High-ranking military officials highlight recruitment difficulties in Anchorage visit
Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
High-ranking military officials are visiting Alaska this week, part of the annual pilgrimage by federal officials and cabinet members during the August recess.
Charges pending for three Katmai visitors who approached feeding brown bears
Erin McKinstry, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Three visitors to Katmai National Park could face charges after approaching brown bears feeding on salmon Thursday evening.
Galvin outraises Young in July; Young has more cash banked
Associated Press
Independent Alyse Galvin reported contributions of nearly $65,000 for her U.S. House bid in July, more than the incumbent Republican, U.S. Rep. Don Young.
Army Corp to announce record of decision on Donlin
Krysti Shallenberger, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Bethel
A major decision for the proposed Donlin Mine is expected Monday. That’s when the Army Corps of Engineers is set to roll out its record of decision after years of review.
State fire service looks to open partnerships with Native organziations
Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks
The Alaska Fire Service is floating a plan to contract with Alaska Native corporations and tribal groups to provide wildfire crews.
Could industrial hemp become the next big crop for Alaska?
Erin McKinstry, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Marijuana and hemp are technically the same plant: cannabis sativa. So it’s surprising that as Alaska’s recreational marijuana industry has bloomed, growing hemp remains illegal. But that could change by 2019.
Native tribes in Ketchikan tell Interior department to keep land-trust program
Liam Neimeyer, KRBD – Ketchikan
The Department of the Interior is reviewing at Alaska tribes’ ability to put land into trust, a right available to these tribes only since 2014. DOI is holding consultations across the state to get feedback on the land-trust program.
AK: Annual community dig brings archaeology to life in Kodiak
Daysha Eaton, KMXT – Kodiak
Every summer, the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository hosts a community project in Kodiak. Students and community members join in.
49 Voices: Ralph Watkins on Hoonah
Adelyn Baxter, KTOO – Juneau
This week we’re hearing from Ralph Watkins in Hoonah. Watkins is the superintendent of Hoonah city schools and was involved in the annual ḵu.éex’ festival, which celebrates the cities Tlingit culture and heritage.
Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson visiting Air Force personnel at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson during her first visit to Alaska since taking over the branch (Photo: Zachariah Hughes – Alaska Public Media, Anchorage)
High-ranking military brass visited Alaska as part of the annual pilgrimage by federal officials and cabinet members during the August recess. Though national defense spending is up, different services are facing major recruitment challenges.
It was slightly chaotic inside a large hangar at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson when head of the Air Force Heather Wilson dropped by Thursday afternoon. There were pilots on hand to greet the secretary, a clutch of reporters, officers and secret service personnel. Airplanes roared overhead. And then there were several dozen paratroopers in camouflage face-paint loaded down with parachutes waiting to pile into cargo planes for practice jumps.
Wilson is in Alaska for the first time since taking over as Secretary of the Air Force 15 months ago. She’s visiting JBER and bases in the Interior to get a sense of how Air Force members in the 49th state are doing and what is needed. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act budgets more money for personnel, but the Air Force is having a hard time recruiting and retaining service-members. That’s especially true of pilots, who have been leaving the service for lucrative jobs in the commercial sector.
According to Wilson, the Air Force has to do a better job of incentivizing highly trained flyers to stay in the Air Force.
“But we also have to increase the number of pilots that we’re training. So we’re expanding pilot training,” Wilson said during a brief round of questions from reporters.
One reason military officials make visits like this is to get out of D.C. to hear more directly from troops and officers. Lieutenant General Kenneth Wilsbach is Alaska’s top commander, and says one of his requests to the secretary is for the administrative burden on troops to be eased.
“And she’s actually a big advocate for this,” Wilsbach said. “Reducing the amount of bureaucracy for the average airman. So things that don’t make a readiness difference, let’s reduce those things to give the airmen more time to do mission, to give them more time with their families.”
Lieutenant General Kenneth Wilsbach at an event during the USAF Secretary’s visit to JBER (Photo: Zachariah Hughes – Alaska Public Media, Anchorage)
The day prior, Army Secretary Mark Esper spoke to the local press alongside Senator Dan Sullivan after meeting with military families at JBER and Fort Wainwright. The Army is trying to expand its ranks after years of reductions under the Obama Administration, with an ambitious aim to add an approximately 30,000 additional active duty troops in less than a decade, increasing the overall size of the standing Army to more than 500,000 before 2028.
However, Esper said it is not an easy time to convince people to enlist.
“With regard to recruiting, we have a great economy, and I would not trade in a great economy for one more soldier. But that means we have to operate more innovatively,” Esper said.
One area where the military has been shedding personnel are immigrants with particular skill-sets who joined the service under a program called Military Accessions for Vital National Interest. The initiative started in 2008 under the Office of the Secretary of Defense to draw in immigrants who spoke strategically important languages or had professional training in fields like medicine, and in exchange put them on an expedited path to citizenship. MAVNI ran into bureaucratic hurdles in 2014, and more recently under the Trump Administration troops were being discharged from the Army with little to no explanation. On Thursday several national news outlets reported the Army had ordered a halt to those discharges while it evaluated the separation process.
Army Secretary Mark Esper with Senator Dan Sullivan during a visit to JBER (Photo: Zachariah Hughes – Alaska Public Media)
The effective end of the MAVNI program won’t affect end-strength numbers, according to Esper, and cited potential security concerns in some immigrants’ backgrounds as a reason for it not to resume.
“MAVNI (recruits) by definition of the name itself are those persons who may present a skill that’s vital to the national interest. But at the same time we have to place importance on the security of these folks to make sure we know what we’re accessing into the force,” Esper said.
The heads of the Navy and Coast Guard are also stopping in Alaska.
A map of the earthquake southwest of Kakotovik (the westernmost and largest circle) and subsequent aftershocks. (Image from the Alaska Earthquake Center)
A large earthquake was recorded on the North Slope, 52 miles southwest of Kaktovik, at around 7 a.m. Sunday morning. So far, there are no reports of any major impacts to communities or infrastructure.
Alaska Earthquake Center seismologist Michael West says the magnitude 6.4 quake was record-breaking.
“This is the biggest earthquake within a few hundred miles, at least, of that area that we have records for,” West said.
West says the main earthquake was followed by roughly half-a-dozen aftershocks of magnitude 4 or greater.
A North Slope Borough spokesperson said Sunday morning they were not yet aware of injuries or damage as a result of the quake.
The main earthquake was 85 miles southeast of Prudhoe Bay, but North Slope oil operators also haven’t reported any damage or injuries yet. In a tweet, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company said the trans-Alaska pipeline was operating normally.
There are six candidates seeking the Republican primary nomination to be Alaska’s lieutenant governor. From left to right, top to bottom: Lynn Gattis, Sharon Jackson, Kevin Meyer, Edie Grunwald and Gary Stevens. Not pictured: Stephen Wright. (Photos by Skip Gray/360 North, Leila Kheiry/KRBD and Andrew Kitchenman/KTOO and Alaska Public Media)
Six Alaskans are running to be the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. Half are current or former state legislators, the other half are military veterans.
The lieutenant governor has limited duties under the state constitution: to succeed the governor if necessary, and to oversee initiatives and referendums. State law has given the lieutenant governor a few more responsibilities. They include administering elections and serving as guardian of the state seal.
Wasilla resident Lynn Gattis is a former state representative. She said she’s most excited about the process of approving initiatives and referendums, and communicating to the public what the proposed laws mean.
“I think that is so very important, that Alaskans understand both sides,” Gattis said. “And that would be my job, as the lieutenant governor, to make sure that folks get the real story on both sides.”
Gattis was defeated two years ago by David Wilson in the Republican primary to serve in the state Senate.
Some of the other candidates pointed to issues other than the lieutenant governor’s duties set by law, in citing why they’re running for office.
Edie Grunwald is a Palmer resident and retired Air Force colonel.
“We have a resource-royalty state,” Grunwald said. “We have historic unemployment right now. And we’re one of two states in recession and crime is skyrocketing. Over the last several years, what Alaskans have suffered through under our leadership right now is just unacceptable.”
Grunwald has been particularly vocal in calling for the repeal of the criminal justice overhaul passed in 2016. Her 16-year-old son David Grunwald was murdered that year.
Sharon Jackson also served in the military, and her position with the U.S. Army brought her to Alaska. She also has worked for the National Federation of Independent Business and in constituent relations for U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan. She said her energy and determination will serve Alaskans. She also has ideas about how to administer elections.
“We need to clean up the voter registration list,” Jackson said. “We need to make sure that everyone on the list are here living in Alaska, and living.”
Jackson said she received a ballot at her home in the Anchorage municipal election for someone who moved away 15 years ago and died five years ago.
Sen. Kevin Meyer has been a legislator for nearly 18 years. He said he’d be able to help the governor improve on what he sees as an unproductive relationship between the current administration and the Legislature. Meyer also works as an investment recovery coordinator for ConocoPhillips.
“I think that’s where I can be a real asset to whoever’s running for governor, is having the years of experience that I have, both in elected office in the Legislature and in the private sector as well, to help the governor sell his ideas to the Legislature and ultimately to the public,” Meyer said.
Meyer emphasized that the primary won’t be a vote-by-mail election, like the recent Anchorage municipal and special elections. So voters will have to go to the polls or request an absentee ballot to vote.
State Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, was the only candidate who said his main reason for running was to focus on administering elections.
“One of the things – few things – the lieutenant governor is absolutely responsible for is the elections issue,” Stevens said. “And we’re facing some serious problems. We have equipment that’s aging, and the most important thing, I think, for the voters is to make sure that their vote counts.”
Stevens hasn’t been actively campaigning, and said that voters who know his record will either vote for him, or will choose someone else.
The sixth candidate is Wasilla resident Stephen Wright, who served in the Air Force. He’s emphasized restoring the full permanent fund dividend under the formula used before 2016. He didn’t respond to requests for an interview last week.
The primary is Aug. 21. The only other lieutenant governor candidate on the primary ballot is Democrat Debra Call, who’s running unopposed. Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott is also a Democrat. But he’s filed to be on the general election ballot, on a ticket with independent Gov. Bill Walker.
Tourists watch brown bears at Brooks Falls. (Photo by Mitch Borden, KMXT – Kodiak)
Bristol Bay has seen a lot of salmon return to the region during the summer sockeye runs in the past few years. This hasn’t just been good for commercial fishermen — it’s also been good for bears.
Along the Alaska Peninsula, around the Brooks River near its famous waterfalls in Katmai National Park, more bears are appearing and more cubs are surviving. This made one researcher ask whether there is a direct link between the size of Bristol Bay’s salmon runs and the number of bears returning to the river each summer.
Tourists from all over come to Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park to watch some of the best fishermen in the world face down the hordes of sockeye surging upstream. The bears are quite a sight, and there are so many here because it’s the easiest place around for them to get a quick bite.
Leslie Skora compares the Brooks River to being the biggest store in a town
“Brooks River is not the only grocery store around, but it’s the most well supplied,” Skora said.
Skora is a wildlife biologist for the National Park Service at Brooks Camp studying bears. She says the salmon are so easy to catch at the falls because it’s a bottleneck; thousands of fish get backed up as they try to jump up about four feet to continue to their spawning grounds. This makes it easier for bears to catch all the salmon they need, and for people to study them.
Since 2001, researchers have kept track of how many individual brown bears come to the stream annually to fish. Around 40 bears return on a yearly basis, but recently there’s been a spike in those numbers.
“We have been experiencing a boom of young bear sub-adults or newly emancipated independent bears,” Skora said.
Usually these young bears would scatter far and wide once they separate from their mothers, but Skora says around 10 sub-adults showed up this summer. Young bears are more likely to make contact with people, and these sub-adults are causing some trouble around the park.
For the first time in over two decades, bears have made contact with humans near the falls. In both incidents, young bears approached individuals and pawed at them. No one was hurt and they were considered minor encounters, but it does raise a question: why are these new bears here?
“The past several years have been a higher productivity for females with cubs. So we have just seen more cubs in previous years and greater survival of the cubs that have been around,” Skora said. “So now it is just that pulse of that age generation coming up.”
The number of bears that show up every summer does fluctuate. In 2013, when Skora first started working near Brooks Falls, it was one of the lowest turnouts ever recorded. She remembers tourists coming up and asking ‘where are all the bears?’
This got Skora thinking. She started examining what determines how many bears come to the river every summer. She does this by tallying how many bears appear annually and “then look(s) at the number of salmon that have been jumping just at Brooks Falls.”
Skora said she then “compares if those numbers have created a correlation in the number of cubs we’ve seen or the survival of cubs or adult bears.”
If there is more salmon, Skora thinks that could mean more bears, while fewer fish would mean fewer bears. Bristol Bay’s large salmon returns over the last few years and the spike in young bears around the Brooks River could support this hypothesis, but nothing is certain yet.
Skora has been working on the project for over a year. Besides the amount of salmon in the river, she is also interested in seeing if the river’s water level affects how many fish bears catch and if the amount of tourists visiting the falls impacts the bears at all. Her research requires hours of just watching bears. It can get a little tedious at times, especially when she’s sitting out in the rain all day. But it can also be like binge-watching T.V.
“Sometimes it is addicting, sometimes you just want to watch the soap opera drama unfold,” Skora said.
Back at the falls, Skora’s enthusiasm for watching bears is shared by a lot of people. Tia Roberts made her way from L.A. and can’t get over being so close to the predators while they snap jumping salmon out of the air.
“It never gets tiring. It is so thrilling to be able to watch anything in the wild in their own natural habitat watching their behavior,” Roberts said. “It is so… It is so thrilling.”
Skora hopes to wrap up her research on Brooks Falls within the next year and move on to a larger part of her study that will look at factors affecting brown bear behavior and survival across Katmai National Park.
The Alaska Fire Service is floating a plan to contract with Alaska Native corporations and tribal groups to provide wildfire crews. AFS spokeswoman Beth Ipsen says the draft proposal currently out for potential contractors to provide feedback on, has several potential advantages.
”Giving them more of an opportunity for stable employment. Giving them some opportunity for Native self-government,” Ipsen said. “As well as a higher quality, more experienced crew that can spend more days on a fire assignment.”
Ipsen says emergency firefighting crews across Alaska have declined from 70 to 20 over the last 15 years, a drop attributed to other, more stable employment opportunities, and increasing government regulations, including a health screening.
”A contractor could potentially have some requirements, like physical fitness requirements or medical requirements, but that would be up to the contractor,” Ipsen said.
Ipsen says AFS emergency fire crews work an average of 16 days per summer, but contract crews could get additional work outside of firefighting, including through federal grants contractors can apply for.
“There can be fuels and mitigation projects. There could be other project work, in the villages where they’re located,” Ipsen said. “So it opens it up for more consistent work outside of just the emergency call up as-needed basis.”
Ipsen adds that having more crews located across the AFS rural northern Alaska service area would make for quicker response when local fires crop up. She says the contract proposal currently out for comment, is modeled after a US Forest Service program in the Lower 48.
Richard Russell’s YouTube channel shows Russell, an airline ground agent. (YouTube screenshot via AP)
The airline worker authorities say stole a commercial plane Friday at Sea-Tac International Airport before crashing on a Puget Sound island is a former Alaskan and 2008 graduate of Wasilla High School.
Richard “Beebo” Russell, 29, had been a star athlete for the Wasilla Warriors, competing in football, track and field and wrestling, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Russell had been a ground agent for Horizon Air — apparently acting alone in the hijacking — and died in the crash after performing dangerous loops in the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400.
Matt Tunseth reported on Russell’s Alaska ties for the Anchorage Daily News and spoke to Alaska Public Media’s Casey Grove.
GROVE: When did you first put it together that Russell had connections to Alaska?
TUNSETH: Well, I had worked at the (Mat-Su Valley) Frontiersmen newspaper out in Wasilla, so I recognized his name when I heard it. He was a fairly prominent athlete out there.
So I knew who he was. I didn’t know him, but it was certainly a name that I recognized. I had watched him play football. He was a big kid. He was fast. He was a pretty good player. He played fullback, runningback for Wasilla. I think he scored six touchdowns his senior year. The kind of energetic, fast, big running back on their football team.
GROVE: You talked to some of his former coaches and I want to ask you about that in a second. But what else did you learn about his time in Alaska? I think I read that his family moved to Wasilla when he was kind of young, is that right?
TUNSETH: That’s my understanding, and I know that he grew up in Wasilla, at least spent a lot of his time as a kid in Wasilla.
He attended both Wasilla High sShool and Teeland Middle School out in Wasilla as well.
GROVE: Over the weekend you reached out to his former coaches, and what did they tell you about him?
TUNSETH: Yeah. I talked to his former track coach and his former wrestling coach. The wrestling coach, Shawn Hayes, has been there for many, many years. He remembered him as a tough kid; a hard worker is how he was described. Shawn told me that he was shocked to hear that Beebo had done something like this.
His track coach, a guy named Gary Howell, has also been at Wasilla for quite some time, and he painted a picture of an outgoing kid somebody who was liked at Wasilla. The way that he sort of described it was this was the kind of kid that you’d give a high-five to in the hallway, even if you didn’t know him. Just a very exuberant, fun-loving, kind of popular student athlete at Wasilla. And he also, like Coach Hayes, described being kind of utterly shocked that be doing anything like this. It was a surprise to everyone at seems.
GROVE: His family described him in a statement as a big, gentle guy. We actually have some tape of a sort of press conference from a family friend:
MIKE MATHEWS (RUSSELL FAMILY FRIEND): On behalf of the family, we are stunned and heartbroken. It may seem difficult for those watching at home to believe, but Beebo was a warm, compassionate man. It is impossible to encompass who he was in a press release. He was a faithful husband, a loving son and a good friend.
GROVE: And Matt, it sounds like you reached out to his family.
TUNSETH: We weren’t able to get in touch with any of the family members, and they just elected to handle it with that statement, kind of the same things that I had heard from other people, which was the this seemed very out of character for him, that he they would like him to be remembered for how he lived his life, as opposed to this incident, which was that he was very well-liked, very outgoing, fun guy to be around.
Nizina River and Valley (Flickr/NPS photo by Bryan Petrtyl)
The death of a pack-rafter in Wrangell St. Elias National Park earlier this month, has raised awareness about proper preparation for the increasingly popular sport of floating back country rivers in tiny ultralight inflatable boats.
Aiden Don’s body was located by searchers along the glacially-fed Nizina River on August 2. The 22-year-old Austrian’s body was seven miles downstream from where he and a paddling partner began a planned one-day float. The trip starts with a stretch of class two rapids, and Wrangell St. Elias National Park spokeswoman Margie Stiegerwald says Don was lacking key gear for the Nizina’s rough, icy waters.
”He was not wearing a personal flotation device or a dry suit,” Stiegerwald said.
Steigerwald also points to a lack of training and experience.
”Not recommended to go on unguided trips this year,” Stiegerwald said. “(He was a) novice to pack rafting.”
Don and his paddling partner were flown into the start point of their Nizina River float, but the two pack rafters became separated shortly after setting out on the water. The partner did not know what happened to Don until finding his empty raft. Pack raft safety educator Monica Morin emphasizes the importance of keeping close track of fellow paddlers.
”Never, ever would I allow them to get out of sight,” Morin said.
Morin is lead ranger for the Bureau of Land Management for the lower Deschutes River in Oregon. The former Denali National Park backcountry ranger, says she began doing pack raft specific safety education after moving to Alaska in 2013.
”Sort of a side project because a lot of my friends were telling me stories of near-misses and almost-accidents that they had on the river and felt that there was a need to help catch the pack-rafting community up to speed with the boating community, the river community,” Morin said.
Morin says in the past, most boaters focused on road accessible rivers, but pack rafts have enabled getting to more remote waters, where any trouble can have greater consequences.
”You’re in a completely different realm of risk,” Morin said.
Morin also points to pack rafters focus on pairing gear weight to minimum, which can lead to leaving behind safety essentials, like a personal flotation device, dry suit and helmet. Morin says pack raft trips remote locations can also result in over commitment to floating out.
”Once you’re in pack raft mode, to get out and hike can be really hard mentally,” Morin said.
Morin teaches pack rafters to have bail out options, in case their float doesn’t go as planned. She says that means carrying a map, compass and other emergency gear inside your dry suit, noting rafts can float or blow away.
Donlin Mine takes massive step with two crucial permits
Krysti Shallenberger, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Bethel
A huge proposed gold mine in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta cleared a major hurdle today. The Army Corps of Engineers okay-ed the Donlin Mine in a joint record of decision with the Bureau of Land Management.
Biggest-ever earthquake recorded on North Slope
Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage
A large earthquake was recorded on the North Slope, 52 miles southwest of Kaktovik, at around 7 a.m. Sunday morning.
Airline employee who stole and crashed Horizon Air plane had Wasilla roots
Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
The airline worker authorities say stole a commercial plane Friday at Sea-Tac International Airport before crashing on a Puget Sound island is a former Alaskan and 2008 graduate of Wasilla High School.
Treadwell points to experience in campaign for governor
Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau
The primary election on August 21st will determine the Republican candidate for governor. Mead Treadwell is trying to make up ground in the race, which he entered at the deadline.
Alaska DOT removes political campaign signs, sparks outrage
Associated Press
The Alaska Department of Transportation seized several political campaign signs last week in Anchorage, sparking protests and outrage from candidates and campaign officials.
In wake of pack-rafter incident at Wrangell St. Elias, experts highlight proper preparation
Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks
The death of a pack-rafter in Wrangell St. Elias National Park earlier this month, has raised awareness about proper preparation for the increasingly popular sport of floating back country rivers in tiny ultralight inflatable boats.
Anchorage Assembly to hear testimony on potential plastic bag ban
Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Alaska’s largest city is deciding whether or not to ban plastic bags.
Decades-old federal policy placed Newtok in the path of climate change
Rachel Waldholz, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage
Some advocates say it’s largely because of federal policy that some of these villages are so vulnerable to climate change in the first place.
When Treadwell says why he should be governor, the former lieutenant governor talked about the sheer range of issues he’s faced in business and government.
“You need a candidate with experience to be your governor,” Treadwell said. “The odds are very strong that the Republicans are going to win this race. The Democrats and Bill Walker are, you know, going to be dividing up the left. And I want the Republicans to put forward a strong candidate who has actually worked on Alaska’s economy all over the state.”
Treadwell is 62 years old. He grew up in Connecticut.
Treadwell said his father was admirable in many ways, but that he abused alcohol.
“I came from a family, which had a great dad when he was sober,” Treadwell said. “He was mayor of our town. He had actually just cut the ribbon on a fire department the day before our house burned down and the fire department was pulling him out. He died in that fire and the rest of us got out.”
Treadwell came to Alaska with his grandmother in 1974, and served on Walter Hickel’s unsuccessful campaign for governor four years later. He spent most of the 1980s working for a company trying to develop the Asian market for Alaska’s natural gas. After Hickel was elected governor in 1990, Treadwell joined the administration as deputy commissioner for the Department of Environmental Conservation.
Treadwell has three children who he largely raised on his own after his first wife Carol died from brain cancer.
“When she died, she left me a kindergartner, a first-grader, a fifth-grader and a minivan,” Treadwell said. “And I drove that minivan to scouts and to volleyball and to the ski hill. And had we not been able to come together as a family and spend those weekends, every weekend at the cabin, I’m not sure we would have survived.”
Treadwell remarried, to Virginia McClure.
Hickel remains a powerful influence on Treadwell. Hickel told Treadwell near his death in 2010 to continue the state’s longtime fight for more control over its land.
“Another thing he said is: ‘Stay free,’” Treadwell said. “We engraved it on his gravestone where he was buried standing up, so he didn’t have to get up to fight, he said. But the main thing about ‘stay free’ is this: Don’t be set with conflicts. And make sure that you have your principles, but be creative enough in your thinking and pragmatic enough in your thinking to get things done.”
Treadwell’s business experience included work with an investment firm he started with his friend John Wanamaker and two others. Wanamaker credits Treadwell’s persistence with the success of some of the companies they invested in. They include Immersive Media, which developed the 360-degree cameras later used for Google Street View.
“The reason why we got there is my buddy just kept beating that horse,” Wanamaker said. “We just kept working it and working it and working it when, you know, some of us thought, ‘Hey, maybe it’s a cool technology, but there’s no application.”
Treadwell’s campaign website doesn’t lay out many specific policy proposals. He does say he supports setting permanent fund dividends at the full amount under the formula used until 2016. Treadwell hasn’t spelled out how he would pay for it. He says he would look to lower the cost of state government while improving what he calls government’s “outputs,” in areas like high school graduation rates and the rate that prisoners commit new crimes.
“I’m not going to tell you a division I’m going to eliminate or anything else,” Treadwell said. “I’m going to make sure that we look at outputs as well as inputs.”
Treadwell noted his experience with Street View and another business that provided anti-piracy technology for films.
“We could be attracting those kind of companies here,” Treadwell said.
Treadwell said he would look for opportunities to develop manufacturing and other industries that would add value to the state’s natural resources.
“I’m wearing a belt that’s made out of salmon leather right now,” Treadwell said. “We’ve got to be ferocious in bringing jobs back to the state.”
Treadwell’s immediate rival is former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy. The senator’s brother and others have bankrolled a group backing Dunleavy.
“I don’t see a problem with Mike Dunleavy having the capability to get elected,” Treadwell said. “I do see a problem with Alaska having a governor who doesn’t have a whole lot of experience. And there was what I’ll call checkbook deterrence to others who wanted to get into the race … I finally decided that I’m going to go up against this paper tiger and I won’t have as much money. But I’ve started companies where we didn’t have as much money as somebody else and we made things happen.”
Treadwell said he’s gaining support from Republicans, as well as from undeclared and nonpartisan voters.
The nearest homes are now just 40 feet from the edge of the Ninglick River. The village could lose that amount of land in just one or two storms. (Photo by Rachel Waldholz/Alaska’s Energy Desk)
On a chilly afternoon last November, I went to visit George Carl, the vice president of the Newtok Village Council. He’s a slight, wiry man in his mid-60s with a bushy gray mustache and a pair of surprisingly hip blue glasses perched on his nose.
I stopped by with Andrew John, Newtok’s tribal administrator. We were greeted with instant coffee and – to Andrew’s delight – cinnamon rolls.
Newtok, in Western Alaska, is perhaps the most endangered village in Alaska. It’s built on permafrost, and it’s losing about 70 feet of land each year as the Ninglick River eats away at the shore. George Carl’s house is one of the closest to the river.
“It’s going to reach my house pretty soon. Probably next summer,” Carl said.
A 2003 report found that most of Alaska’s 200-plus rural villages face flooding and erosion. By 2009, as many as 12 villages were already considering some kind of relocation.
But moving a whole village is astronomically expensive. So who’s going to cover those costs? Who is responsible?
Some advocates say the answer is the federal government. They say it’s largely because of federal policy that some of these villages are so vulnerable to climate change in the first place.
George Carl thinks he’ll see the end of this Newtok. Residents expect the village to become uninhabitable within a matter of years, as the river consumes houses and, eventually, the school and runway.
Carl also remembers the beginning: He was born a few miles away, at a site called Old Kealavik.
But in 1958, the Bureau of Indian Affairs built a school at the nearby seasonal camp of Newtok. The story goes that the site was chosen because that was as far as the barge with the building supplies could make it. So that’s where it stopped, and that’s where the school was built.
When Carl was about six, his family moved to be near the school. Families from all over the region did the same.
“I remembered a guy who was telling our parents that if you want to have our kids put in the school, just move here,” Carl said.
At the time, this was happening all over the state. Many Alaska Native families still moved around seasonally. Carl’s family lived in a sod house, the traditional housing built from the tundra. If a river changed directions and a site flooded, the camp could be rebuilt somewhere else.
But when the government started building schools, the villages grew around them, rooting people in place. Other infrastructure followed: clinics and airstrips and power plants.
Many of the sites were chosen the way Newtok was – convenience for the builders, not longevity for the village. Sally Russell Cox is a planner with the state of Alaska who has worked with Newtok since 2006.
“No really good planner, or no really good developer would go out to this area and say, ‘Well this is a great place to build a new community!’,” Cox said
Cox says their locations have made villages like Newtok more vulnerable to climate change.
“That compounded with you know the warming that we’ve seen over quite a lot of years has really impacted these communities,” Cox said.
Many locations were already vulnerable to environmental change. And now the landscape is changing faster than expected, with climate-driven shifts like the loss of sea and river ice.
Newtok hopes to relocate to a new site, about nine miles upriver. The village has been trying to move for more than two decades, but it’s been a struggle to find the funding. One estimate puts the price tag for relocation at $130 million.
Some advocates say Alaska’s history means the federal government has a special responsibility for village relocation.
Robin Bronen is with the Alaska Institute for Justice. She’s working with more than a dozen villages trying to decide whether and how to move.
“There is some responsibility I think from the federal government because the federal government made the decision to create sedentary coastal communities in the locations now where people are not being able to stay,” Bronen said.
At times, Congress has seemed to recognize that responsibility. This spring, lawmakers approved $15 million to help Newtok move, as part of the bipartisan spending bill signed by President Trump. George Carl and others say that’s a big deal for Newtok. But — it’s a one-time fix. It will jump-start the move, but not complete it. And it doesn’t help other communities in the same situation.
The schools, of course, did more than simply root people in place. The ripple effects of that policy are still being felt across Alaska today. In Newtok, some 60 years later, George Carl still remembers the culture shock. Everything was in English.
“First days of school…I wasn’t understanding nothing at all. Just totally nothing,” Carl said.
Carl says students weren’t allowed to speak Yup’ik.
But many fundamental ways of life continued. For Carl, life in Newtok still revolves around subsistence hunting and fishing. This time of year, for instance, residents hunt for muskrat, mink and otter.
That’s why, for George Carl and others in Newtok, it’s so important to relocate to a site nearby – and for families to stick together, and not scatter to other villages and cities around the state. He says he can’t imagine moving to Anchorage.
“You know I’m adapted to Mother Nature and the ocean and the river, you know, that kind of food,” Carl said.
The federal government made Carl’s family move once. Now, he’s asking for help to move again: this time, to a place of his own choosing.
Solar panels installed at the Administration and Humanities Building on UAA’s campus. (Photo by Samantha Davenport, Alaska Public Media)
Governor Bill Walker’s Climate Action Leadership Team is trying to envision innovative ways to reduce carbon emissions in Alaska. For inspiration, task force members are looking to Connecticut, where a state-sponsored bank has helped loan millions of dollars for energy efficiency projects.
Bert Hunter has a favorite project the Connecticut Green Bank has helped fund. You can almost hear hear his eyes sparkling through the phone as he describes it. An old textile mill is being transformed into shops and affordable housing, and on site is a built-in hydroelectric dream.
“Literally, a river will run through it,” Hunter said with a chuckle.
That river will generate power for the building through two turbines — lowering energy costs for the residents.
Hunter is the Connecticut Green Bank’s Chief Investment Officer, and he admits this is unusual project for a conventional bank loan. He says those barriers to installing energy upgrades can exist for regular homeowners, too. Not just big ambitious commercial projects. That’s because in the eyes of a traditional bank, a loan for something like a kitchen remodel is typical.
“But if you start talking about solar and energy efficiency … you know, most bankers don’t know how to approach that,” Hunter said.
Hunter says the concept of renewable energy is still relatively new, which can make traditional banks cautious. But the Connecticut Green Bank has enough leverage to put those lenders at ease.
Hunter explains the Connecticut Green Bank partners with credit unions and community banks, acting like a conduit. For residents who apply, that’s where the money comes from. If a homeowner does default on their loan, it’s the Green Bank that shares the burden of paying back those cost.
This lowers the perceived risk for lenders, and it’s how Hunter says they can offer single digit interest rates for energy efficiency projects.
In the six years it’s been around, the Connecticut Green Bank has more than doubled its initial investment of $70 million dollars, and states like Alaska are starting to take notice.
“We’re talking about setting up an enterprise that is going to make money,” Chris Rose, who serves on Governor Walker’s climate action task force, said.
Rose is a big fan of establishing a green bank here. It’s included in a draft policy, which is expected to be submitted to the governor next month.
Rose thinks Alaskans could save a lot of money by making their homes more energy efficient.
“In the past, the state spent over a half a billion dollars to do that very successfully. But we don’t have that grant money anymore,” Rose said.
Rose says a system that operates like a business makes a lot of sense. You put money in and that money comes back in the form of interest.
But Alaska has a huge budget deficit. So, where would that initial money come from?
“I don’t think a green bank would be a huge lift,” Rose said. “I do think the issue of where the money is going to come from is a big question. A carbon tax is just one potential source of revenue.”
Rose says to look at what other states are doing. At least seven have proposed carbon pricing legislation. Alaska should be thinking long term.
Connecticut didn’t establish its green bank with a carbon tax. It transformed an existing energy program and collects a small fee on utility payments.
However Alaska decides to go about it, Bert Hunter has some advice: get the state on board and start with a pot of money.
“Alaska is no stranger to making these kinds of investments,” Hunter said.
Hunter is talking about Alaska’s Permanent Fund Corporation. It invested close to $100 million in a leading financier of renewable energy this year.
Donlin Gold’s general manager Andrew Cole (right) signs the permits with Colonel Michael Brooks (left), district commander for the Army Corps of Engineers (Photo by Krysti Shallenberger/KYUK)
A huge proposed gold mine in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta cleared a major hurdle on Monday, Aug. 13.
“The spirit of this joint record of decision is about everyone coming together and working together and coming up with a quicker decision,” David Hobbie, of the Army Corps of Engineers’s Alaska District, said.
Hobbie and other top federal officials joined representatives from the mining industry and Native Corporations at their Anchorage office to commemorate the occasion.
It took six years of environmental review, but Donlin Gold has finally received two major permits from the Army Corps and Bureau of Land Management. Donlin is trying to develop one of the biggest gold mines in the world.
Because the mine will impact thousands of acres of wetlands, it needed a permit from the Army Corps. The plans also include a 315-mile-long gas pipeline, which crosses over federal land run by the Bureau of Land Management. So it needed a permit from them as well.
And for two Native Corporations, the permits means the Y-K Delta could get more jobs. Andrew Guy is the CEO of the Calista Regional Native Corporation, which leased the subsurface rights to Donlin Gold.
“This is one of those steps that we need in order to improve conditions we have out in the region,” Guy said.
But Donlin faces growing opposition from Y-K Delta tribes. Nearly a dozen have passed anti-mine resolutions in the past two years.
The tribes fear the mine would damage their subsistence lifestyle. And they fear a mine accident could contaminate the Kuskokwim River, a vital food source.
The Orutsaramiut Native Council and the local working group, the Yukon Kuskokwim River Alliance, oppose the mine. They released a statement Monday saying the permitting process left out many voices from the region.
But Andrew Guy says their concerns have been heard throughout the process.
“We are involved in subsistence too with our own families, so that’s a very valid concern that we’ve always kept in the top of our heads,” Guy said.
The gold mine needs at least one hundred permits before it can start mining. Donlin Gold says they plan to get the major ones out of the way this year. The rest of them could be completed in two years.
A Coast Guard Jayhawk rescue helicopter from Air Station Sitka participates in a training exercise. (USCG Photo taken by Petty Officer 3rd Class Wes Shinn)
On Friday, a Klukwan resident set out to pick blueberries in the Upper Chilkat Valley. When he didn’t return, an extensive search began. After two days alone in the woods, he was found alive and well.
When 74-year-old Valentino Burattin found himself lost in the woods, he didn’t have any food or water with him, aside from a bucket of blueberries he’d harvested.
“Blueberries, they are good, but when you are thirsty, they don’t satisfy,” Burattin said.
Burattin, a Klukwan resident originally from Italy, was berry picking near Porcupine Rd. and Sunshine Mountain, in a heavily wooded area around 28 miles from Haines. It’s a popular spot for berry picking.
Burattin had only set out for an afternoon trip. That was on Friday.
“I went berry picking and at the end of — I think it was about 5:30 p.m. and I said ‘okay I can go down.’ But instead of going straight down and following the same trail that I had in coming up, I said ‘oh, I can go down this way,’” Burattin said.
But the direction wasn’t quite right, and instead of getting back down to his car, Burattin walked Friday evening and all of Saturday, until he was found on Sunday.
During that time, a lot of people got involved to help search for him. The police, fire department and local residents from Haines and Klukwan started an initial search. Community members were present throughout the weekend.
By Sunday morning, the Alaska State Troopers took over the overall search operation.
The U.S. Coast Guard also got involved, sending two helicopter aircrews from Air Station Sitka.
A local search dog was deployed, followed by additional canines from Juneau. Search and rescue teams from Skagway joined those in Haines. The Skagway Fire Department aided in the effort. So did Alaska Mountain Guides, a local tour operator.
According to a dispatch from the troopers, Burattin decided to stay in one place and wait for help after becoming disoriented.
Brad Ryan is in charge of emergency operations at the Haines Borough. He’s there to provide borough support in situations like this.
“The state troopers did a really good job of providing resources and coordinating the outside resources for the search effort,” Ryan said. “They got the Coast Guard, search dogs, they got Skagway search and rescue here. And then I think the Haines Fire Department stepped up, set up an incident command post in town, and did a good job of handling the assets of the resources sent out here.”
There were crews on the ground, and in the air. Ultimately, Burattin was spotted and picked up by a Coast Guard helicopter.
Ryan said the team on land helped with the successful effort in the air.
“All that effort on the ground, people put a lot of hours in, I think allowed the Coast Guard to put in a pattern that was wider and ended up finding the gentleman. As well I think he was in the open, which was huge,” Ryan said.
Ryan said local forester Greg Palmieri, who has a lot of experience in the area, joined the helicopter crew and helped carry out a wider search.
Burattin was found at Walker Lake, a good distance from where his car was parked. As he was spotted, he was in the process of writing a message.
“I was writing ‘help’ with the fern grass,” Burattin said. “And I was putting it together, making bundles to write help, and putting that in the water. But I made ‘h,’ ‘e,’ and I was doing pretty good doing the rest. But the helicopter came, so I didn’t finish it.”
“When I saw the helicopter I started crying and giving praises to the lord,” Burattin added.
Burattin had been out harvesting blueberries, but he credits his survival to a different berry.
“What saved me was eating the watermelon berry,” Burattin said.
Burattin said he ate them constantly, and they kept him hydrated.
“I wasn’t dehydrated,” Burattin said. “When they found me yesterday, they wanted to give me an IV. I said ‘no, you don’t need it.’ All the signs are perfect so why give me an IV?”
In a press release about the rescue, the Coast Guard offered a few more survival tips: always carry a GPS and a map, and tell someone where you’re going before heading out.
Burattin says throughout the ordeal, he always believed he would make it out of the woods.
“I had peace of mind throughout the whole thing,” Burattin said. “I knew that I was lost, but I would be found.”
Burattin returned to his family Sunday evening, after being seen by medical personnel. He was reported to be in good condition with no injuries.
As for the blueberries he had harvested, he had to dump them out to gather water in his bucket.
Pauline Beebe was among the first to enter the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center in Quinhagak on Saturday, August 11, 2018. (Photo by Katie Basile/KYUK)
On Saturday, a large crowd of elders, scholars and artists gathered in Quinhagak to celebrate the opening of the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center. Quinhagak’s new museum is home to 60,000 artifacts, the largest collection of pre-contact Yup’ik artifacts in the world. Its opening was the culmination of nine years of back-breaking work, and the result of a unique partnership between Quinhagak’s village corporation and archeologists.
“I almost broke down,” Warren Jones said when asked about the museum opening. The CEO of Quinhagak’s Qanirtuuq Corporation, this project was in many ways his idea. The opening was emotional for him and many other residents who attended.
Quinhagak elders had always known about the ancient village near their community, and residents chose to begin excavating it after much discussion in the late 2000s. The Qanirtuuq Corporation owns all of the artifacts that archaeologists have found there, and they’ve chosen to keep every single one of them in Quinhagak.
“It’s our culture,” Jones said. “It’s priceless to us. And they will be here with us forever. When I’m gone, when we’re gone, they’ll be in the village. And future generations can come at any time and look at them, and never forget where they came from.”
At the museum’s opening, Quinhagak children huddled with world-renowned mask-makers around the collection’s ancient dolls and ulus. According to University of Aberdeen archaeologist Rick Knecht, the dig’s summer volunteers find hundreds of artifacts a day at the Nunalleq site. Knecht says that he’s gotten very little sleep in the past few days. The museum’s opening didn’t quite feel real.
“I think this is really the highlight of my professional career, what just happened,” Knecht said. “And of Warren [Jones’] too. And we looked at each other and shook hands. Because we’d done it.”
The Nunalleq Culture and Archeology Center doesn’t have a curator yet, but it is taking some visitors. If you’re interested in flying to Quinhagak and seeing the collection, please contact Warren Jones at 907-556-8713.
A view of the smoke column from the north side of the Taixtsalda Hill Fire taken during Monday’s initial attack. (Photo by Tim Whitesell/Alaska Division of Forestry)
Wildfires are raging across many Western states, causing death, evacuations and massive efforts to contain the blazes. And though more than a dozen fires are burning in Alaska, the situation isn’t nearly as dire.
For much of the summer, national news outlets have featured stories on the record-setting fire season scorching much of the Lower 48.
Amid that coverage, on Tuesday one of NPR’s newscasts mentioned a startling figure about Alaska.
“The National Interagency Fire Center says there are at least 106 large wildfires actively burning in the U.S.,” host Korva Coleman announced. “Alaska has the most, with 17.”
While that is technically true, there is an important caveat.
“I think the key thing to look at is that none of those fires are staffed,” Alaska Division of Forestry director Chris Maisch explained.
Most of the fires burning in Alaska currently are far out in wilderness, and not a threat to communities, life or property. There is no need to send out fire crews to try containing them. The majority of the fires were started by lightning, and in cases like these, officials keep track of them but otherwise let nature run its course.
“Alaska’s a bit different,” Maisch said, comparing the wildfire approach to how they are handled in other states. “We have a lot less population so we can let a lot of fires play the natural role that they do.”
According to Maisch, overall the state has seen about half the number of wildfires it gets in an average season, with significantly less acreage burned.
“It’s actually one of our lowest years in the last ten years,” Maisch added.
In fact, it is the third year in a row with a low fire season for the state. But Maisch cautions that according to the law of averages that could portend a summer more like what’s happening in California and other parts of the west in the near future.
John Sturgeon discusses his U.S. Supreme Court case with the Alaska Senate Resources Committee, Feb. 17, 2016. Sturgeon is the plaintiff in in Sturgeon v. Frost, a case involving a dispute over federal control over navigable waters. (Photo by Skip Gray/360 North)
The State of Alaska is weighing in again on a lawsuit over management rights of navigable waterways, known as the Sturgeon case, which is back before the U.S. Supreme Court.
It started more than a decade ago, when federal officials told Anchorage resident John Sturgeon he couldn’t operate his hovercraft on a river in Yukon-Charly Rivers National Preserve.
Sturgeon sued, and the disagreement about whether the state or federal government had regulatory authority has gone back and forth between the courts.
But In June, the Supreme Court agreed to again take up the Sturgeon case.
On Tuesday, the state of Alaska filed a brief with the court offering its take in an amicus brief. Alaska Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth joined Alaska Public Media’s Casey Grove to talk about that and why the state has continued to pursue the issue all these years.
LINDEMUTH: The state is very committed to always defending its sovereign interests. And so, you know, we’ll fight the battle as long as it’s out there. But I wasn’t surprised that the United States Supreme Court only answered the question right before it. They’re usually careful to just do that, but they, I would be surprised if they don’t finally resolve the case this second time. I mean, I think it’s unusual for them to take and review a case a second time. And that they’ll not do so in a way that leaves additional open issues for the 9th Circuit or any other court.
This is not just about one hovercraft. This is about who gets to manage the state’s navigable waters, whether the federal government has broad regulatory authority, as they assert in this case, or whether the state actually gets to manage those waterways that are part of the state’s sovereign rights.
GROVE: How do we get here? And what is really new about this filing?
LINDEMUTH: The first time that it went through the court system all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, it was a statutory interpretation case about the proper meeting of 103C in ANILCA. And that, the federal government was interpreting that provision to grant it the ability to broadly regulate private and state lands and waters that were in-holdings within conservation system units.
The state’s position was, no, it actually means the opposite of that, and the United States Supreme Court agreed. The Supreme Court did not go further in addressing the other alternative arguments the federal government was making and remanded back to the 9th Circuit. That’s where we’re at now.
So, the 9th Circuit accepted the federal government’s argument that it actually had broad regulatory authority under a doctrine called the Federal Reserved Water Rights Doctrine. And that’s the issue that’s now going back up to the United States Supreme Court, is whether this alternative basis provides the federal government broad regulatory authority.
It’s the state’s position that absolutely it does not. The interesting thing is that that doctrine was used by the 9th Circuit in the Katie John line of cases in the 1990s to find that there was the power to go forward and move forward with the subsistence priorities that are explicitly set forth in ANILCA Title 8. And the 9th Circuit in this particular case greatly expanded that holding and says now that it’s not just limited to subsistence activities and priorities that are explicitly set forth in ANILCA, but now the federal government has broad regulatory authority for all purposes over the state’s waterways.
GROVE: Does it run the risk of changing the subsistence rights that are in place now, arguing this case on that same basis?
LINDEMUTH: Well, we’re arguing that it doesn’t have to, and usually courts are very careful to just be answering the question before them. But because the doctrine that the 9th Circuit relied on is the very same doctrine that was in the Katy John line of cases, there is the danger that the United States Supreme Court could rule in such a way that it implicates the holding of those cases as well. But we’re arguing that that should be distinguished and that the court need not reach those issues and should not reach those issues.
Scientists look for clues in the case of the unusual salmon season
Rashah McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau
There’s something unusual going on with the sockeye salmon runs returning to Alaska this year. In some places — like Bristol Bay — the runs are strong, and in others, like the Copper River or the Kenai River, they’re unexpectedly weak.
U.S. Army Corps publishes scoping comments on Pebble of cooperating agencies
Isabelle Ross, KDLG – Dillingham
The first batch of scoping comments on Pebble Mine from what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is calling “cooperating agencies” are now public.
What’s going on with Alaska’s 17 wildfires?
Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
Though there are blazes across the state, their location and size make for a relatively low threat.
Klukwan man survives two days lost in woods after losing way while berry picking
Abbey Collins, KHNS – Haines
On Friday, a Klukwan resident set out to pick blueberries in the Upper Chilkat Valley. When he didn’t return, an extensive search began. After two days alone in the woods, he was found alive and well.
Senator who often stood alone runs for state’s highest office
Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau
By the end of his time in the Alaska Senate, Mike Dunleavy often stood alone. Now he’s hoping that his sometimes solitary positions will draw support from across the state in his run for governor.
Sturgeon case navigates its way back in front of Supreme Court
Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
The State of Alaska is weighing in again on a lawsuit over management rights of navigable waterways, known as the Sturgeon case, which is back before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Nunalleq Culture and Archeology Center opens in Quinhagak
Teresa Cotsirilos, KYUK – Bethel
On Saturday, a large crowd of elders, scholars and artists gathered in Quinhagak to celebrate the opening of the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center.
Former Wasilla state Sen. Mike Dunleavy is running to be the Republican nominee for Alaska’s governor. (Photo by Wesley Early/Alaska Public Media)
By the end of his time in the Alaska Senate, Wasilla Republican Mike Dunleavy often stood alone. Now he’s hoping that his sometimes solitary positions will draw support from across the state in his run for governor.
When Dunleavy left the Senate majority in April 2016, he became the first senator in at least four decades who was outside either the majority or minority caucuses. He said he couldn’t support a budget that cut permanent fund dividends.
But the rest of his time in the Legislature was unusual in another respect. He’s the only majority senator in the past 30 years who was never the primary sponsor of a bill that became a law, according to state records. He’s unapologetic about it.
“My goal wasn’t to pass a lot of bills,” Dunleavy said. “My goal was to go down there, and in many cases, ensure that certain things didn’t happen to Alaskans, such as taxes. Worked hard at trying to preserve the PFD, the permanent fund, fell short. But once I get in as governor, I’m going to work at rectifying that issue.”
Dunleavy said he was effective in other ways, such as making changes to bills that affect education.
Dunleavy, 57, grew up in the former coal-mining city of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
“The economy was depressed in Scranton,” Dunleavy said. “And it was a working person’s town. My father was a mailman. He was a World War II vet. My mother was a clerk for the city. I had three brothers and I would say we grew up low middle-class. There wasn’t a lot that we needed, in terms of our parents taking care of us. I think we had a great childhood, a great family.”
After graduating from college, he said his interest in the outdoors and the state’s economy drew him to Alaska.
“Alaska was a beacon of hope in terms of economic activity,” Dunleavy said. “The state was actually booming. Oil was ramping up and reaching peak production until 1989. There was a robust timber industry in Southeast Alaska, lots of mining, lots of fishing going on. So for me, it was just a natural fit and quite frankly, I had thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I came to Alaska.”
Dunleavy taught for seven years, including time as the only teacher in Koyuk.
“It’s a tricky endeavor to be teaching multiple grade levels at one time in multiple subjects, and you have to be able to organize and do it the right way to get the outcomes that you want,” Dunleavy said.
Dunleavy has been married to his wife Rose for 31 years. She’s from Noorvik on the Kobuk River. They raised three daughters: the oldest works at Red Dog Mine, while the younger two are college students. One has an internship at Red Dog, while the youngest has a summer job there.
Dunleavy served as a school administrator, including two years as a superintendent of Northwest Arctic Borough schools. And he was on Matanuska-Susitna Borough’s school board before joining the Senate in 2013.
The signature issue of Dunleavy’s campaign may be his support for a full permanent fund dividend. It was set by a formula in state law until Gov. Bill Walker vetoed roughly half of two years ago. Walker cited the state’s fiscal crisis and shrinking savings. The Legislature then passed reduced PFDs the last two budgets.
Dunleavy said Alaska voters should have an advisory vote before any long-term change is made to PFDs.
“There’s money in the earnings reserve that, if we need to use that to cover shortfalls in government, we can do that,” Dunleavy said. “That’s always been in place. That’s been in place for decades, along with the calculation of the PFD.”
Oil revenue bailed the state out of fiscal crises repeatedly in the past.
Dunleavy sees developing the state’s resources as the answer now.
“Containing the operating budget, getting that oil online and continuing to explore and develop our resources – that was the basis of what Alaska was supposed to be about,” Dunleavy said. “If we get back to the basic principle, we can produce the revenue to get us through and get us, I think, on a path of sustainability.”
A year before resigning his Senate seat, Dunleavy proposed cutting a quarter of the state spending the Legislature controls, or more than a billion dollars. He’s now calling for spending growth, but keeping it to 2 percent a year. He cites the state’s improved outlook for the change.
Dunleavy’s been ahead in the polls. His Republican rival Mead Treadwell has criticized donations by his brother Francis Dunleavy, who lives in Texas, to a group backing Dunleavy’s candidacy. Dunleavy swats it away.
“I have a brother whose only concern is that he cares about his brother,” Dunleavy said.
Treadwell has pointed out that Francis led a J.P. Morgan unit that paid a $410 million settlement of government accusations of fixing electricity prices.
“I can assure Alaskans, there’s nothing illegal, immoral or unethical that’s occurring, with regard to a family member donating to a campaign to see another family member get elected,” Dunleavy said.
Dunleavy shot back that Treadwell held a fundraiser in Washington, D.C., and questioned what the donors had to gain. But he emphasized that he’s focusing on running a positive campaign.
A Kokhanok resident speaks to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Program Manager Shane McCoy (R) at a scoping meeting in April. (Photo by Avery Lill/KDLG)
As the Army Corps oversees the drafting of an Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed mine, cooperating agencies have agreed to provide “technical assistance for specifically identified special expertise.”
The 90-day scoping period ended June 29. It was an opportunity for the public to voice concerns and possible alternatives to the proposed plan as a part of the federal permitting process.
The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Lake and Peninsula Borough, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency were among the groups whose comments were published on August 9. The Corps also released comments by the Nondalton Tribal Council and the United Tribes of Bristol Bay.
Comments from these agencies addressed inventory surveys and the potential impacts of mine infrastructure on fish, wildlife and water quality. The Lake and Peninisula Borough voiced their concerns over the impacts of the proposed ferry across Iliamna Lake, the natural gas pipeline and the road. Along with concerns about the mine’s impact on habitat and subsistence, the Nondalton Tribal Council and UTBB stated that they believe that the Pebble application is still incomplete.
The preliminary scoping report and comments from organizations and individuals can be found on the U.S. Army Corps website. The Corps will release a summary of the comment content in the final scoping report.
