and snow depth. Stevens says finding a site with the right conditions can be tricky.
“In terms of siting, we’re looking for a nice balance between exposure to the wind so we get good wind data, but not too exposed because then all the snow blows away,” Stevens said. “We’re trying to find a sheltered spot that’s kind of partially sheltered but still exposed to the wind, and that’s pretty hard to find.”
Right now they are looking at a spot near Glade Peak, also known as Three Guardsman. Once installed, information from the station will be available to the public online in real time.
