Officials in Anchorage are pushing forward with a new plan clearing away unlawful camps in the city’s parks and greenbelt more quickly. Critics say homeless people in the camps are trashing the woods, committing crime and making the city’s public trails feel less safe. But others say the encampments are one of the only options for people with nowhere else to go.

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As rain trickled down on a recent morning, John Weddleton poked around in the woods, looking for things that aren’t supposed to be there.

Like an improvised fort tucked back in a thicket.

“Tarps over the sticks,” Weddleton observed, “and a tent inside.”

It was a small homeless camp, scraps of trash strewn about, along with alcohol and soda bottles. The owner was either asleep or away.

Weddleton is a member of the Anchorage Assembly, representing communities in the southern part of the municipality. He is keenly interested in one of the body’s most persistent and hotly contested questions: what to do about people setting up unlawful encampments throughout public green spaces.

As civic consternation has grown more intense, with increasingly vocal community groups pressing officials to act, the Assembly has budgeted more funds for cleaning up abandoned camps. And they recently passed a measure speeding up the timeline for disassembling encampments that are close to trails, ball fields, schools and other public recreation facilities. The details of that change are still being worked out, and it remains to be seen what difference it will make.

Weddleton followed trodden footpaths that resemble game trails winding through the woods near Chester Creek. The area feels remote, but in fact, just past a small knoll is an apartment complex.

“One thing that’s so offensive about these is they’re scary because they’re so trashed,” Weddleton said. “It’s just disgusting, I mean they’re hazmat sites.”

On a given day, there are around 1,100 homeless people in Anchorage, according to the city Homelessness Coordinator Nancy Burke. A portion of them stay in improvised shelters and encampments throughout the city’s sprawling green belt. Many of those most familiar with the camps say they can be extremely dangerous to occupants’ health and safety.

Weddleton strikes up a conversation with a woman dressed all in black passing in the opposite direction, and asks if she feels unsafe walking along the trails given all the camps.

“No, I’ve live in these camps for three years,” Toni Anaruk responded. “These woods are crazy. Everybody lately, honestly, has been getting out.”

The area feels scarier, more dangerous, Anaruk said. There are heroin deaths. Bear encounters that have sent people looking for camp spots further away. And there is violence. Two years ago, Anaruk herself was brutally attacked.

“I was chopped up in Valley of the Moon,” Anaruk said.

An article in the Anchorage Daily News from August of 2016 described an unnamed woman attacked with a machete in the same area by a 19-year-old acquaintance she accused of stealing from her.

Anaruk was the woman. She pulled down the edge of her shirt by her shoulder to show Weddleton a thick red scar running all the way across her back.

“Holy smokes,” Weddleton gasped.

“That’s just one of six, the other one’s right here on my neck,” Anaruk ticked off. “Across my head, right here, my hand.”

The young woman did not stick around to answer other questions.

Nearby was a section of the Chester Creek Trail that tends to be the most densely filled with encampments. Earlier in the week, clean up crews from the city’s Parks and Recreation Department had cleared away most of the tents, tarps and abandoned garbage.

Abating camps this way is one of the city’s main approaches to managing homelessness: telling individuals their camps are unlawful, then returning 10 days later to dismantle and clear anything left.

“We cleaned out over there, all the way to Gambell,” Greg Jacobsen said, referring to a swath of land behind the Ben Boeke Ice Rink to the arterial highway where Ingra and Gambell streets merge.

For years Jacobson has overseen municipal camp cleanup efforts. He showed off raw patches of dirt not far off the paved trail where trees have been stripped out for fire wood or shelter. There were mounds of black trash bags waiting to be hauled out, filled with “lots of clothes brought in, bike parts, needles.”

Simply managing all the waste generated by the encampments is a significant part of abatement. For one thing, the volume is tremendous. According to Parks and Rec Director John Rodda, as of mid-July the municipality had removed 92 tons of garbage since the start of the year. And a lot of that trash is hazardous to health and safety: Hundreds of propane tanks, food scraps that invite bears and piles of human excrement that seep into the nearby waterways.

There is criticism this strategy is fundamentally flawed, that it basically pays city employees to shuffle homeless people around.

Jacobson touched on this sentiment as he surveyed a site that crew members were almost finished cleaning.

“Because it’s all cleared out like this, somebody’s gonna move back in real quick,” Jacobson said with a hint of resignation. “We’re house-keeping.”

The mayor’s administration is adamant that dealing with camps is one piece in a larger, long-term approach to getting people off of the streets, into housing and connected with supportive resources. According to Anchorage Homelessness Coordinator Nancy Burke, social workers piggy back on the abatement process to make contact with individuals that can be tricky to otherwise find, gathering data in the process.

“We’ve been using the camp ordinance and the processes that go around that as an organizing principal for outreach, basically,” Burke explained.

Burke concedes that many residents are frustrated with a camping situation that appears to them to have worsened. But Burke, as well as others from the administration and assembly, say that more individuals, many with severe mental health and substance abuse problems, have gotten off the streets as a result of policies expanding housing opportunities.

“The visual doesn’t always match the progress,” Burke said, adding that according to her office’s data, homelessness in the municipality overall is trending downward. “But the residents are not feeling that, and so what I need to make sure I’m doing is helping them understand the long-term play. It is a very complex system.”

Even with an overarching strategy for addressing homelessness, there are sympathetic critics who feel the current policies toward camps is unacceptable. Russ Webb is a former board chair of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority spent decades with the State of Alaska working on issues connected to substance abuse and mental health. He regularly takes photos of sprawling encampments along the trails near his neighborhood to report for clean up.

“That kind of squalor is unsafe for the people camping there, and certainly for the people using those public green spaces. Including kids,” Webb said.

The population camping along the trails is heterogeneous, according to Webb, and he is quick to give credit to recent progress moving many of the city’s most vulnerable into better shelter situations.

But people live on the streets for lots of different reasons, and in Webb’s experience there are folks with no interest in housing that the administration’s current tools have no recourse for dealing with. He believes the policy focus on long-term solutions has in the meantime created “passive acceptance” of what’s happening now.

“What we haven’t done is focus on the campers who are young, capable, involved in criminal activities and victimizing others,” Webb said. “Other campers, as well as others in the community.”

Webb doesn’t believe there should be an either-or approach to homelessness, with long-term plans on one side and reactive safety concerns on the other. In Webb’s view, it needs to be both.

The federal government has joined Gov. Bill Walker’s administration in choosing not to extend the road from Juneau 48 miles closer to Haines and Skagway.

Walker announced in 2016 that he wasn’t going ahead with the project. But the new Federal Highway Administration decision finalizes that choice.

Road opponents celebrated.

Buck Lindekugel, a lawyer for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, said the project was ill-conceived.

“This is a huge victory for the Aak’w Kwáan, the original settlers of Juneau who were able to safeguard their ancestral lands from destructive road building,” Lindekugel said. “It’s a victory for folks who care about Berners Bay and the incredible fish and wildlife resources there.”

Lindekugel said the state should spend money the Legislature set aside for the project to fund improvements to the ferry docks in Haines and Skagway. The communities will be served by two new ferries.

Denny DeWitt of the First Things First Alaska Foundation, a pro-road group, characterized it as a setback.

“The option that this governor has chosen puts the project into limbo,” DeWitt said. “The federal folks signed off on his recommendation, and when we get a new governor we’ll talk to the new governor about proceeding with the project.”

It’s not clear how the state will spend $43 million it has set aside.

“It will remain in the account until an acceptable alternative concept to advance transportation access for Juneau is proposed and agreed upon by stakeholders,” Aurah Landau, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, said.

For now, the state loses access to the federal money for the project. The federal government would have covered more than 90 percent of the projected $574 million cost.

Landau said the state would seek a federal match for any project it funds with the money that’s set aside.

The state won’t have to repay federal money it already spent.

KTOO’s Jacob Resneck  contributed to this report.

Like many Gulf of Alaska communities, far fewer sockeye are returning to the Chignik River than forecasted. Chignik has an early and late run. The combined escapement goal for July 20 is 416,000 sockeye. As of July 18, only 222,000 sockeye had made it upriver to spawn.

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With no harvestable surplus, the Chignik Management area has not had a commercial fishing opportunity targeting sockeye. Further, some residents say they are voluntarily forgoing subsistence fishing to boost escapement.

Three groups, the Bristol Bay Native Association, the ADF&G Chignik Advisory Committee and Chignik Regional Aquaculture Association submitted petitions, asking the Board of Fisheries to further restrict South Peninsula fisheries because a significant number of Chignik sockeye swim through their waters as they return to Chignik to spawn.

At the emergency meeting on Tuesday, the Board of Fisheries considered the requests.

Many South Peninsula fisheries stakeholders strongly opposed the petitions and urged the board to reject them, arguing that Fish and Game already has the authority to address in-season conservation issues and that closure of South Peninsula fisheries would be hurt regional fishermen.

In June and July, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game placed unprecedented restrictions on fishing in the South Unimak and Shumagin Islands.

Nick Sagalkin is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game regional supervisor for commercial fisheries in the westward region. He explained that in mid-June, fishing time in these sections was cut in half. Post-June, the South Peninsula fisheries were initially unrestricted.

“When we got to the second period the escapements were still languishing, and we opted to close the Dolgoi Management Area,” Sagalkin said. “So the period opening for the rest of the areas was the same, but we closed the Dolgoi’s.

Sagalkin said at the meeting that the early sockeye run to the Chigniks is very unlikely to meet its escapement goal, and the late run is weak as well. However, it was Fish and Game’s position that the situation did not constitute an emergency.

“Current sockeye salmon escapement is not the worst on record for the state, and while escapement is not adequate to provide directed commercial salmon harvest opportunity in the Chignik Management Area, the sockeye salmon escapement level does not threaten the long term sustainability of this stock, and the Department does believe the current Chignik River sockeye salmon escapement level or the harvest of some Chignik origin sockeye salmon in KMA or South Alaska Peninsula represents an emergency,” Sagalkin said.

However, the board approved the emergency petitions with a 5-2 vote.

Fritz Johnson, a board member from Dillingham, explained why he considers the Chignik situation an emergency.

“This is the lowest return, if not in recorded in history, certainly in a long time with regard to the fish returning to the Chignik system,” Johnson said. “This is an important resource, an important fishery for the communities that participate in it. And I think, given what we’re seeing in terms of escapement, we need to address this today, now, while we’re here and provide what protections we can to this salmon stock.”

Members voted to keep the subsection of the Dolgoi Islands and Southeastern District Mainland area closed through August 8. Both those measures will be lifted if the interim escapement goals for Chignik sockeye are met.

The emergency declaration will expire in 120 days. The Board of Fisheries will further discuss management of Chignik and South Peninsula stocks at a February meeting in Anchorage.

A natural gas supply proposal from Siemens and Knikatnu Corporation is a safer, less expensive option for the Interior Gas Utility. That’s the message from officials with the partnered companies that want to supply the Fairbanks North Star Borough’s Interior Gas Utility with liquefied natural gas.

The IGU’s current plan is to expand its Titan LNG production plant on Cook Inlet to increase output of gas it trucks to Fairbanks.

Speaking in Fairbanks on Monday, Knikatnu Corporation President Tom Harris says buying gas from Knik area Native Corporation and Siemens would save the Interior Gas Utility the cost of expanding the Titan plant.

”I don’t look at Siemens as a competing interest. They’re a completing interest,” Harris said. “There is not the capacity at Titan to make the demand today.”

Harris says Knikatnu has a proven coal bed methane source of gas on corporation owned land where the companies plan to install LNG production facilities. He emphasizes that the property is along the Alaska Railroad tracks, providing a cheaper, safer transportation alternative to increasing daily LNG truck traffic out of Southcentral.

”The last thing we want to see is 50 trucks of LNG coming up Knik Goose Bay Road going north and 50 trucks coming back empty, on a road that’s already killing so many people because it’s so overcrowded,” Harris said.

Siemens’ proposes using scalable gas processing modules to begin supplying Fairbanks with LNG as early as 2019.

Alaska’s does $1 billion dollars worth of trade with China every year — it’s the state’s largest trading partner. But, it took a lot of work to break into that market. One man, Yingdi Wang, has been at it for decades.

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When Alaska Gov. Bill Walker decided to take 50 people on a trade mission to China — the logistics were complicated. But, when the bulk of the delegation landed at the airport in Beijing on our first day, Yingdi Wang was waiting there.

Wang is this small, impeccably dressed man. And he is really, really good at logistics. He’s a natural-born fixer. On this trip, that means a steady-stream of rapid Mandarin to the bus driver, to staff at the airport and hotels, answering questions, solving problems. Tracking down a tailor so half the delegation can get new suits.

You know, herding cats and making sure people are getting where they need to go.

Wang is up with the group first thing in the morning, out late. And on these long bus trips? He usually puts his sunglasses on, crosses his arms and takes a nap. During a recent bus trip through in Shanghai, with about a dozen people who are interested in selling what Alaska has to offer into China — Wang sits in the front seat, watching the horizon.

Wang is thinking about how much the city has changed since the first time he visited in 1991.

“Well, there was no highway. There was no high-rises … like, this road we’re on? It’s just a big, big, big change,” Wang said.

From that seat, nearly 30 skyscrapers are in view.

“Hundreds, hundreds you know,” Wang said.

It’s a sea of people.

Wang was born in 1954 in Beijing — about 10 minutes from Tienanmen Square.

“That was my childhood. I grew up there,” Wang said. “Oh, you know summertime we just went to Tienanmen Square, we slept in the square there, you know?”

It was a chaotic time. The cultural revolution started in 1966. China’s communist leader, Mao Zedong, shut down the nation’s schools for a time. Wang says his education just kind of stalled.

“We just doing the revolution, you know? Even we go to school, we don’t study you know, we just play,” Wang said. “Teacher afraid to teach, student just doesn’t want to study.”

When he was 16, Wang was sent to a work camp. He worked as a welder, a boiler-maker and in a big chemical factory outside of Beijing for about 15 years.

By the early 1980s, Wang was 30 years old and he wanted more. He wanted to finish college. But, he said he wasn’t allowed to do that in China.

“Well at that time in China — my age — cannot go to college you know. I’m 30 years old.” Wang said. “It’s just, the system not allow me to go to university to study.”

So, he decided to come to America. But, it took awhile.

A close friend, John Sturgeon, said that process was not even.

“And I can’t remember the exact number of times, but he told me think over 100 times you went to the American embassy and apply for a visa and they were extremely hard to get in those days because they figure people come over here and they wouldn’t leave. And think like 120th time, he told me that he went up and put his visa application down. He said the guy looked at him, he said ‘son, you’re going to keep on coming aren’t you?’ And he says ‘yes.’ and he says ‘OK approved,’” Sturgeon said. ” And that’s how he came to America.”

Wang ended up in Alaska.

Sturgeon — yes, that John Sturgeon — is something of a state’s rights celebrity in Alaska. He said he met Wang for the first time in Anchorage.

“I had a friend that I was working with called up and said he had some college, college student that was looking to make some extra money if I needed him my lawn cut,” Sturgeon said. “I says, ’yeah.’ I really didn’t. But I was trying to do him a favor and so I said ‘OK.’ So that person turned out to be Yingdi.”

Sturgeon said he liked Wang immediately.

“‘He’s real personable. He’s really outgoing and kind of always got a smile on his face,” Sturgeon said. “But he was, you know, trying to work his way through college. He got a scholarship that wasn’t enough to pay for everything, so he had taken, kind of, odd jobs wherever he could get them to live on.”

Before long, they were working together. First, in the timber industry at Koncor Forest Products, a company set up by four Alaska Native corporations. Wang’s first job was scanning log tags by hand before they were shipped off. Sometimes 20,000 thousand tags per ship.

“Yingdi would come in after hours and scan those tags till, you know, late in the evening and sometimes early in the morning,” Sturgeon said.

Sturgeon said watched Wang blossom from a new immigrant with terrible English skills into a savvy business person pretty quickly.

With Wang’s help, Koncor Forest Products opened one of the first headquarters for an Alaska company — in China.

Wang ran the company’s bureau from his apartment in Beijing.

Sturgeon and Wang don’t work at Koncor together anymore, but they’ve started their own businesses together since then. In a country that values reputation, Sturgeon said Wang has built a good one.

“Still to this day we don’t have to put down deposits to the factories when we buy something because they trusted Yingdi,” Sturgeon said.

About 15 years ago, Wang took those private-sector skills into the public sector and started working for the state.

When someone from the Governor’s office or the Department of Commerce wants to do business in China? They call Wang.

“So, he is the ultimate fix it man for the state of Alaska,” Alaska Gasline Development Corporation Economic Adviser John Tichotsky said.

Tichotsky said Wang is completely at ease negotiating with high-level government officials, then chatting casually with cab-drivers or negotiating in a market.

“He’s like a genie in the bottle you get to tell them your wish, and everything from a suit to a meeting with a minister… he could probably pull it off,” Tichotsky said.

And, Wang knows Alaska. Tichotsky said he has a talent for stepping in at these crucial points in meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page.

“There are some real cultural specificities and Yingdi’s just good at pointing out to people what they should do — how they should react — without being condescending or making you feel like you’re awkward,” Tichotsky said. 

But, that’s all changing now.

Back on that bus in Shanghai, Wang said he’s getting close to retirement age. He’s 64.

This summer, he’s leaving behind that apartment in Beijing and settling in the U.S. for good.

This week, we’re hearing from Benito Achas in Kodiak. Achas works with drug rehabilitation at Safe Harbor and immigrated to Alaska from the Phillipines in the mid 90s.

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ACHAS: I come to Kodiak because that’s where… my mother-in-law and her husband were already here in Kodiak. Actually they originated from Hawaii. They came to Kodiak to work in the cannery. I worked for like three months when I came here. But, after that, I kept looking for a job, and then I get the job that I wanted, but I don’t really stay long for that job. From the cannery, I used to work as a correction officer in the city of Kodiak, but I don’t like the job because I’d been in the military and the police force when I was still in the Philippines. And the setup is different from here.

In the Philippines, we only have two seasons — dry season and rainy season. Here we have four. And at that time when we arrived here, that snow is really thick, you know. It’s like, I remember one time during Thanksgiving and you cannot got out from your house because it’s full of snow outside.

We have our own Filipino-American Association of Kodiak. Me, I am the one who organizes Filipino youth movements against alcohol and drugs. This is one way, you know, to help the Filipino-American youth get away from the dangers of alcohol and drugs in this community.

I usually have my own team for basketball with the young kids. We used to travel from Kodiak going to Anchorage to play against Filipino teams in Anchorage. That’y my passion, you know, travelling with kids and playing sports.

It’s the middle of summer, but students seeking higher education are making plans for fall. The University’s new Alaska College of Education aims to train more state residents to take teaching jobs here. The idea is to keep good teachers in rural Alaska communities.

HOST: Lori Townsend

GUESTS:

• Jim Johnsen – UA System President
• Steve Atwater – New dean of College of Education
• Cameron Perez-Verdia – President/CEO of Alaska Humanities Forum

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

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

University of Alaska Fairbanks officials say a man killed himself on campus this morning by jumping from the eighth-floor of the Gruening Building. UAF spokesman Jeff Richardson says university police received a call about a man’s body found on the west side of the building just before 10 a.m.

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“On the west side, there is kind of a little alcove that you can access via an emergency exit. And it appears he jumped from that alcove,” Richardson said.

Richardson says the man died of head trauma. He says campus authorities are withholding the victim’s name until next of kin are notified. And he says no foul play is suspected.

“There was a note found on the body, which makes this something that they’re considering an apparent suicide,” Richardson said.

The Gruening building is located on the east side of the campus. It houses classrooms and offices for UAF’s College of Liberal Arts.

Richardson says an investigation on the man’s death continues.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski and more than two dozen other senators wrote President Trump Friday urging that he use all available resources to reunite migrant families that were detained after crossing the southern border.

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“Enforcement of our immigration laws should be a high priority,” the senators wrote, “but we must also adhere to our core moral values as Americans.”

The letter asks Trump to make keeping families together the default policy.

Including Murkowski, 10 Republican senators signed the letter. Among them is Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., one of the most conservative senators, and frequent Trump critic Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. The list of Democrats includes Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, one of the most liberal senators.

Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan’s name is not on letter. His spokesman says Sullivan was not asked to sign it, but he agrees with its main points.

In a separate statement, Murkowski said there are more effective and humane ways to enforce immigration law that don’t require family separation.

“This sad chapter in our nation’s history must come to an end,” Murkowski said in the written statement.

The Texas Tribune reported Friday that the government still has some 2,000 children over five who must be reunited with their parents before a court-imposed deadline on Thursday.

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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Murkowski calls on Trump to end ‘sad chapter’ of splitting families at border

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

Sen. Lisa Murkowski is urging President Trump to use “all available resources” to reunite migrant families.

Court filing aims to prevent lawsuits by Alaska victims in Las Vegas shooting

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

In Alaska federal court, MGM Resorts International is seeking to prevent lawsuits from being filed against it related to the mass shooting in Las Vegas last year.

Board of Fisheries declares low Chignik sockeye returns an emergency

Avery Lill, KDLG – Dillingham

The Alaska Board of Fisheries declared the low sockeye return to the Chignik River an emergency at a meeting on Tuesday. Members voted to keep the subsection of the Dolgoi Islands and Southeastern District Mainland area closed through August 8.

Inuit Circumpolar Council signs Utqiaġvik Declaration: a guide for future Arctic action 

Ravenna Koenig, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Fairbanks

The meeting concluded with the signing of the Utqiaġvik Declaration, which will guide the ICC’s work for the next four years.

In apparent suicide, man dies after jumping from eighth floor of UAF building

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

University of Alaska Fairbanks officials say a man killed himself on campus this morning by jumping from the eighth-floor of the Gruening Building.

After Hydro One leaders resign, Avista reassures regulators about merger

Jacob Resneck, KTOO – Juneau

Alaska Electric Light & Power said political pressures in Ontario won’t affect the acquisition of its parent company Avista by Hydro One of Toronto. But market analysts warn of new uncertainty over the $5.3 billion deal.

The squid or the whale? Reported giant squid in Lynn Canal actually decomposing whale

Abbey Collins, KHNS – Haines

On Tuesday morning, a fisherman called the U.S. Coast Guard to report a giant squid on the West side of Lynn Canal, near St. James Bay.

AK: The journey of Alaska’s go-to man in China

Rashah McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

It took a lot of work for Alaska to break into the Chinese market. One man has been at it for decades: Yingdi Wang, the Chinese-born, American citizen who is the state’s go-to guy in China.

49 Voices: Benito Achas of Kodiak

Daysha Eaton, KMXT – Kodiak

This week, we’re hearing from Benito Achas in Kodiak. Achas works with drug rehabilitation at Safe Harbor and immigrated to Alaska from the Phillipines in the mid 90s.

MGM Resorts International is seeking to prevent lawsuits from being filed against it related to the mass shooting in Las Vegas last year, including in Alaska federal court.

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A gunman firing from his hotel room window killed 58 people, including at least two Alaskans, and injured many others attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival in October. MGM owns the hotel from which the gunman shot and has filed preemptive lawsuits against the victims or family members of victims.

The lawsuit filed in Alaska this week names six defendants. It does not seek any monetary award. Instead, MGM wants a judicial declaration that it was not liable in any way for the attack. The PBS NewsHour reported about 2,500 people had sued or threatened to sue MGM and that the company responded with lawsuits similar to the one filed in Alaska.

MGM declined a request for an interview but issued a written statement saying the six defendants had all expressed interest in suing the company or had done so already. The MGM lawsuit says security for the festival was certified by the Department of Homeland Security and therefore MGM is not liable due to provisions in federal anti-terrorism legislation.

But legal experts say the gunman’s motivations are unknown, so its unclear if the shooting constituted terrorism and whether the legislation applies.

Anchorage resident Avonna Murfitt’s son Adrien died in the shooting and she is named as a defendant in the MGM lawsuit.

In an interview after the shooting in October she said Andrien was a graduate of Dimond High School, a commercial fisherman, and a country music fan.

“He was just enjoying life, and it’s just such a terrible thing that happened,” Murfitt said. “Just a young man enjoying life, having a good time after a hard season of work.”

In a text message Friday, Murfitt called the MGM lawsuit “absurd and outrageous” and said it had again brought up the pain of losing her son.

In late 2017, Anchorage resident Isaac Vanderburg realized that he was having the same conversation with a lot of his neighbors in the Airport Heights area.

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“Several people had asked about could we turn Airport Heights into its own micro-grid or could we put solar panels up or what about electric vehicles in the neighborhood,” Vanderburg said.

So Vanderburg reached out to organizations that work with renewables like the Alaska Center for Energy and Power or ACEP.

“The folks over at ACEP had wanted to do a Solarize campaign for a long time and were just looking for the right dynamics and a little bit of local leadership to actually make it a reality,” Vanderburg said.

The first phase of the Solarize Anchorage campaign was born. The program brings together community members to purchase solar panels in bulk. That saves the company that installs the panels money and results in a discount for residents. The campaign hosted community events and did door-to-door outreach in Airport Heights. Thirty-two residents signed on, three times more than organizers expected.

Less than a year after Vanderburg had the idea, it’s becoming a reality.

It’s starting to rain as Anchorage Solar employee Tim Remick hoists a solar panel over his head and slides it toward the pitch of a garage roof. Another member of the team sets it atop two metal bars at the roof’s edge and clamps it into place.

They spent the better part of yesterday and this morning preparing for this moment, putting in wiring and taking care to protect the integrity of the roof. Not to mention the permits, inspections and the planning and design behind each installation. They’re about halfway done with all their Solarize Anchorage installs. And Remick said people are starting to take notice.

“We’ve had kids feel like we’re the ice cream truck. We drive by and the kid’s like ‘Solar so cool! Dad, can we have some?'” Remick said.

They’re installing for home owner Lisa Pekar who said part of why she wanted to participate in the project was to teach her son about renewable energy. When the team’s finished, the south-facing half of the roof is covered in panels, enough that Pekar hopes to sell some of the power back to the grid in the summer months. She said she’d never considered solar before signing on to the project.

“What really drew us to it was that we could kind of join together with a bunch of people and have some momentum,” Pekar said.

The U.S. is set to reach two million solar panel installations by the end of this year. It took 30 years to reach the first million and just two to add a million more. That’s partly because solar panels have gotten a lot cheaper and more efficient in the last few years. Anchorage Solar owner Ben May, who won the contract for the project, said solar’s increasing affordability boils down to policy. Germany started a feed-in tariff program, an incentive that pays people for producing clean energy like solar.

“As a result China built factories to fill that demand and as a result we all have cheap solar panels now,” May said.

May said Alaska is playing catch-up to the national solar trend. His business has boomed, increasing almost eight-fold since they opened in 2016. One hurdle is reaching people who’ve thought about solar in the past but found it too expensive. Panel cost has dropped to almost a tenth of what it was ten years ago. And then there’s Alaska’s dark winters.

“We get asked a lot about winter,” May said. “We make our power in the summer. We make the difference in the summer and the spring and the fall.”

Depending on the number of panels and their energy usage, homeowners can produce enough in the summer to cover their winter power costs and then some. Still, the price tag isn’t small. An average install costs $10,000. Solarize Anchorage saved participants about 10 percent. There’s also federal tax credits and state and local incentives to help bring down the expense. It takes around 10 years to pay back the up-front costs.

“We’re seeing rate of returns about the same as the stock market, about eight, nine, sometimes even 10 percent for a good roof that’s facing south,” May said.

The most rewarding part, May said, is watching homeowner’s reactions when they turn the solar on for the first time.

“When it turns on they’re psyched. They’re so psyched,” May said. “They’re making their own power.”

Kristen Collins works for the Alaska Center, which is in charge of education and outreach for the project. She says the program was modeled after similar ones across the country but is the first of its kind in Alaska.

“Anywhere from Fairbanks down to the Kenai Peninsula, people want to know how to bring this program to their own neighborhood,” Collins said.

They’re not sure yet what the next phase of the project will hold, but they’ve already started brainstorming. Ideas include adding commercial buildings and expanding the program to other forms of energy.

The Inuit Circumpolar Council wrapped up its 2018 General Assembly Thursday in Utqiaġvik.

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Iñupiat, Yupik and Cup’ik from Alaska and Inuit from Canada, Greenland and Russia got together to discuss a range of common issues and interests across the Circumpolar North. The meeting concluded with the signing of the Utqiaġvik Declaration, which will guide the ICC’s work for the next four years.

In the Utiaġvik high school gym, translators were kept busy for four days, working to translate content live into the languages of the listening audience: Iñupiaq, Yupik, Inuktitut, Russian, English and Kalaallisut, the main dialect of Greenlandic.

This meeting happens every four years, when the Inuit Circumpolar Council gets together to set priorities for the next term and elect new leadership.

On Thursday, Alaska’s own Dalee Sambo Dorough was elected Chair of the ICC, a position she will hold until 2022. Sambo Dorough has been to every ICC General Assembly since the first one was held in Utqiaġvik in 1977. This is her first time elected Chair.

“I am deeply humbled by the recognition, and the support, and the confidence that people expressed in me,” Sambo Dorough said.

Sambo Dorough is Iñupiaq with family roots in Unalakleet. She’s also a professor of political science at the University of Alaska Anchorage, specializing in international law and Indigenous human rights.

In her closing address, Sambo Dorough underscored the importance of Inuit engagement in global decision-making, as more and more countries show interest in the Arctic.

“We can’t underestimate it. We’ve already seen the growing compounded interest and pressure,” Sambo Dorough said. “Therefore, we must become more assertive about our status and rights to effectively safeguard what is indeed ours: the lands, territories and resources of the Arctic.”

On the last day of the meeting, the ICC passed the Utqiaġvik Declaration, a document that outlines some of the ways forward on issues ranging from education and economic development, to wildlife management and food security.

It includes a provision advocating for the phase out of heavy fuel oil, a type of fuel used in shipping that can present unique clean-up challenges, especially in the Arctic. The UN group that regulates international shipping is currently considering banning its use.

James Stotts, the President of ICC Alaska and a member of the ICC executive council, says the declaration also deals with a range of social and cultural issues. One thing that stood out to him from this year’s meeting was the frank discussion of suicide, especially suicide among young people.

“It’s an issue that’s been more or less hidden or silent for a long time,” Stotts said. “And I heard a very strong desire to bring it out into the open.”

The declaration directs ICC to hold a summit sometime in the next four years on health and well-being that will look at suicide, addiction and general mental health.

The next General Assembly meeting will be held in Greenland in 2022.

Alaska Electric Light & Power’s parent company says its acquisition by Hydro One remains on track. That’s despite political pressure that forced the resignation of the Canadian company’s leaders.

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Hydro One has been roundly criticized in Canada over rising utility rates. Ontario’s newly elected leader Doug Ford had made the company’s unpopularity a campaign issue.

“I said over and over and over again on the campaign trail the CEO of Hydro One and the board will be gone,” Ford said during a July 12 press conference. “I’m happy to say today the CEO and the board of Hydro One, they’re gone. They’re done.”

Hydro One had been publicly owned until 2015. But the province of Ontario still holds a minority stake, which coupled with Ford’s bully pulpit, was apparently enough to force the company’s leadership to resign.

Market analysts warn the upheaval could delay or even torpedo the $5.3 billion deal to acquire AEL&P’s parent company Avista.

The Hydro One-Avista transaction requires approval in five states and is still being reviewed by state regulators in Oregon, Idaho and Washington. Regulators in Alaska and Montana have already signed off. Casey Fielder is a spokeswoman for Avista in Spokane, Washington.

“We remain committed to this merger with Hydro One and believe that it still adds benefits to all of our stakeholders,” Fielder said. “With regards to AEL&P, they’ll continue to manage the operations there in Juneau and this should not have a material impact on the customers there in Juneau.”

Avista penned a seven-page letter to Alaska regulators on Wednesday reaffirming its commitment to the deal. It stated that structural arrangements would insulate operations of its subsidiaries from changes of leadership at Hydro One.

Closer to home, AEL&P is celebrating its 125th anniversary on Friday afternoon in Juneau’s Cope Park.

“Actions in Ontario will not impact our ability to serve our customers,” AEL&P’s spokeswoman Debbie Driscoll said Thursday. “AEL&P remains focused on our operations and providing clean and reliable power to the community of Juneau as we always have been.”

Market analysts say the risks to the Avista-Hydro One merger remain twofold: if any one of the five state regulators declines to approve the deal, it would trigger a domino effect.

The other risk is that Hydro One’s new leadership team – which has yet to be named – could cancel the Avista deal.

Analysts agree both scenarios are unlikely but possible.

As the proposed Donlin gold mine moves through the permitting process, more tribes in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta are speaking out against it. Six tribes have passed resolutions against the proposed mine in the past two months; eight have spoken out against it in the last two years.

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Napakiak is one of the tribes. Tribal administrator David Andrew says the village council is worried about possible impacts to salmon.

“They were concerned about salmon,” Andrew said. “That’s our life. Salmon, our life.”

Subsistence is a way of life for many families in the Y-K Delta. And Donlin would be one of the biggest gold mines in the world, built next to the Kuskokwim River. Many residents worry about the impact to subsistence resources.

The Y-K Delta is also one of the poorest regions in the state, and Donlin Gold, the company developing the mine, promises jobs for locals. But some tribes think the risks to their food and health are too high to support the project.

Minnie Andrew is the assistant tribal administrator for Kongiganak. The tribe passed its anti-Donlin resolution last week, and she says they discussed the potential jobs before the vote.

“They were mostly talking about the cons,” Minnie Andrew said. “The pros — it would bring jobs, but the cons are more.”

Several of the tribes passing anti-Donlin resolutions did so after the Orutsaramiut Native Council held their first public demonstration against the project in June.

And most of the tribes with anti-Donlin resolutions so far live about 100 miles down river from the proposed mine site. Only one tribe on the Yukon River took a stance against it. So far, it’s unclear if any tribes directly next to the mine have passed any resolutions about Donlin.

Several of the tribes with anti-Donlin resolutions also signed on to a letter sent to Gov. Bill Walker protesting the mine. However, Walker supports the project.

Donlin Gold spokesman Kurt Parkan says the company plans to develop the mine safely and responsibly.

“We welcome people’s opinions we know there is a variety of opinions in the community,” Parkan said. “We get a lot of people asking us when the jobs are going to start and we also understand that people have concerns that they don’t think can be adequately addressed.”

Meanwhile, Earthjustice, a national environmental group, sent a letter on behalf of four of the tribes asking the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to deny a crucial permit for Donlin.

The project needs more than one hundred permits before it can start mining and expects to get the major ones out of the way this year.

State government leaders said an initiative to protect salmon that Alaskans could vote on in November will cost the state money and delay infrastructure projects. They spoke at a Senate State Affairs Committee meeting held Friday in Anchorage to consider the effect of Ballot Measure 1. The initiative would increase protections for salmon streams.

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Ben White is the statewide environmental program manager for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. He noted the initiative would increase the number of streams the state must assume have salmon. Companies or state agencies seeking to build on or near these streams could require the state to check whether each stream has salmon. And White said this would take time.

“They’re not always there,” White said of the salmon. “They’re not always there when we’re there, and so that’s an expense. It takes us time and effort to get out to the sites at a lot of times. And so, this is going to increase the delivery time of our projects.”

Ron Benkert said the Department of Fish and Game would have to hire people to enforce new regulations if the initiative passes. He’s a habitat coordinator for the department.

“There is a significant impact from a cost perspective,” Benkert said. “Our estimate is about $1.3 million a year annually for at least five years.”

Gov. Bill Walker opposes the measure. However, the state officials who testified Friday are prohibited by state law from trying to influence the outcome of the ballot initiative.

Initiative supporters say it would actually lower costs for the state.

“With the assumption that fish are in the streams, that saves the Department of Fish and Game a lot of money and resources, from going out and constantly testing these streams to add them to the existing catalog,” Ryan Schryver, Stand for Salmon’s director, said. “So this is really about saving Alaskans money.”

The committee will not take action as a result of the meeting.

The Alaska Supreme Court is considering a case that could block the initiative.

Bristol Bay’s Nushagak fishing district pulled in more than a million sockeye on eight separate days earlier this month. Before this summer, it had only done that twice in Bristol Bay’s history.

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Keeping all those fish cool proved problematic for fishermen who still rely on slush ice. Capt. Nick Sotiropoulos of the fishing vessel Flyin’ Tiger said he’d like at least 1,000 pounds of ice for every opener to keep his catch cold and earn that chilled quality bonus from his processor.

“A couple of the busy days, the Bristol Maid, the ice barge was limiting to 500 pounds and there was a lot of fish being caught that day. That’s enough ice to fill up a few holds, but we didn’t really know what to do after that,” Sotiropoulos said.

It wasn’t just the ice barge that struggled to keep up with demand. Tenders also couldn’t hack it.

“When (tenders) bring it out from town, they announce over the VHF that they’ve got bags of frozen water molecules, and it’s a big race to see who can get the ice first,” deckhand J.R. Haukins of the F/V Baze said. “Ice is a hot commodity out there, and I’m not sure everybody gets it as quick as they want it. It’s a price deduction come delivery time.”

Trident Seafoods and the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation team up to run the ice barge near Clark’s Point. Neither group would comment on how often they limited ice this summer. BBEDC president Norman Van Vactor said they had to prioritize ice for Bristol Bay residents over out-of-state fishermen.

“The issue here on the Nushagak this year was one of volume,” Van Vactor said. “Thirty million fish on this river system here obviously is just off the charts, and so the demand for ice this year was also off the charts.”

Van Vactor’s right when he said volume was up this year. On the traditional season peak of July 4, records from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game records show 674 boats were fishing Nushagak. That’s twice as many vessels as the district has averaged on Independence Day for the past four years (389 in 2017; 308 in 2016; 325 in 2015; and 335 in 2014).

Considering that, Sotiropoulos said he doesn’t fault the ice barge for putting in limits.

“Everybody was doing the best that they could, but given the number of boats that were here, it was just kind of a mess trying to keep all the fish cold,” Sotiropoulos said.

Fewer boats were fishing east-side districts as the run trickled in several days late, so Van Vactor said the Bristol Lady didn’t experience any ice shortages. That’s the other barge BBEDC operates with Ocean Beauty Seafoods at the Y in Naknek.

Just over 10 percent of Bristol Bay’s fleet relies on ice to chill their fish. Another 27 percent turn over unchilled fish to processors, and the final 63 percent are drift boats with refrigerated sea water systems. Those figures come from a 2017 Northern Economics study for the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association.

Van Vactor said the BBEDC and its processor partners will discuss how to prevent ice shortages for next summer, but he’s also eying long-term change for the drift fleet.

“For folks that might have had ice problems, may this be the catalyst for them considering RSW systems and becoming more self-sustaining on their own as well,” Van Vactor said.

Van Vactor said he personally loves the quality of slush ice fish, but that RSW allows for much more efficient fishing. He realizes, though, that outfitting boats with RSW is a pricey endeavor. He promised that BBEDC would continue to help local fishermen get ice for the immediate future.

“A lot of the smaller, older fiberglass boats just are not that readily adaptable. They are going to need to be continually supported by either ourselves and access to ice from the ice barge or from their processor,” Van Vactor said.

In the end, Van Vactor called Nushagak’s ice shortage a minor issue when compared to other parts of Alaska like the Chigniks, where even subsistence fishing is questionable this year. Sotiropoulos added that he feels confident enough of his fish were down to temperature to earn that chilled fish bonus from his processor.

Most processors still haven’t released 2018’s prices, but Trident Seafoods paid fishermen an extra 25 cents per pound for chilled, floated and bled sockeye in 2017.

It’s forecast to remain hot across the Interior through mid-week.

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National Weather Service meteorologist Erin Billings says several temperature records were broken or matched on Sunday.

”We reached 89 degrees in Nenana, breaking the old record of 86 in 1968. Delta Junction was 86, which broke the previous record of 84 set in 1968,” Billings said. “Northway was 85, breaking the old record of 83 set in 1990. And Fairbanks hit 88 degrees which tied the old record set in 1968.”

Billings says high pressure over the region is expected to persist through Wednesday, with 80 plus degree highs.

Southeast Alaska cities have invested a lot of energy, money and infrastructure into supporting the tourism industry.

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What do the communities get in return?

With bigger and bigger cruise ships bringing more and more passengers to the Inside Passage, we took a look at how Southeast Alaska in general, and Ketchikan specifically, benefit from all those people.

The new mega-cruise ship Norwegian Bliss docks in Ketchikan, bringing 4,000 passengers – about double the number a regular ship can hold.

Combine that with other ships in port on a typical Monday, and the community of Ketchikan’s population pretty much doubles that day throughout the tour season.

Vendors stand behind Ketchikan Visitors Bureau counter, fielding questions and – most important – selling tours to the thousands of visitors streaming through.

Loren McCue sells helicopter tours.

“The Bliss is so enormous,” McCue said. “There’s not enough tours and things to do. They line up. It’s like a feeding frenzy.”

McCue said the city’s infrastructure isn’t set up yet for that many people.

What will it be like when more of those huge ships start coming regularly?

“I think they really have to rethink restrooms, traffic,” McCue said. “There’s a lot of issues that come along with it.”

City officials are working with consultants on a multi-million-dollar project to reconfigure not only the docks to allow for bigger ships, but the uplands, to accommodate more people.

It’s a tough balance for a community of roughly 14,000 year-round residents.

Those big ships will be an economic boon,

“It’s a gold mine, the Mondays,” McCue said. “We say that we’ve been Bliss-tered.”

Visitors Bureau Executive Director Patty Mackie brought along information from a recently released McDowell Group report on tourism’s economic impact for Ketchikan.

Mackie said total spending in Ketchikan by the industry, including all visitors, cruise ships and crew members, is about $223 million a year.

“That’s a big number. $187 million of that, so the vast majority, really is visitor spending,” Mackie said. “That’s on things like shopping, tours, food and beverage and transportation.”

Mackie said all that spending benefits not only the businesses, but the community in general through sales-tax revenue.

“The amount that (visitors pay), according to our research, is about 25 percent of what’s collected each year,” Mackie said. “If you’re paying 6.5 percent sales tax right now, you’d probably be looking at paying over eight percent if you didn’t have that revenue being generated by our visitors.”

Mackie hears the complaints about tourism, the related congestion and the amount spent on port improvements, but she said most people in Ketchikan understand tourism has been good for the local economy.

Port improvements are funded through head taxes and wharfage fees paid by the cruise lines.

Mackie added that 90 percent of tourism businesses in Ketchikan are locally owned, or at least Alaska-owned, and tourism-related jobs have gone up in recent years.

Meilani Schijvens, director of Juneau-based research firm Rain Coast Data, said last year’s Southeast By The Numbers report for Southeast Conference report had one number that really surprised her: For the first time, the visitor industry was No. 1 in terms of private-sector wages in Southeast.

That’s not because they’re paid particularly well.

“It’s really among the lowest of all sectors in terms of wages,” Schijvens said. “You need a lot of visitor industry jobs to create that level of wages that’s now being provided in the region.”

The average annual income for workers in all industries across Southeast Alaska is close to $50,000. The average wage for someone in tourism is just under $30,000.

Schijvens recently completed a business-climate survey of Southeast industries, and she says the visitor industry shows the highest level of confidence — for good reason: tourism is expected to keep growing, with an estimated 1.3 million cruise passengers visiting Alaska next summer – that’s about 12 percent more than this year.

The big challenge is to make sure Southeast communities are ready for that number, Schijvens says.

Shauna Lee’s year-round job is all about getting ready for visitors. She runs the Bering Sea Crab Fishermen’s boat tour in Ketchikan.

The whole process that ends with a successful excursion starts with the cruise ship schedule, released about two years in advance.

Lee works with the cruise lines to determine how many spots each ship can sell on board, and works with visitors who purchase directly from the business.

Ketchikan offers plenty of options for shore excursions, and many of those tours hire locally, she said.

“I hear a lot of people say, ‘Well, the money just leaves town at the end of the year,’” Lee said. “Well, it’s not. Because it’s paying my mortgage. It’s paying for the mortgage of other people who work here, who live here in Ketchikan.”

Lee said other members of her family work in tourism, too.

When they buy groceries or donate to a local nonprofit, those are tourism dollars supporting the community.

Passengers start arriving, and Lee gets to work, checking in eager visitors, excited about the tour.

Once they’re all on board, Lee casts the boat’s lines and they’re off.

Just like that, a two-year process is completed. Now, on to the next one.

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

Listen now

State leaders say salmon initiative would cost time and money if it passes

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

Initiative supporters say it would actually lower costs for the state.

More Y-K Delta tribes protest Donlin Mine as permitting process progresses

Krysti Shallenberger, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Bethel

Six tribes have passed resolutions against the proposed mine in the past two months; and eight have spoken out against it in the last two years.

Troopers investigate double North Pole shooting

Associated Press

Alaska State Troopers say a man died and another was injured after two masked men reportedly burst into their North Pole home and shot them.

Interior heat wave to continue as temperature records are broken

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

It’s forecast to remain hot across the Interior through mid-week.

Small fires put out near Copper River over weekend

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

A state forestry crew responded to 2 small grass fires in the Copper River area yesterday. The human caused blazes burned under an acre along the Edgerton Highway, before being contained.

Siemens and Knikatnu propose to jointly supply IGU with LNG

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

A natural gas supply proposal from Siemens and Knikatnu Corporation is a safer, less expensive option for the Interior Gas Utility. That’s the message from officials with the partnered companies that want to supply the Fairbanks North Star Borough’s Interior Gas Utility with liquefied natural gas.

Southeast invests in tourism hoping for big return

Leila Kheiry, KRBD – Ketchikan

Bigger and bigger cruise ships bring more and more passengers to the Inside Passage. Southeast Alaska communities are investing more into the tourism industry hoping for a return of that investment.

Solarize Anchorage spreads solar across Airport Heights neighborhood

Erin McKinstry, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The U.S. is set to reach two million solar panel installations by the end of this year. It took 30 years to reach the first million and just two to add a million more. That’s partly because solar panels have gotten a lot cheaper and more efficient in the last few years. Solarize Anchorage is working to bring that trend to Alaska.

Selling Arctic science with a BARC-becue

Ravenna Koenig, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Fairbanks

There’s a lot of science that happens on the North Slope. Some of it’s homegrown, like the wildlife research done by the North Slope Borough. But a lot of it is done by scientists who spend weeks or months doing field work here before heading home.

Here’s why ice was a hot commodity in the Nushagak this summer

Austin Fast, KDLG – Dillingham

Many Bristol Bay salmon processors give bonuses to fishermen who can chill the fish sitting in their boat’s hold. That’s not so easy, though, when ice is in short supply.