At 3 p.m. at Jack Sprat in Girdwood, servers move in and out of the dining room, cleaning and setting tables. Owner and operator Frans Weits answers a question from his executive chef as he passes through the kitchen on the way downstairs to the prep kitchen. In the hot, windowless room, cooks chop herbs and thinly slice beets. Another washes dishes.

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Everyone’s doing their part to prepare for a busy evening, but some will be rewarded more than others.

Weits said that on a night like tonight during peak season, servers will walk away with around $37 an hour in tips. He pays them almost $10 an hour in minimum wage on top of that.

“Now we’re up to $47 an hour,” Weits said. And that’s after servers share tips with support staff like bussers, hosts and bartenders.

Most of us don’t think twice before adding 10 to 20 percent to our restaurant bills. But how often do you know where that money is going? For years the federal government has been grappling with who owns tips and whether employers can tell servers what to do with them. To clarify, the Alaska Department of Labor implemented a new regulation last month that prohibits restaurant owners like Weits from requiring servers to give tips to back-of-house staff like cooks and dishwashers.

“The servers makes two to three times as much as the back of the house. And the cooks, dishwashers work just as hard,” Weits said.

Weits understands that wage gap firsthand. He’s worked almost every job in the industry.  So, when he opened Jack Sprat in 2001, he required servers to give a portion of their tips to cooks and to dishwashers. Weits said he keeps raising the kitchen staff’s starting pay, but it’s still hard for them to make ends meet.

“It’s a high cost of living in Alaska. So I want everyone to be able to afford to live here, not just servers,” Weits said. “So I would propose that this regulation get reversed. And at least allow employers to help facilitate an even playing field.”

Weits can still require his servers to give tips to other workers that customers see, like bussers, hosts and bartenders.

Restaurant organizations like Alaska Cabaret, Hotel, Restaurant and Retailers Association, or Alaska CHARR, have come out against the new regulation, saying the line it draws between front-of-house and back-of-house staff isn’t fair. CEO Pete Hanson said he doesn’t know of any restaurant that supported it but that several wrote public comments in opposition. He thinks restaurants should be able to decide what works best for them.

“Servers are the employees who interface with customers, but a server has a whole team of people behind them in the kitchen, preparing the food, washing the dishes, clearing the tables, preparing the drinks,” Hanson said.

Servers have the most to gain from the new regulation. Marty Kimball has worked in restaurants for over 20 years, much of it as a server. He thinks the lines the regulation draws between front-of-house and back-of-house make sense because servers are the ones interacting with the people leaving a tip.

“There are sometimes that it can be a beautiful mutually-satisfactory experience, and there are other times that are just absolutely hell, beginning to end, where you just really truly feel like you are sacrificing your soul for a couple extra dollars to make rent,” Kimball said.

Kimball thinks servers should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to share tips with the back-of-the-house. Kimball acknowledged that the life of a chef is a hard one but thinks the solution is instead to allow restaurants to pay servers less than minimum wage.

Deborah Kelly is director of labor standards and safety for the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the department behind the new regulation.

“So when a customer comes in, they expect that their tip goes to the person that they give it to, and this regulation helps to protect that,” Kelly said.

The state of Alaska used to follow the federal Fair Labor Standards Act for regulations on tipping. But those regulations haven’t always been clear, particularly for states like Alaska where tipped workers have to be paid at least minimum wage. Most recently, they clarified that restaurant owners can’t keep tips for themselves, but they can require them to be shared with cooks and dishwashers as long as they pay everyone at least minimum wage. Kelly said that doesn’t go far enough.

“It’s not up to the employer to take tips and then decide how to best distribute them to run their business. They are tips given to the workers, and they belong to the workers,” Kelly said.

Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington D.C., which sent a letter in support of the new regulation, said the vast majority of tipped positions aren’t in fine dining establishments where servers are walking away with $30 an hour.

“(You have to remember) the person who’s working at the IHOP overnight shift that doesn’t have the tips left over to be able to comfortably share with back-of-house workers and so it really is, you’re taking tips that that person uses to make ends meet,” Shierholz said.

Shierholz worries restaurant owners will simply lower the base wage of a cook or dishwasher if they know they can use tips to make up the difference. She suggested that instead, they pay kitchen staff more to stay competitive.

Weits from Jack Sprat said his restaurant can’t afford to raise the wages of back-of-house workers any higher. Some restaurants have tried getting rid of tipping altogether or putting a mandatory service charge on their bills, but Weits said he doesn’t want to do that.

“It feels good to voluntarily give someone money that served you,” Weits said. “Once you put it on the menu, and you require that, it takes the fun out of it and it feels like, you know, oh you’re locking me into this before I even sit down.”

The new regulation doesn’t prevent servers from voluntarily sharing tips with cooks and dishwashers.

In June, Golden Valley Electric Association, the cooperative that provides electricity to the Interior, broke ground on a new photovoltaic solar demonstration project in Fairbanks.

The solar array is a small-scale test and will be completed at the end of October. It’s expected to add more than 500 kilowatts to the grid, enough to power around 70 homes.

Nathan Minnema is the project manager. He says the solar array fits into the utility’s goal to reduce their carbon emissions, while being mindful not to raise energy costs.

“We’ll get a good feel on what our average cost of power will be from this project,” Minnema said. “And then that is information that we can present to our CEO and board and let them be able to decide on what or how much they want to expand.”

This project is too small to have a significant impact on emissions, but if the dollars pencil out, it could lead to a larger-scale solar installation further down the road.

Golden Valley currently gets 10% of its electricity from renewables — mostly wind and hydro power and a small percentage individual-owned solar. The rest comes from oil, natural gas, and coal.

Following two minor accidents, a citizens’ watchdog group is asking the state’s top environmental regulator to require tougher training for new oil spill response crews in Prince William Sound.

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In late June, an Edison Chouest tugboat hit an oil tanker during a docking maneuver. Two days later, a skiff was caught between an Edison Chouest response barge and tugboat. During both accidents, there were no injuries and no oil was spilled.

Edison Chouest is the new oil spill response and prevention contractor in charge of escorting oil tankers in Prince William Sound. Alyeska Pipeline Service Company is replacing Crowley Marine Services with Edison Chouest this summer.

In response to the accidents, the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens Advisory Council is asking the state Department of Environmental Conservation to require the new crews and equipment to be trained in rougher weather conditions. That’s something the group has called for before.

In a letter sent July 5, the group stated it “believes a gap exists in prevention and response competency and proficiency.”

The group added the two incidents are “clear symptoms that this transition was too rushed.”

Alyeska reports it is taking measures to ensure the circumstances leading to both accidents don’t happen again. In an emailed response, Alyeska spokesperson Kate Dugan said Edison Chouest crews have undergone thousands of hours of training and will continue to train going forward.

However, Dugan said Alyeska is standing firm in its position that it won’t train crews in rough conditions.

“We won’t risk human life or environmental damage to demonstrate something where capability can be demonstrated in other, more safe ways,” Dugan wrote.

“This transition has been years in the making and has been carefully planned and executed,” Dugan added. “We have brought some of the most high-performing tugs in the world to Prince William Sound and they are operated by highly trained and experienced crews.”

Officials with the Department of Environmental Conservation are meeting with the council today, and the agency will issue an official response after that meeting.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan announced Thursday he’ll vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

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Sullivan said Kavanaugh is highly qualified and takes a strict view of the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“The whole issue of looking at the law and the constitution as written. As written. I think that’s really important,” Sullivan told reporters after meeting with Kavanaugh for an hour in his Washington, D.C. office.

Sullivan also likes that Kavanaugh recognizes the Constitutional right of individuals to own guns.

“That’s also a really important issue in Alaska. Strong views with regard to the Second Amendment,” Sullivan said. “And he’s been a leader on that. There’s no doubt about it.”

In 2011, Kavanaugh wrote that the Second Amendment includes the right to own semi-automatic rifles.

Kavanaugh and Sullivan know each other from their days serving in the George W. Bush administration.

Sullivan’s support for the nominee wasn’t much of a surprise. But Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, is considered a swing vote. She hasn’t announced a position on Kavanaugh.

The owner of Bethel’s Tundra Suites hotel has been charged with Medicaid fraud.

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When Medicaid recipients fly to Bethel for medical appointments, they pay for their food, hotel rooms and cab rides with vouchers in lieu of payment. Local companies then use those vouchers to bill Medicaid for reimbursements. Tundra Suites’ owner, Chin S. Kim, age 58, is accused of billing the government for Medicaid recipients who never actually stayed at his hotel. Alaska’s Office of Special Prosecutions has also charged Tundra Suites employee Mi Ae Young, age 56, in the alleged scheme.

According to charging documents filed with the court last month, Tundra Suites’ Medicaid billing increased from an average of $4,000 a month to a high of $57,000 for December 2017. On several occasions, Kim and Young allegedly billed the government for more Medicaid recipients than there are rooms in their hotel.

Investigators claim that Mi Ae Young admitted to fraudulently billing Medicaid. According to the charging documents, Young says that she did it to help Kim when Tundra Suites started struggling financially. Kim allegedly didn’t know about the scheme for months.

Kim and Young are each charged with medical assistance fraud and scheme to defraud, both of which are felonies. They were arraigned in Bethel last week and their next hearings are scheduled for July 23.

Lawmakers got a progress report on the Alaska LNG project from the state’s gasline development corporation on Wednesday in Anchorage.

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It is a busy year for the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, or AGDC. It is trying to land agreements with Chinese companies to buy the state’s gas. At the same time, the corporation is working through an exhaustive federal environmental review and negotiations with North Slope companies to sell their gas into the pipeline.

Before the meeting on Wednesday, Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, sent the corporation a bulleted list of the information and questions that she wanted answered.

Giessel asked for everything from a list contractors the corporation is using and how much money it’s compensating board members for travel to certain types of state employees moonlighting for the corporation as well.

On that last one, Giessel said she is concerned about the influence of partisan politics on the project.

“When we created AGDC, we were very careful to make sure that AGDC was a separate entity that would not be influenced by politics. In other words, governors that come and go,” Giessel said. “Here is the governor’s deputy chief of staff on a list documented by AGDC as working for a AGDC. It’s concerning.”

Giessel is not the only legislator who said that they were concerned about political influence on the LNG export project.

The Alaska LNG project has been a key issue for current Gov. Bill Walker and it’s an election year.

When asked about Giessel’s letter, Anchorage Democrat Geran Tarr said she wants the legislature to have oversight but thinks it’s important not to micromanage what the state corporation is doing.

“It just seems that you know people who are politically aligned to the governor are more willing to trust what they’re doing moving forward and people who are not politically aligned with the governor are not trusting,” Tarr said.

Tarr said she is concerned that the politics are getting in the way of lawmakers being able to accurately gauge the Alaska LNG export project’s feasibility based on its merit — rather than their own political alignments.

Putting aside the politics —  a lot of lawmakers had questions about how the project would be financed and what the state could be obligated to pay for.

They heard presentations from the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Revenue as well.

Senator Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, asked the Department of Revenue about its analysis of how the state is going to pay for its portion of construction on the project.

“When you have cost overruns of 10, 20, 30 billion possibly — which is not out of the realm of possibilities,” Stedman said. “How are you going to factor in the state exposure of capital calls in particular if we draw on the Permanent Fund or something I never really thought about and not too excited about grandma’s pension pool to to do to deal.”

Lawmakers also asked about tariffs and the trade war with China.

Frank Richards, the senior vice president of the gasline corporation says– so far — the project seems to have escaped major impact from the steel tariffs. And, China hasn’t retaliated with a tariff on LNG imports.

“China wants clean efficient natural gas, Alaska has it, U.S. wants to produce it and export it. So we feel that are in a good position as a project as Alaska to not hopefully be impacted by that,” Richards said.

Lawmakers were on a tight timeline to get the meeting finished, so several will be submitting questions in writing to the corporation.

Project organizers are on a tight timeline too. Their deadline for signing commercial agreements with potential Chinese investment partners and buyers is in December.

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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Sen. Sullivan: ‘Yes’ on Kavanaugh nomination

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

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan says he’ll vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Legislators quiz Alaska LNG project managers on progress

Rashah McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

State-led Alaska gasline project leaders confident on progress, minimize tariff impact during legislative update.

Watchdog renews call for tougher training for Prince William Sound oil tanker escorts

Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

Following two minor accidents, a citizens’ watchdog group is asking the state’s top environmental regulator to require tougher training for new oil spill response crews in Prince William Sound.

State government receives grant for opioid-related job training

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

Some Alaskans with opioid addictions who are leaving prisons or juvenile justice facilities will receive federally funded job training.

Bethel’s Tundra Suites hotel charged with Medicaid fraud

Anna Rose MacArthur, KYUK – Bethel

The owner of Bethel’s Tundra Suites hotel has been charged with Medicaid fraud.

In Haines, remote court proceedings frustrate law enforcement

Abbey Collins, KHNS – Haines

The Alaska Court System is one of many agencies impacted by state budget cuts. For rural communities like Haines, where residents are already separated from some court services, the impacts of a shrinking budget are compounding existing frustrations.

Drying fish and having trouble with flies? A local biologist wants to help

Anna Rose MacArthur, KYUK – Bethel

As fishing restrictions push salmon harvests on the Kuskokwim River later into the wet part of summer, families are seeking new ways to dry their fish and keep bugs away. A local fish biologist has a possible solution and is seeking volunteers to test it out.

Cooks and dishwashers left behind in new statewide tipping regulation, restaurants say

Erin McKinstry, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

For years the federal government has been grappling with who owns tips and whether employers can tell servers what to do with them. To clarify, the Alaska Department of Labor implemented a new regulation last month that prohibits restaurant owners from requiring servers to give tips to back-of-house staff like cooks and dishwashers.

Seahawks linemen learn about Yup’ik culture on whirlwind trip to Bethel

Teresa Cotsirilos, KYUK – Bethel

Professional football players embarked on a whirlwind tour of Bethel on Wednesday. Seattle Seahawks offensive linemen Joey Hunt and Jordan Roos were in town for a grand total of nine hours and got a crash course in Yup’ik culture.

Blockbuster to close last two stores in Alaska

Emily Russell, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The final day of regular business at the two remaining Blockbusters– one in Anchorage and one in Fairbanks– will be Mon., July 16.

Some Alaskans with opioid addictions who are leaving prisons or juvenile justice facilities will receive federally funded job training.

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A grant also will pay to increase the number of people trained to provide opioid treatment.

State Labor and Workforce Development Commissioner Heidi Drygas said the opioid crisis is affecting Alaskans from all backgrounds.

“It’s affecting those who are impacted by addiction, whether they are themselves addicted and trying to come off opioids, or whether they have family members that are addicted,” Drygas said. “Those individuals need assistance — first of all, getting clean and getting sober – but also they need help seeking employment.”

Drygas said family members of those with addictions could also receive job training.

Drygas said her department applied for the grant as soon as officials became aware of it. It received $1.26 million of $21 million the U.S. Department of Labor is awarding to all states.

“That small grant of $1.2 million is huge to our department and our state,” Drygas said. “We can have a really great impact with that amount of money.”

The grant also will pay to inform at-risk youths about the dangers of addiction. It will train teachers in addiction and how to help students having crises. And it will pay for medical devices that are designed to help people who are withdrawing from opioid use.

The grant starts this month and lasts two years. The state is working to launch the programs.

The organizer of a kid’s bike race in Anchorage Saturday wants to raise awareness for the importance of healthy lungs.

The race, called Race and Puff, is in it’s second year. Proceeds will benefit Peninsula Puffers, a summer camp for kids who have asthma. Last year’s funds went to a teen smoking cessation program. Racers as young as two will race against themselves, rather than competing against other participants. They’ll get a raffle ticket for each lap they complete.

“Well, I know that I like the feeling of winning, everybody does I think. And I want all the participants to feel like they’re winning or at least having a chance to win,” race organizer Merridy Littell said.

Littell is only 10 but that didn’t stop her from wanting to help a man she saw smoking when she was riding her bike two years ago. Her solution? A bike race that could help people quit.

“At first I thought it would never work out, but now it’s turned into a two-year race,” Littell said.

Littell turned a fleeting idea into a full-blown event with the help of her mother and a kids’ committee of three 11-year-olds. She and the other kids came up with the idea for the race, gathered the donations and designed the posters all on their own.

“I have definitely learned that even though you are small, you can help the community, but I’ve also learned more practical things as in typing and email composition,” Littell said.

The race fundraiser starts at 9 a.m. Saturday at Service High School in Anchorage. Littell  said she hopes it will help kids with asthma realize that they can still play sports.

The Alaska Court System is one of many agencies impacted by state budget cuts. For rural communities like Haines, where residents are already separated from some court services, the impacts of a shrinking budget are compounding existing frustrations.

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Superior Court Judge Philip Pallenberg, representatives from Juneau’s Public Defender’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office, Haines District Court, local police department and local government came together for a community meeting in Haines.

Pallenberg covers Superior Court cases out of Haines. He’ll soon take over for retiring District Court Judge Thomas Nave, who also covers Chilkat Valley cases. Pallenberg is based in Juneau.

“I feel really strongly the court should bring justice to the people as much as possible and do as many trials as I can in Haines,” Pallenberg said.

But because of the time and money it takes to travel between Haines and Juneau, it’s common for some court proceedings to be held telephonically.

“If I’ve got an hour-long hearing, I can’t necessarily travel to Haines and miss a whole day out of my court calendar to do it,” Pallenberg said. “With the travel time, I’ve got a busy calendar. I can’t always do it. But as much as possible I do. And if I have an all-day trial and the people are here, I’ll come to them.”

Haines Police Chief Heath Scott said he feels when court business is done telephonically, justice isn’t served adequately.

“If we can change behavior through sets of circumstances, like inconveniencing someone to be in front of a judge, and they see that judge, and that judge, in the courtroom, and the structure of the courtroom, holds them accountable to stand up straight, not chew bubblegum, get their hands out of their pockets, and they feel the frustration of being before somebody like yourself, then maybe we can change that behavior,” Scott said.

Scott said he hopes in the future, the court can better utilize available technology.

“That at least when you are unable to sit here in Haines, and when Judge Asper is unable to sit here in Haines, they are seeing some form of structure,” Scott said. “They are being held in some way accountable.”

Assistant District Attorney Amy Paige suggested Haines could benefit from using a polycom system, to allow for video conferencing.

“I think it would help with what Chief Scott pointed out,” Paige said. “Which is that it does increase the severity of the circumstances. People take it more seriously when they can see the judge that’s responding to them.”

Clayton Jones provides administrative support for the First Judicial District. He said Haines already has the technology to do this. But, whether it would be reliable on a regular basis is uncertain.

“Depending upon the bandwidth that day — we all certainly have felt the effects of having a cruise ship in town and what that does to our bandwidth,” Jones said. “So we do face some realities of not being able to use it 100 percent of the time.”

Amid state budget cuts, the court system has consolidated responsibilities throughout the state.

A few years ago, Haines’ magistrate judge retired and Yakutat Magistrate Mary Kay Germain took over his responsibilities, in addition to covering Yakutat and Hoonah. Soon after, retired Judge Linn Asper came back to the Haines court on a part-time basis. His current appointment ends in about a year.

The court system still plans to consolidate magistrate positions, with one judge serving several communities. Court hours have also been reduced in recent years.

Borough Manager Debra Schnabel called the reduction of court services ‘alarming’.

“It’s tragic,” Schnabel said. “That is what we’re supposed to be doing is carrying justice. And it’s not getting done.”

Budget cuts have affected resources for state prosecutors as well. But Assistant D.A. Paige said she still takes on as many local cases as she can.

“I at least take every case that comes from the Haines Borough Police Department seriously,” Paige said. “And I prosecute as many as I can. Not because I want to send people to jail but because it increases the quality of life and it can really help people if they can get into rehabilitation services.”

Judge Pallenberg held this community meeting on a day he was already in Haines to hear a trial. But the trial was postponed the morning it was supposed to start.

As fishing restrictions push salmon harvests on the Kuskokwim River later into the wet part of summer, families are seeking new ways to dry their fish and keep bugs away. A local fish biologist has a possible solution and is seeking volunteers to test it out.

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Last summer, stories of spoiled fish traveled along the Kuskokwim River. The rain seemed constant and the flies relentless. Families lost catches from entire fishing openings to rot and maggots. Aaron Moses is a federal fishery biologist at the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. He saw what was happening and wanted to help.

Moses grew up in Toksook Bay and now lives in Bethel. He watched as families hung mosquito netting around their fish racks to keep the flies away. The netting kept the bugs out, but it also kept out something that the rows of salmon slabs and strips needed to dry: air flow.

“A lot of that mosquito netting only allows five to 15 percent of air to flow through it,” Moses explained, “and so it caused a lot of the fish to spoil.”

Fish racks may need more airflow than before. In recent years, restrictions aimed at conserving king salmon have changed how people fish. Fishery managers have restricted subsistence salmon fishing to brief windows, six to 24 hours long, as the kings pass through the lower and middle river. As a result, people try to catch as many fish as they can at once, and they pack their fish racks more densely than they used to.

“In the past, people would go out and catch 15 to 20 [fish] at a time and be like, ‘Okay, we’re done for the day,’” Moses said. “Now with these openings, people are trying to get 50 to 100 fish at one time, and so it takes a lot more work to make sure that every single one of them is going to be able to dry properly.”

Moses is a scientist, so he started researching and looking for a webbing that would keep flies out while allowing air to flow in. The answer came while he was catching up with an old friend who lives on a fruit farm in Oregon.

“And he showed me this netting that keeps the bugs out, and he said it’s been very successful. I thought I’d give it a try,” Moses said. “And it’s actually worked out a lot better than I even imagined it would.”

The difference is that the webbing is woven into triangles, rather than squares, and the design allows 85 percent or more of the air to flow through it. It’s also made from PVC and highly durable.

“We were just pulling on it, but we were also cutting it and trying to see if it would rip like other things do when you make a little nick on it,” Moses described. “But it’s interwoven, so even if you put a little puncture hole in it, the way it’s woven won’t allow it to rip.”

Moses will send out the webbing to anyone who wants to try it in the region. For elders living nearby, he’ll hang it up himself. The netting is free, and so far 15 families have taken him up on his offer.

“From the pictures I’ve gotten, a lot of these fish camps look really nice and the bug netting has been very successful,” Moses said, laughing. “I got a comment yesterday saying that, ‘This is the first time there’s no bugs on the backbones of my salmon.'”

The webbing has also kept away another pest that has plagued fish dryers no matter what season they’re working in: the many birds that peck at the hanging fish.

Distributing the webbing is one piece of a larger project. Moses is also interviewing subsistence families along the Kuskokwim river and nearby coastal communities to learn how different areas preserve fish and what we can all learn from each other. He plans to release his results in the spring.

You can contact Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge fish biologist Aaron Moses at 907-545-3620 or at aaron_moses@fws.gov.

The Trump administration reopened a decades-long fight over whether tribes in Alaska can create sovereign areas.

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Native American tribes are able to put land into trust with the federal government. The property then gains special status: it’s not subject to most local and state laws and it’s not taxed either.

Such lands are included in the legal classification of Indian Country.

For decades, Department of Interior cited the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 — the law that set up regional Native corporations — as the reason Alaska tribes weren’t able to put land into trust.

But most of the more than 200 tribal organizations in Alaska weren’t part of the deal.

“We did not receive land from the federal government so we’re kind of at a loss to our aboriginal land claims,” Ivan Encelewski, executive director of Ninilchik Traditional Council said. The council oversees tribal affairs for the 900-member Ninilchik Village Tribe.

The council received a federal grant about a year ago to run a public bus service on the Kenai Peninsula.

“We do a static bus route basically running from Ninilchik down to Homer and up to Soldotna and Kenai,” Encelewski said.

The tribe decided to put its bus garage into trust, which would exempt property from local and state taxes and potentially unlock further federal money.

“It just simply made a lot of sense,” Encelewski said. “This is a piece of property that would work well and be well-suited for the land-into-trust application.”

The tribe had reason to be optimistic.

After years of litigation the Bureau of Indian Affairs began accepting lands-into-trust applications from Alaska tribes in 2014.

Three years later the Craig Tribal Association on Prince of Wales Island made history by becoming the first – and so far only – one to be successful.

That was in January 2017.

A week later, President Donald Trump was inaugurated, which meant new appointees running the Department of Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Tribes were notified in June the rule was being withdrawn, pending further review.

Anchorage attorney Lloyd Miller helped sue the Department of Interior that eventually opened the way for Alaska’s tribes to put lands into trust. He’s disappointed it didn’t last.

“The White House has made it clear that anything associated with President Obama is to be questioned and presumptively reversed,” Miller said. “The White House has taken that to heart, the agencies have taken it to heart and this is certainly part of that directive.”

Bureau of Indian Affairs released a list of trust applications from tribes, but did not otherwise respond to requests for comment.

Where Gov. Bill Walker’s administration stands is unclear. It has fallen in line with previous administrations in opposing Alaska tribes from establishing sovereign trust lands.

Alaska Native leaders that advise Walker recently met over the federal government’s sudden U-turn.

Governor’s Tribal Advisory Council Chairwoman Melissa Borton said the feeling among the group is that when it comes to putting lands into trust, the so-called “Alaska exception” is unfair.

“If tribes feel the need and see the importance in putting that land into trust, then they should have that opportunity just like every other tribe in the nation has,” Borton said. “We should not be treated differently than the Lower 48 tribes.”

Alaska Native tribes have invested thousands of dollars in their applications in the meantime.

“There’s a lot of time that goes into these applications,” Encelewski said, “It’s definitely frustrating to see something potentially hold that up right at the end.”

Bureau of Indian Affairs sent a July 2 letter to tribal leaders saying it would hold consultations with Alaska tribes and take public comment over the issue.

A delegation from China visited Kodiak Island with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, touring fish processing plants in Kodiak and Larsen Bay.

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Right in the middle of the visit, President Donald Trump’s administration proposed more tariffs, which doesn’t bode well for Alaska’s seafood trade.

But that didn’t dampen the delegation’s enthusiasm for what Alaska has to offer.

The water is low, so Alaska Department of Fish and Game employees in Kodiak are seining for sockeye salmon at the Buskin River weir.

The Chinese delegation has come to learn about local fisheries management, said Tyler Polum, sport fisheries area management biologist.

“Sometimes when the water is low, we can’t get them to go into the trap at the weir, so we thought that it would be better to beach seine for these fish,” Polum said. “We’ll show them how we sample fish to get age, sex, and length from them.”

Among the delegation, Mingzhen Zhang says Kodiak is a stark contrast to her city.

“I live in Beijing, so the best impression for me is less pollution,” Zhang said.

China’s northern capital city of more than 20 million people is infamous for smog.

Zhang works for one of China’s largest media companies there.

“I work for Tencent as a video producer and we just try to understand how Alaska Seafood works and make a video about it,” Zhang said.

The group walks along a one-foot-wide wooden plank to the other side of the Buskin weir, where a net is full and the Fish and Game crew already is pulling fish out of the water.

The weir trip was just one of many outings for the delegation, which also toured Trident Seafoods, Ocean Beauty Seafoods and Alaska Pacific Seafoods processing plants in Kodiak, as well as Icicle Seafoods in Larsen Bay.

Most of the visitors work in the seafood industry in areas from purchasing to development and media.

Right in the middle of their visit, President Donald Trump proposed more tariffs on Chinese goods, including seafood reprocessed in China and exported back the United States.

But that doesn’t worry Wei Zhang, who works for SMH International in Shanghai, where he is also a representative for Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

Zhang says when he started working with the marketing institute 20 years ago, most Chinese consumers couldn’t find Alaska on a map.

Now, people ask for it’s seafood by name, and they can order a fillet online and have it delivered to their home within hours.

“They are willing to pay a little more higher price, but the quality is the most important,” Zhang said.

Zhang says Chinese consumers believe Alaska seafood is one of the healthiest products available because of the virtually pollution-free environment here and strict food-safety rules.

“For the safety, they think that is more safe for them, not just for the feeding for the family, and it is good for feeding for the kids,” Zhang said.

Zhang says Alaskan seafood has an advantage in a country where lack of environmental and workplace regulation means it isn’t always easy to ensure food is pure.

Xin Lyu has been working in the seafood industry in China for more than 20 years.

Lyu is impressed by Alaska’s pristine waters and efficient food safety systems at processors: huge selling points.

“I think that right now safety is almost the number one point that they focus on,” Lyu said.

Lyu is general manager for a seafood import/export company and CEO for Shanghai Hollywin Frozen Food.

Lyu said the news of new proposed tariffs was troubling. The Trump administration announced the tariffs overnight.

“We are really a little bit worried, but if you look for the long term I think seafood is more and more popular in China,” Lyu said.

Despite the continued tariffs, Lyu said Alaska has something special that she believes will keep its products selling in China, at least to those who can afford them.

China has a massive and growing middle class of consumers with money to spend and want sustainable and wild seafood.

ASMI and lots of Alaska seafood processors and fishermen are counting on it.

The delegation will be in the U.S through July 14, making stops in Seattle and Anchorage, but the majority of their time was spent on Kodiak.

This week we’re hearing from Noatak Post in Juneau. During the summers, Post can be found playing the violin for tourists visiting the state’s capital as they disembark from cruise ships.

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POST: I started playing the violin 11 to 12 years ago. I started when I was turning six-ish I think. I started at a bluegrass summer camp that was hosted here in Juneau by a band called Barefoot Bluegrass. And I went to the summer camp with no musical experience really in my family at all, and I came home after that first week and said, “Mom. Dad. I really want a violin. Please buy me a violin.”

And so they went to one of the band members and asked where we could get one, and they happened to have their old violin, sitting in their parents’ attic. And they sold it to us.

Whenever and wherever someone will hire me. I do wedding fairly often. I just played a birthday party a week ago, and I’ve done a couple family reunions. But weddings are fairly common. One of the songs I can do with my looped violin is Pacebel’s Canon, which people love to have at their wedding.

Violinists are a dime a dozen. It’s great. I love that there’s so many people playing music, but there’s so many people. Especially here in Juneau. What I think is great is the Jam program that’s in the elementary schools, getting everyone to play an instrument. I didn’t have that when I was in elementary school.

I haven’t played bluegrass in over a decade, it’s crazy. I only went to that camp for a couple more years before they stopped coming to Juneau. And after that, I started taking private lessons with Mr. Shaw, who’s one of the teachers in town. And since then I’ve been classically trained, and in the past few years, have moved on to more modern and pop.

I’m gonna be a senior this year, so I’ve got one more year in Juneau, and I’ll keep doing it as long as people will listen to me, and with a different group of people on the cruise ships every day, that’s an easy thing to accomplish.

Each spring in Southeast Alaska, the Sitka spruce tip harvest happens suddenly and only lasts about a week. With the flavor’s growing popularity and short harvest season, Alaska businesses have come to rely on a small town commercial operation to meet the growing demand.

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On a blustery May afternoon, Molly Kelly and her family spread out along the Gustavus treeline near its sandy beaches. They’re picking spruce tips, the bright green nubs that grow on the branches of the coniferous Sitka spruce. The harvest has become an annual tradition in Gustavus that locals refer to as “spruce tipping.”

With a bucket hung around her neck, Kelly grips the branch with a gloved hand and slowly drags down the limb, pulling away a handful of spruce tips. Kelly and her sister Cassie Parker say it can take anywhere from five to 20 minutes to collect a pound, depending on energy level and kid interruptions.

“I have not picked many at all, maybe 50 pounds,” Kelly said. Parker says she’s only got maybe 75 pounds, nothing compared to their nephew Caleb who is nowhere in sight. He’s already already amassed a thousand pounds picking spruce tips both day and night.

The Gustavus “spruce tipping” season all started back in 2000, when the Alaskan Brewing Company approached the family owned fish processing plant Pep’s Packing to provide the spruce tips.

The Juneau brewery’s inaugural order of 500 pounds eventually became their seasonal Winter Ale, an English Old Ale style honoring the history of Captain James Cook, who brewed spruce beer on his voyages to prevent scurvy.

Now, the brewery uses Gustavus tips in their many spruce beers, including the Spruce IPA which took home a Gold Award at the bi-annual World Beer Cup Competition this spring.

At Pep’s Packing, families unload garbage bags full of spruce tips into special vacuum sealing bags that owner Pep Scott weighs and records.

“One of the families that has been picking from us from the very beginning now has three generations that’s been picking and now they have this rivalry where grandpa tries to pick more than his son,” Pep said.

Pep says around 50 people partake in the annual harvest with from small children to their oldest picker at 75 years old who used his past earnings to go to Mexico to have dental work.

“Another kid bought a lawn mower a couple years ago with his spruce tip money and then he mowed lawns the rest of the summer,” John Scott said.

With the season beginning right after the school year gets out, the Scotts believe it brings an economic boost to the town.

Because of a cold spring, this year’s spruce tipping season ran extra long, allowing that nephew Caleb Warren collect more than 3,000 pounds in two weeks at this year’s price of three-dollars-a-pound. He was this season’s top picker.

After weighing, the spruce tips are packed in 50-pound fish boxes stored in the freezer. When they have enough to fill orders Pep’s Packing charters a Cessna aircraft to move the product to destinations around Southeast.

Pep’s largest customer is still the Alaskan Brewing Company, but the spruce tips go to smaller outfits like Coppa ice cream in Juneau, and as far as Rogue Ales in Oregon.

In Juneau, Amalga Distillery owner Maura Selenak says they’ve relied on Pep’s packing to provide the spruce tips for their syrups, spruce tip soda, and small-batch Juneauper gin that’s distributed across the state. She says the spruce tip taste is indescribable until you’ve tried it.

“People come in from out of town and they’re expecting a piney flavor, and it’s actually more of a bubble gum sweetness,” Selenak said. “A lot of times people will come in and say this gin tastes like southeast alaska or it tastes like the rainforest.”

The distillery could buy ingredients from growers in the Lower 48, but for them it’s a source of pride knowing their product was hand-foraged by Alaskans, creating economic opportunity in rural communities, and not to mention, a taste of southeast in every glass.

Dwindling supplies of groceries on a remote Bering Sea island prompted the federal government last month to approve an unusual, early opening of an annual subsistence seal harvest.

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Federal managers in June agreed to the early harvest on St. George, which is more than 200 miles from the mainland.

The decision came after a request by the tribal government, which said members needed the meat because the island’s store was running out of food, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Flights to the island are often canceled amid bad weather and because of what airlines say is a poorly-positioned runway.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve called ACE to say, ‘Hey, where are our groceries? Why can’t we get them?’” Mayor Pat Pletnikoff said, referring to the cargo airline that serves the island. “It happens on a regular basis.”

About 60 people live on St. George, Pletnikoff said. Passenger planes only come twice a week, and frequent flight cancellations can make it hard for residents to keep fresh food around.

One thing that’s not in short supply on the island? Meat.

St. George and nearby St. Paul both host massive populations of northern fur seals in summer and fall — about 500,000 between the two. It’s about half the world’s population, said Mike Williams, who works with the fisheries service.

But the seals’ harvest is strictly regulated by the federal Fur Seal Act.

While the St. George store was starting to run short on food last month, the harvest season wasn’t scheduled to open until June 23. So the tribal government asked the fisheries service to allow it to start earlier. (Tribal leaders did not respond to requests for comment.)

The fisheries service, which co-manages the harvest with the tribe, responded by issuing a special, temporary rule allowing the harvest to start three days early.

“The community needed food. And this was the way that the government could help with that,” Williams said in a phone interview from a federal bunkhouse on St. George.

Typically no more than 150 seals are taken in a year, and each one has about 30 pounds of edible meat, Williams said.

Those harvest numbers are down substantially from when the seals were hunted commercially for their fur. That’s how St. George and St. Paul were originally settled two centuries ago, when Russians forcibly moved Alaska Natives from the Aleutian Islands to help with the harvest.

Even after the U.S. bought Alaska from Russia, the government continued relying on the Pribilofs’ residents to hunt and process fur seals. But since the hunt ended in the 1980s, Pletnikoff, St. George’s mayor, said his island hasn’t received enough government support to transition to a more diverse economy.

St. George faces continuing uncertainty about its flight schedule amid the bankruptcy of PenAir, the passenger airline that serves the island. And without better, federally subsidized air service, Pletnikoff said St. George will continue to face problems like the food shortage that led to the early seal harvest.

Residents are also pushing Congress and federal agencies for improvements to their boat harbor to allow better access for barges.

“This early start on fur sealing — while a good gesture on the part of the United States government and the tribe — doesn’t begin to address the serious issues that we need to deal with and we need to get a handle on,” Pletnikoff said.

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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Chinese delegation visits Kodiak as Trump administration issues new proposed tariffs

Daysha Eaton, KHNS – Haines

A delegation from China visited Kodiak Island with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, touring fish processing plants in Kodiak and Larsen Bay.

Trump administration puts brakes on Indian Country in Alaska

Jacob Resneck, KTOO – Juneau

Alaska tribes’ are in legal limbo after the Interior Department said it was suspending accepting lands into federal trust pending a fresh legal review,. Many tribes in Alaska have long sought trust status for land that exempts it from state and local jurisdictions.

Fairbanks Four suit alleges misconduct, questions settlement agreement

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

A judge will decide whether a federal civil rights suit filed against the city of Fairbanks can proceed. The four Native men, known as the Fairbanks Four, say racially motivated police misconduct led to their wrongful convictions in a 1997 murder.

With grocery supplies dwindling on remote Alaska island, the government opened seal harvest early

Nathaniel Herz, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

Federal managers recently agreed to a special, early opening of the fur seal harvest on a Bering Sea island. The decision came after a request by the tribal government on St. George. Tribal leaders said they needed the meat because the island’s store was running out of food.

First marijuana dispensary in Haines opens

Henry Leasia, KHNS – Haines

Marijuana can now be purchased legally in Haines. Winter Greens, the borough’s first recreational marijuana dispensary, opened its doors to the public Tuesday afternoon.

AK: Spruce tip fever brings economic boost to Southeast

Annie Bartholomew, KTOO – Juneau

Each spring in southeast Alaska the sitka spruce tip harvest happens suddenly and only lasts about a week. With the flavors growing popularity and short harvest season, Alaska businesses have to come rely on a small town commercial operation to meet the growing demand.

49 Voices: Noatak Post of Juneau

Jacob Steinberg, KTOO – Juneau

This week we’re hearing from Noatak Post in Juneau. During the summers, Post can be found playing the violin for tourists visiting the state’s capital as they disembark from cruise ships.

Sharks. Alaska’s waters are full of them. But they aren’t just predators to be featured in horror films. Sleeper sharks, spiny dogfish and flat sharks like skates play key roles in the state’s marine ecosystem keeping it healthy for all species.

HOST: Anne Hillman

GUESTS:

• Cindy Tribuzio – Alaska Fisheries Science Center
• Markus Horning – Alaska Sealife Center
• Olav Ormseth – Alaska Fisheries Science Center

• 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, July 17, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

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

A crab boat that sank in the Bering Sea last winter likely capsized after the vessel became coated in hundreds of thousands of pounds of ice.

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That’s the conclusion of a report released last week by federal investigators.

On Feb. 11, 2017, the Destination was pushing through rough, frigid waters a few miles from St. George Island.

Then, in about four minutes, the boat went from carrying 200 crab pots and preparing for opilio season to vanishing without a mayday call.

“Whatever happened happened very, very quickly,” spokesperson Chris O’Neil, of the National Transportation Safety Board, said. “And there’s no one left to tell their story.”

O’Neil said NTSB investigators reviewed the vessel’s mechanical history, pored over weather reports, and interviewed almost 50 people to piece together the probable cause of the accident.

“The captain’s decision to proceed into heavy freezing spray conditions without ensuring the Destination had a margin of stability to withstand that accumulation of ice led to the loss of the vessel,” O’Neil said.

In better conditions, the boat could have carried the 200 crab pots without a problem.

But with gale force winds kicking up freezing spray, the Destination became weighed down by as many as 339,416 pounds of ice.

“If you look at that probable cause, yes, this is a preventable accident,” O’Neil said.

With no survivors to interview, NTSB couldn’t determine why the crew didn’t beat more ice to mitigate that weight — especially a well-respected crew with more than 70 years of collective fishing experience.

“It’s very hard to know the mindset, the decision-making process, and what factors were or were not considered,” O’Neil said. “But certainly, through the evidence that was collected, we recognized the pressures that are associated with the industry.”

Investigators found several signs that the crew was feeling the pressure of time. The vessel had gotten a late start on crab after fishing for cod. Its delivery deadline was looming. And a few weeks earlier, a crew member had texted his father, “Oh my god, I haven’t slept in days.”

The strains of commercial fishing are familiar to Daher Jorge. He’s captain of the F/V Polar Sea, which was fishing for crab in the same area as the Destination the day it went down.

“The whole crew was exhausted,” Jorge said. “I was beating ice with my crew.”

The Polar Sea pulled into port safely after hours spent heaving sledgehammers to break ice. But in an interview weeks later, Jorge said the Destination’s sinking was a wake-up call for the entire fleet.

“It’s devastating,” Jorge said. “They say most accidents happen close to home. He was so close to St. Paul. He was at St. George. He could’ve anchored up there and gotten some ice off the boat. We have no need to rush so much. We’re going to catch the crab, so why are we going to push that hard?”

In a fishery that’s made huge safety strides in the last two decades, U.S. Coast Guard officials say crabbers have taken the sinking to heart.

Almost 50 boats participated in a voluntary safety check last year to review their stability criteria, and there were no fatalities in this winter crab season.

The loss of the Destination marks the fleet’s deadliest accident since 2005.

A judge will decide whether a federal civil rights suit filed against the city of Fairbanks can proceed. Four Native men, known as the Fairbanks Four, allege racial bias driven police misconduct, including coercion of false confessions and fabrication of evidence, lead to their being wrongfully convicted of a 1997 murder. The civil suit is the latest development in an unresolved case that continues to haunt the community.

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New evidence heard in 2015 pointed to alternative suspects in the 1997 beating death of Fairbanks teenager John Hartman, but exoneration of the Fairbanks Four, long jailed for the murder, hinged on a slow legal process, and the men opted to settle with the state and city. The agreement vacated the convictions of George Frese, Kevin Pease, Eugene Vent and Marvin Roberts, but also barred them from suing for damages, a stipulation they’re now challenging in federal court.

Fairbanks Four attorney Mike Kramer says the men had little choice but to go along with the December 17^th 2015 settlement.

“This is an involuntary agreement, thrust upon three men who’d been incarcerated for an excess of 72 years, wrongfully, that wanted to get out for Christmas,” Kramer said. “Of course, Marvin Roberts was out on parole, but the other three depended on him signing this agreement as well. It was an all or nothing.”

Kramer says the Supreme Court only allows such agreements under strict guidelines.

”And that is essentially whether the agreement was voluntary and whether it serves the public interest,” Kramer said.

Kramer maintains the Fairbanks Four release agreement does not serve the public interest, especially from the city’s perspective.

”If the city really believed that these guys were murderers, it’s hard to imagine how public policy can be served to set murderers free, in exchange for them to cover up official misconduct, or not bring claims alleging official misconduct,” Kramer said.

Kramer says the case is unique in that others challenging such agreements have involved lesser crimes.

City attorneys have requested the case be dismissed. Their motion maintains the Fairbanks Four voluntarily agreed to the settlement, an agreement they’re using to show they were wrongly convicted, and at the same time challenging in court. City attorneys declined to comment, or did not reply to requests for comment, but their motion says damage suits require an official finding of innocence, something the settlement does not provide.

The Fairbanks Four legal team filed a response to the city’s motion to dismiss the case July 2nd. The city has until August 6^th to reply, after which the judge can set up a time to hear arguments on the dismissal motion.

The Hartman murder remains unsolved. No physical evidence has linked anyone to the crime, and none of the alternative suspects pointed to in the 2015 hearing have been charged.