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. In others, like the Copper River or the Kenai River they’re unexpectedly weak. In some places, there are sockeye that are unusually small. In others, sockeye of a certain age appear to be missing entirely.

It’s a mystery.

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In Southeast Alaska, one of the first Fish and Game staffers to notice an unusual trend was Iris Frank, a regional data coordinator and fisheries technician.

Frank’s lab is on the first floor of Fish and Game’s Douglas Island office that looks like it hasn’t changed much in the 32 years since she got there.

Frank has been looking at blown-up images of sockeye salmon scales for decades.  She pops one onto the machine and dials it into focus to show that salmon scales have ridges, called circuli. They look a lot like fingerprints.

Circuli carry a lot of information about what a salmon has been doing since it hatched.

“So if you think about a fish being out say, in a lake in the summertime, it’s warmer there. There’s more feed around. So these circuli are probably going to be bigger and more widely spaced apart,” Frank said.

Then, during the winter months, the ridges compress together. Grouping those two sets of ridges together, Franks says she can usually get a pretty good idea of how old a salmon is from reading the scales.

Frank gets about 40,000 of these salmon scales in a year, and she’s an expert at reading them. In the last few years — she’s noticed that on some fish — those lines are getting closer and closer together. Frank is quick to point out that she is not a fisheries scientist, but that could mean the fish aren’t growing as fast, or as big as they normally do.

Frank said she hasn’t seen anything like it before, in the decades that she’s been reading scales.

“This is just, you know, the hairs on the back of your neck standing up going ‘well that’s really odd,’” Frank said.

Frank doesn’t know why it’s happening, or what it means. But it’s a clue.

And, it’s part of a pretty big mystery. Elsewhere in the state, Fish and Game scientists are scratching their heads over smaller sockeye, sockeye trickling into rivers and lakes where they normally come back strong or whole age groups of sockeye that appear to be missing. Several said they’re wondering what is happening to the sockeye once they leave Alaska’s freshwater and head out into the ocean.

Out at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Auke Bay, there’s a team of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists who specialize in researching fish at sea.

Among them is Ed Farley. He’s a program manager for the Ecosystem Monitoring and Assessment Program. There, researchers focus on Alaska’s large marine ecosystems like the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering and Chukchi Seas.

Farley said he was not surprised to see inconsistent returns of sockeye salmon to Alaska this year, and he has a pretty good idea of what could be happening — though he’s reluctant to call it a smoking gun.

One big clue is the blob. That’s the warmer-than-normal water that moved into the North Pacific about four years ago. It stayed unusually hot through 2016 in the Gulf of Alaska shelf — some 4 to 6 degrees higher than normal. Farley said that shelf is where young sockeye salmon from Alaska go to eat once they venture out from their home rivers. Generally they move onto the shelf and move counter-clockwise, foraging for food before they wind up in the North Pacific Ocean.

That heat has a big impact on salmon and other cold-water species.

“That’s going to increase their metabolic rate, so they’re going to have to find more food,” Farley said.

But something else happened in the Gulf of Alaska during that time period, too.

Farley said a team of researchers did surveys on the food web during those hot years and found that some of the key food for young sockeye salmon was missing.

Some things like copepods — that’s a high-fat bug that sockeye eat, basically eggs with legs — just weren’t around in the same volume as they had been.

“So you kind of a get a double whammy,” Farley said. “You know they’re having to eat more because their metabolic processes are speeding up. But there’s less prey. And so this is impacting their growth rate at this time, this period of summer, when they’re supposed to grow and get this fat store.”

Farley said that could have caused a lot of young sockeye salmon to die during their first summer at sea.

Another factor, Farley said, is pink salmon. There’s some evidence that they compete with sockeye for food in the North Pacific. But Farley is quick to point out that the role pink salmon play in sockeye salmon deaths is still in question.

Farley also works with the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission which has scientists from several countries including Russia, Japan and the United States. Farley said some researchers on that commission have looked at sockeye salmon scales and calculated growth rates of the salmon during different life history stages. They’ve found a pattern of growth that shows sockeye salmon aren’t growing as fast in years when there are a lot of pink salmon in the same place.

But when it comes to the sockeye salmon returns this year, Farley is less focused on what’s happening in the North Pacific and more on the Gulf of Alaska. He suspects that some of the sockeye salmon returning to Alaska this year went out into the ocean at a time when they needed more food to survive and it just wasn’t there.

And those banner Bristol Bay sockeye salmon returns this year? Farley said those same warm ocean conditions might be the culprits there as well.

Warm water may have decimated the food web in the Gulf of Alaska — but there’s evidence that it made the Bering Sea more fertile. Farley says that’s where Bristol Bay sockeye rear, so they were much better off than their Gulf of Alaska relatives.

Starting next year, Unalaska retailers won’t be allowed to distribute single-use plastic bags to their customers. If they do, they’ll be hit with $100 fines each time.

The City Council passed the bag ban unanimously Tuesday night after about six months of discussion and overwhelming public support.

Councilor James Fitch said it’ll help reduce the amount of plastic littering local beaches and polluting the ocean.

“Currently, there’s a flotilla of plastic the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean,” Fitch said. “It’s getting in our food source. It’s killing animals. So I think this is a good start, and I think we need to make it go farther.”

With an economy dependent on healthy fisheries, several Unalaskans have called on the council to ban other pervasive plastics, like disposable straws and industrial pallet wrap.

Vice Mayor Dennis Robinson said that may be possible in the future.

“Next, we can look at plastic straws and other containers that we see in the bushes,” Robinson said. “You know, the plastic cups and forks and spoons — picnic stuff.”

But before they consider widening the ban, councilors are still deciding how retailers should handle their existing bag inventories.

Robinson has suggested the city buy out leftover stock — both to help business managers and to ensure bags are secured in the landfill instead of blowing around. The city manager is researching how much that would cost.

Councilor Shari Coleman’s proposal to delay the ban and let inventory run out failed to garner enough support.

Unalaska’s bag ban goes into effect Jan. 1. The island will join more than a dozen Alaska communities that have prohibited their distribution.

Thom Eley wears a bright orange vest and camo pants. He stands on the shore of Campbell Creek near Bancroft Park. It’s peaceful. The occasional airplane overhead is the only reminder that we’re in the middle of Alaska’s biggest city.

“This is sort of our neighborhood beach,” Eley said. “And people come here, the kids play here.”

Some folks raft down the creek too, including Eley, who’s in charge of research and education for the Anchorage Waterways Council.

“I got bounced off the end of the raft and went into the water and got a big mouthful of water and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this may not be fun,’ but it caused no problems,” Eley said. “But, I mean there’s always the concern that it can.”

When it gets hot in Anchorage, many people cool off with a swim or a float down the city’s creeks and streams. But is that safe? DEC data show that for almost all of the city’s creeks and streams levels of fecal coliform bacteria are higher than the safety standards for drinking, swimming or even secondary activities like rafting and kayaking. The bacteria can lead to some unpleasant health problems, like urinary tract infections and diarrhea.

“We have it in our gut tract,” Eley said. “It’s an indicator species that says there is poop getting into this water of some sort or another.”

Poop: that’s the main problem with Anchorage’s waterways.

To be fair, it could be worse.

Most U.S. cities have to contend with big industries like agriculture or manufacturing that can leach chemicals or heavy metals into their streams. Anchorage’s creeks flow straight from the Chugach Mountains.

And fecal coliform doesn’t cause problems for fish, just humans.

Still, it’s enough of an issue that it worries Eley.

“I personally wouldn’t swim here,” Eley said.

The municipality is required to conduct a certain number of tests a year. And their data show lower levels of fecal coliform than DEC’s. But their monitoring is limited to storm water outfalls and not the creeks themselves.

The rest pretty much falls on Anchorage Waterways Council volunteers through a citizen monitoring program. Eley says the non-profit has struggled to find funding for basic materials.

“Mainly it’s on donations,” Eley said. “We’ve crept along, but it’s hard.”

Eley tests for temperature, oxygen levels and pH. Finally, he fills a white bucket to check for fecal coliform.

“And what we do is we take five milliliters of water and put it in here and mix it up. And then I take it back home and put it in a Petri dish, and then it incubates overnight at 98 degrees,” Eley said.

What’s causing the high levels is a bit of a mystery. Testing is expensive and sometimes imprecise. It’s identified horse poop in areas where there are no horses in Anchorage.

Most arrows point to dogs and water fowl like ducks and geese. But human waste may be playing a role too. In some streams, it could be leaky septic tanks on the hillside. And in others, homeless camps.

Eley points across the stream to a well-worn pathway down to the water.

“When you start having lots of homeless people living along creeks, you know, and they drink and they may want to bathe. Although I wouldn’t drink this water, but people do, I’ve seen it,” Eley said. “And um, so it can get into the water.”

Jeanne Swartz works for DEC’s division of water.

“People have asked me about homeless camps and their contribution,” Swartz said. “Like most people I suspect the lack of sanitation facilities for the homeless population has contributed to the bacteria load problem, but I don’t have any data to support that thought.”

Swartz said high levels of bacteria popped up when Anchorage started monitoring its waterways in the 80s. Campaigns to get people to pick up after their dogs and stop feeding birds have been successful in specific areas. But DEC’s data is only partial. It hasn’t studied the issue comprehensively since 2000, when it identified dog poop as the main culprit.

“We just have anecdotal evidence that it’s gotten better. That doesn’t mean that much,” Swartz said. “It’s not worthless. But you can’t quantify it and do model calculations and things like that.”

But, that’s about to change. She’s just received a decade’s worth of data from Eley and his team. By 2019, she hopes to have it analyzed for trends. They’ll use that to identify problem areas to focus on and to help understand whether waste from homeless camps and septic tanks is contributing to the problem.

So — should you go for a swim or not?

Swartz says yes, but taking a shower after swimming and avoiding putting your face in the water is advised.

As school starts in Bethel, some parents still are not entirely sure how their children are getting there.

After parting ways with a long-time contractor, the Lower Kuskokwim School District doesn’t have nearly enough school buses for the city’s students.

Administrators are scrambling to find transportation for them, and they’re proposing that many children take taxis to school instead.

Bethel’s public schools don’t have much of a bus system right now, but they do have a deal with Kusko Cab.

The taxi company’s owner Naim Shabani said that this could be difficult to pull off.

“Let me put it to you this way,” Shabani said. “If anyone could, it’s us.”

Kusko Cab is the larger of Bethel’s two cab operators, and Shabani already has talked through some of the logistics with school officials.

LKSD has offered to give children cab vouchers, and Kusko Cab will pick the students up at designated stops throughout town.

“We’re trying to mirror the bus system as closely as possible,” Shabani said. “Think of it as like a shuttle service, where folks going in the same direction hang out, and the shuttle comes by and picks up as many as they can.”

LKSD finalized their deal with Shabani about 36 hours before the first day of school.

This last minute scramble is the result of a months-long contract negotiation process between the school district and Golden Eagle Unlimited, a Bethel-based company that’s provided student transportation in town for more than 20 years.

Golden Eagle and LKSD left the table without a deal, and they have somewhat different stories about what happened.

In early 2018, the district issued a request for proposals, inviting companies to bid on a one-year contract to transport Bethel’s students to and from their schools.

Former state legislator Bob Herron, who co-owns Golden Eagle, says that the contract was only a year long because the district actually planned to get into the busing business themselves as a “belt-tightening” measure.

LKSD’s Superintendent Dan Walker strongly disputes this.

After plenty of back and forth, Golden Eagle declined to bid on that one-year contract. Superintendent Walker says that Golden Eagle didn’t walk away from the deal until May.

“We were still negotiating with Golden Eagle,” Walker said. “I know what we did, and I know we were negotiating with Golden Eagle right up until the very day that we knew we had to order buses.”

Now, LKSD is buying its own fleet of school buses.

According to Walker, the new fleet will cost about $600,000, or about $100,000 per 65-passenger bus.

But those buses won’t arrive in town for another six weeks.

Walker defended his district’s stop-gap solution.

“It is absolutely routine for kids to take cabs [here],” Walker said. “We do it at KLA all the time, we do it at our Ready Program all the time.”

Parents have expressed concerns about LKSD’s use of taxis.

Some are worried about younger students riding to school alone in cabs. In general, taxi drivers do not undergo the same background checks that school bus drivers do.

Other community members, including Bethel Police Chief Burke Waldron, have expressed concerns about the traffic that all these Kusko Cabs might cause.

In addition to LKSD’s deal with Kusko Cab, the district also is offering to reimburse parents for driving their children to school; the rate varies by distance.

LKSD also purchased three special education “short buses” from Golden Eagle, though those won’t be enough for the city’s students.

Golden Eagle said in a statement that it offered to provide LKSD with bus service while they wait for their new bus fleet to arrive, but LKSD declined to hire them.

Bob Herron added that the district “would not use the bus company they’d been using for 22 years to do a six-week stint.”

While the first few days of school could be rocky, Walker assured parents that LKSD’s new bus system will be better in the long term.

“This is going to work out,” Walker said. “And it’s going to be a good system.”

In the meantime, Kusko Cab’s Naim Shabani wrote a detailed Facebook post that lists when and where his taxi drivers will pick up Bethel’s students.

Across Alaska, crime is up.

That’s according to data released today by the Department of Public Safety comparing 2017 to 2016. In its Uniform Crime Report, the department said that statewide, crime rose by 6 percent last year.

It’s part of a longer-term increase in Alaska crime. The rate of violent crimes like murder, rape, robbery and assault increased by 34 percent from 2013 to 2017. Property crime rates grew, too, by 22 percent in the same period.

During a press conference today, Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan took questions from reporters. Asked if the report identified any particular areas where violent crime was increasing most dramatically, Monegan pointed to Alaska’s more densely populated communities.

“We’ve actually seen a lot more activity in the urban area in regards to some of the violence that kind of related to related to gangs,” Monegan said.

That lines up with the Department of Law’s data, too. According to the department, felony prosecutions last year went up mainly in urban hubs and western Alaska.

Commissioner Monegan said Alaska’s designation as a “high-intensity drug-trafficking” area by federal officials means it will receive an injection of funds to help combat the ongoing opioid crisis.

“Understanding that a lot of the violent crime is being driven by the drug epidemic itself,” Monegan said. “So, with the high intensity drug trafficking money that we’re gonna be receiving shortly, that is going to be a concerted effort to try to address the gangs, address the drugs, and we should see a — hopefully — a reduction in violent crime.”

Thirty-two police agencies from around Alaska submitted data for 2017. The Uniform Crime Reporting data is submitted to the FBI as part of a nationwide effort to collect national crime statistics.

You can find a link to the full report here.

Two well-funded candidates are running in the Democratic Primary to win the opportunity to challenge incumbent Republican Congressman Don Young. They are Alyse Galvin and Dimitri Shein, both from Anchorage. We’re featuring Galvin first.

Alyse Surratt Galvin is running as an everywoman. That’s part of her campaign message.

“This is the time for someone who is like all people, to be representing people,” Galvin said. “I’m in touch. I’ve been there.”

Galvin is best known as a mainstay of Great Alaska Schools, a citizens’ lobby that has pressed the Legislature for better education funding. But she’s done plenty of other things, too – daycare operator, hotel manager, school consultant.

“Honestly, my biggest pride in terms of my job in life is raising four kids,” Galvin, whose youngest goes off to college this fall, said.

Galvin grew up mostly in Alaska. She has family members who homesteaded in the Anchorage Bowl, among other relatives who settled in the state.

“They became everything from builders to auto mechanics and butchers and, well, misfits and outlaws — a little bit of everything,” Galvin said.

Galvin is running in the Democratic Primary, but she’s an independent, or technically “undeclared.” She says her positions line up well with the Democratic platform, though she says she’s more committed to solutions than she is to any party.

If she wins the primary, she’ll be on the ballot as the Democratic nominee. If she loses the primary, she says she will not try other routes to get on the November ballot. Democrat Dimitri Shein has pledged the same, so they’re not going to split the Democratic vote in the General.

Galvin says healthcare is at crisis point in Alaska, and is calling for a multi-pronged approach. First she wants to stop efforts that undermine existing coverage, and in the meantime she wants to work toward comprehensive coverage for everyone. Shein wants single-payer health care, Medicare for all. Galvin isn’t opposed to that.

“I think that’s an idea that certainly needs to be put on the table as one of them, as one solution,” Galvin said.

Congressman Young is tight with the National Rifle Association and opposes bills to ban assault-style firearms. Asked if she supports a ban on specific firearms, Galvin reframed the issue around violence and mental health.

“I think that parents aren’t feeling safe I’m very concerned about how we’re feeling. Our children aren’t feeling safe walking into school,” Galvin said. “At the same time, we’re a state that very much values having our guns. In fact, for many Alaskans it brings us the protein that many families need.”

Galvin says it’s possible to protect 2nd Amendment rights and still increase safety. To do that she wants to close loopholes in background check requirements before gun sales.

“I’m also in favor of ensuring that we have the resources we need to follow the laws that are on the books as well,” Galvin said.

Galvin said she’ll hold the president to account, if needed, and she opposes efforts to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller before he finishes investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

If Galvin is part of a “blue wave” that puts Democrats in control of the House of Representatives, there will likely be a push to reverse the decision that opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development. Galvin hasn’t taken a position on that.

“Well, I’m I’m not running on that,” Galvin said of ANWR legislation. “That’s not something that I’m putting out as one of my platform pieces. I do know that it passed (in) law already. Whether or not it gets rescinded, I don’t know about that.”

Galvin said she is leery of offshore drilling in the Arctic. She’s not convinced it’s safe.

Alyse Galvin is married to Pat Galvin, a Democrat who was then-Gov. Sarah Palin’s Revenue commissioner. Pat Galvin is now an executive at Great Bear Petroleum, an exploration company active on the North Slope.

Alyse Galvin has proved she can raise serious money. She’s raked in about $600,000, a third of it in small donations – $200 or less. Her biggest contributors, at $4,000 apiece, are a fund associated with the National Education Association, and the campaign of Democrat Steve Lindbeck, who challenged Young two years ago. Galvin says she’ll have to raise a lot more to beat the incumbent. The Congressman has raised about $800,000 so far.

Besides Galvin and Dimitri Shein, two other candidates will appear on the Democratic ballot who have raised little or no money. Christopher Cumings, of Ketchikan, says on Facebook he’s running in part to raise awareness of addiction and suicide. Carol Hafner lists a South Dakota address and says she’s never been to Alaska.

The Primary is Tuesday, August 21st.

Check back soon for our story about Galvin’s main opponent in that race, Dimitri Shein.

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 @AKPublicNews

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Alaska crime up 6 percent, officials say

Erin McKinstry, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Across Alaska, crime is up. That’s according to data released today by the Department of Public Safety comparing 2017 to 2016. In its Uniform Crime Report, the department said that statewide, crime rose by 6 percent last year.

Moose hunters riled over new restrictions on military-training range access to camps

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

Moose-hunting season begins in just over two weeks, and hunters are up in arms over restrictions on access through military-training ranges that will make it hard for them to get back into their favorite camps.

Number of bears at Brooks Falls may depend on the size of the salmon run

Mitch Borden, KDLG – Dillingham

Officials at Brooks Camp in the Katmai National Park have noticed a lot more young bears have returned to the area this summer and it could have something to do with salmon. A park service biologist is conducting a study to try and figure out if there’s a connection with the size of annual salmon runs and the amount of bear’s that return to Brooks River annually.

Galvin runs as Alaskan everywoman, vying for US House

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

Education advocate Alyse Galvin is running for Congress as a mom and “someone who is like all people.” That’s part of her campaign message: “I’m in touch. I’ve been there.”

Is swimming in Anchorage’s waterways safe?

Erin McKinstry, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

When it gets hot in Anchorage, some people cool off with a swim or a float down the city’s creeks and streams. But is that safe? DEC data show that for almost all of the city’s creeks and streams levels of fecal coliform bacteria are higher than the safety standards for drinking, swimming or even secondary activities like rafting and kayaking.

With few school buses, Lower Kuskokwim School District turns to Kusko Cab to transport students

Teresa Cotsirilos, KYUK – Bethel

After parting ways with a long-time contractor, the Lower Kuskokwim School District doesn’t have nearly enough school buses for the city’s students.

At Kindergarten Boot Camp, kids get a head start on learning

Jacob Steinberg, KTOO – Juneau

Last year, only about a third of kindergarten students in Juneau showed up to the first day of school ready to learn.

Moose-hunting season begins in just over two weeks, and hunters are up in arms over restrictions on access through military-training ranges that will make it hard for them to get back into their favorite camps. Fort Wainwright officials say they’ve tried to accommodate hunters’ concerns. But they say the restrictions are needed because the ranges around Fort Greely will be busy for the next few weeks with Air Force Red Flag training exercises.

Michael Bryan says he won’t be going moose hunting this year, because he can’t get back into his camp near the base of Mount Hayes due to restrictions that’ll keep him from flying through airspace over ranges around Fort Greely.

“It’s an area where hunters have traditionally gone for decades,” Bryan said. “And, myself and my hunting partner, we’ve been going to our camp for 25 years.”

Bryan says he’s especially disappointed because Fort Wainwright officials announced the restrictions and training schedule on July 30th – too late for him to re-jigger his schedule.

“At the 11th hour, the military published a training schedule and a map that eliminated or greatly reduced the hunting opportunities in a big portion of the eastern Tanana Flats,” Bryan said.

Fort Wainwright spokesman Brady Gross says post officials have gotten some complaints about the restrictions over the past couple of weeks. But he says they’ve tried to accommodate hunters by coordinating with Air Force officials to stagger the Red Flag training schedule and open up opportunities for hunters to access the ranges or their airspace en route to their camps.

“We did coordinate with the Air Force to keep as many areas open as possible,” Gross said.

Bryan agrees the Army and Air Force have tried to reach out to hunters. But he says they didn’t reach very far.

“They have made some marginal efforts to accommodate hunters,” Bryan said. “But very little.”

Gross says Wainwright officials didn’t have a lot of wiggle room this year, because this round of Red Flag training will be especially busy. He says that’s because the Air Force has adopted a two-year cycle for exercises that involves more aircraft and training on even-numbered years. And he says on those years, the ranges will have to be set up for the heavier schedule.

“They need to modify the training area to support Red Flag training with their units,” Gross said.

Wainwright officials emphasized the Red Flag training that began Thursday is essential to ensuring the pilots are trained and ready to quickly respond to trouble spots. Bryan says hunters agree with that.

“None of us hunters out there have any problem with a well-trained military,” Bryan said. “My wife is retired military. My hunting partner is a retired full-bird colonel, having served 28 years in the service.”

Bryan says he and other hunters have talked about the restrictions with staff of Alaska’s congressional delegation and members of organizations like Resident Hunters of Alaska as well as a state Department of Fish and Game’s advisory panel.

“The Fairbanks Area Advisory Committee for Fish and Game will be meeting in October,” Bryan said. “And this will be a point of discussion, certainly.”

Bryan says he hopes those talks will lead to a solution that won’t keep him and his fellow hunters from getting into their favorite hunting spots every other year.

Erosion is a widespread problem throughout Alaska, with at least 31 villages and towns facing imminent threats.

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In Utqiaġvik, a lot of that erosion is connected with storm damage. As sea ice continues to trend toward coming in later and leaving earlier, it makes the coastline vulnerable to storms for more of the year. And as the erosion problem continues to get worse, the municipal government is facing tough questions about how to combat the issue going into the future.

A big North Slope Borough truck rumbles down the road that divides downtown Utqiaġvik from the Chukchi Sea. Scott Evans is behind the wheel; he works for the department that’s responsible for emergency management and disaster coordination within the North Slope Borough.

To our right is a sandy playground, and to our left the small sprawl of downtown: the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation headquarters, the courthouse, Wells Fargo bank and a few houses with sandbags stacked outside.

Evans points to the houses closest to us, and says that during a storm that hit Utqiaġvik last September, this area at the base of downtown was flooded.

“These lower houses right here, the lower-lying houses… the water certainly reached them,” Evans said.

The cost of the damage from that storm to the North Slope Borough is still being figured out, but the rough estimate is $8 million. That reflects damage to roads and the structures that were supposed to protect the town from storm surge: a 600-foot seawall, sandbags and a five-mile gravel berm that spans much of the coastline.

The borough is also worried about what might happen in the future to things like a critical water and sewer pump station, the drinking water lagoons and a decommissioned military landfill site located right by the beach.

Utqiaġvik is losing ground, and part of that has to do with these storms.

“If you’re here, and you watch a storm, and you watch the way we have to just continue to try to throw gravel at it and watch what it does to it, you realize that it’s a losing battle,” Evans said.

Right now, the borough’s main tool for combating the problem involves exactly that: throwing gravel at it. They’ve got a seawall made of wire mesh filled with gravel bags, huge “supersacks” full of gravel and a gravel berm they have to keep building up. The height varies, but even at 20 feet, it can be wiped out in a matter of hours if the right storm comes along.

“We know that the berm isn’t the long-term solution,” Evans said. “But that’s what we have the ability to do right now. So that’s what we’re continuing to do because we know it’s slowing everything down.”

When the damage from a single storm event goes beyond what the North Slope Borough can pay for on its own, it can seek help from the state and federal governments. That happened in 2015, and again with the storm last September.

But there’s a lot of damage from smaller events that the borough is on the hook for.

On top of that, they’re running out of material to hold back the ocean.

Bob Shears works for the North Slope Borough’s capital improvement department and is one of the people on the North Slope who’s thinking about how they’re going to address this problem in the longer term.

“Gravel here is almost akin to gold or silver: it’s that hard to find anymore,” Shears said.

Shears says that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will be releasing a study for public comment later this month, looking at engineering options that could protect the town for years into the future.

The corps is still deciding exactly what that would look like, but essentially the idea is to armor the coastline in front of Utqiaġvik with big 2.7-ton rocks, so that from the ocean it would look like a continuous rock wall.

A preliminary estimate for all that is $120 million. About one-third of that would be paid for by the North Slope Borough. The rest would have to come from Congress.

Shears says that’s nowhere close to a done deal.

“This game is not over ‘til it’s over,” Shears said. “We can lose just as easily as we can win.”

And even if they do get the money, Shears thinks it could be awhile. Which means they have to figure out something else in the meantime.

Back at the Utqiaġvik coastline, I ask Scott Evans if the borough is ready for the storm season that’s just around the corner.

“Would we like to be more prepared? Would we like to have other solutions out there that are more robust than we have right now? Of course,” Evans said.  “But the reality is… this is where we’re at right now.”

Evans says that they’re getting federal and state assistance to build things back to where they were before last year’s storm and make things a little stronger for the future. In addition to federal and state money, the North Slope Borough will also use its own funds to make improvements.

The rest, they’ll have to cross their fingers for and hope that the coming storms don’t outpace their ability to fend them off.

Anchorage entrepreneur Dimitri Shein is one of two main candidates in the Democratic primary for Alaska’s sole U.S. House seat. The other is Alyse Galvin, whom we featured Wednesday.

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Though Shein has amassed serious campaign money, he is well behind Galvin in fundraising. He’s collected about $50,000 from donors, put in nearly that much of his own money, and loaned his campaign another $100,000. What makes him tick?

Shein was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Anchorage in 1993. He was 12. Shein says the experience helps him appreciate what makes America exceptional.

“American freedoms and values, like free press, independent judiciary. This belief and notion that no one is above the law, even the president of United States,” he said. “And now I see all these values under attack.”

Shein says America still sees itself as exceptional but somewhere along the line stopped working at it, stopped trying to solve its problems. He says anti-government rhetoric on the right helped set that stage.

“It seems to me that our current elected leaders have sold us on the notion that our government is completely worthless and cannot solve problems,” he said, “and to some extent (they say it) deserves to be attacked from abroad … and is being attacked internally by our elected leaders as well.”

Shein wants to turn that around. He’s running as a progressive. He takes inspiration from Sen. Bernie Sanders and has made “Medicare for all” the banner issue of his campaign. That would be a single-payer health care system, one that’s government-funded.

“In Alaska, we have the highest cost of health care and health insurance,” Shein said. “And to me it’s just obvious that a single-payer, Medicare for all-type system would benefit Alaska enormously.”

Shein thinks it will save money, citing a study that says Medicare for All could cost $2 trillion less over a decade than the total Americans and their government spend now on health care. Others say that conclusion is based on best-case scenarios. The website Politifact.com rated the claim half true.

Shein doesn’t think a special health care tax is needed, but he does want to repeal parts of last year’s tax legislation that cut taxes for the wealthy and for corporations.

Some within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party have called themselves “Democratic Socialists.” Shein doesn’t.

“I think that term is fine,” he said. “I myself am a pretty successful capitalist so I think it would be hard for me to call myself that.”

Shein worked as an accountant for years, balancing the books for tribes around the state. Now, he’s an e-commerce entrepreneur. He sells a metal planter, called the “nice planter,” online.

He met his wife, Melissa, when they were students at West High. She became a doctor and now works at Southcentral Foundation. They were a family of four but they recently doubled in size after taking in four sisters who needed a home.

All of them, except Shein himself, get single-payer health care, through the Native health system, and Shein is a big fan. Critics of publicly-funded health care often say it will lead to rationing of expensive services. Shein says there’s proof to the contrary.

“I just say go to Tudor and Diplomacy Drive and look at Alaska Native Medical Center,” he said. “Nothing is rationed. People walk in there and get the best health care in the world. That’s the way it should be.”

But for most Americans, “we’re rationing health care based on money,” Shein said. “Based on cost. So there are people who are being denied health care because they are not able to pay.”

If Democrats take the House, there will likely be a move to reverse course on development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and close it to drilling. Shein says he won’t support it unless it’s accompanied by other programs or spending that will make up for the jobs Alaska would lose if development isn’t allowed.

If Shein wins the Democratic primary, he’ll be on the ballot in November to vie for Rep. Don Young’s seat. If Shein loses the primary, he says he will not seek to get on the ballot for the general by other means.

Alyse Galvin, an independent candidate vying for the Democratic nomination, says the same. It means they won’t split the Democratic vote as they try to unseat Young.

Also running in the Democratic primary are Christopher Cumings of Ketchikan, who says he wants to raise awareness of addiction and suicide, and Carol Hafner, who lists a South Dakota address and says she opposes drilling in ANWR. Cumings and Hafner have reported no campaign spending.

The primary is Tuesday, Aug. 21.

A cyber-security firm is reporting that Alaska was targeted by hackers using computers in China.

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The company, Recorded Future, documents repeated attempts to connect to several networks in Alaska before and after the state sent a trade delegation to China in May.

According to the report, the scanning activity spiked when Gov. Bill Walker announced the visit to China in March and again just after the delegation left the country.

The data shows that Alaska Communications Systems Group, or ACS, and Alaska Power and Telephone Company were targeted in addition to the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

There’s evidence that the scanning came from internet connections registered to Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Walker’s administration is pushing back against the report.

Press Secretary Austin Baird said there was web traffic targeting the state but no hack actually happened.

“The state of Alaska like most state governments, like most businesses, like most companies that do business online or do business internationally, there’s routinely anonymous activity on the perimeter networks that amounts to someone checking if the door is locked,” Baird said.

Baird said the state does not believe that China was the original source of the scanning activity. He said the state contacted law enforcement as a precautionary measure but doesn’t plan to do any further investigation into the source of the web traffic.

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 @AKPublicNews

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Cyber-security firm says Alaska was targeted by Chinese cyber spies

Rashah McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

Report details state, private companies that were targeted.

State house candidate faces charges over food stamp benefits

Associated Press

An Alaska legislative candidate and her husband have been accused of misleading the state in applying for food stamps.

NTSB releases initial report on deadly Alaska Range crash

Phillip Manning, KTNA – Talkeetna

The National Transportation Safety Board has issued a preliminary report on the flightseeing crash that killed five people earlier this month.

Lieutenant governor candidate Grunwald was fired at height of National Guard scandal

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

Edie Grunwald is a retired Air Force colonel who’s running to be the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. She also was fired at the direction of former Governor Sean Parnell. The dismissal was part of the fallout from the Alaska National Guard scandal that contributed to Parnell’s defeat four years ago.

Political support to play part in jury selection for trial

Associated Press

Alaska political support is expected to play a role in the jury selection process for the trial of one of the four young men charged with murder in the 2016 death of their high school classmate.

Democrat hopes to unseat Young with ‘Medicare for all’ campaign

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

Dimitri Shein was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Anchorage when he was 12. He says the experience helps him appreciate what makes America exceptional. “And now I see all these values under attack.”

Alaska marijuana board taking comment on onsite use draft

Associated Press

Alaska marijuana regulators will take public comment on the latest draft proposal for allowing onsite use of marijuana in authorized stores.

Alaska Marijuana Control Board fines pot festival organizer

Associated Press

An organizer of a marijuana festival where people consumed pot inside a designated tent has been fined $2,500.

Major oil development planned in NPR-A to get ‘streamlined’ environmental review

Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

The Bureau of Land Management has kicked off the environmental review process for what could be one of Alaska’s biggest future oil developments, in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Trump administration wants to make that process go faster. But environmental groups worry a faster review won’t do enough to protect the Arctic wilderness.

In Utqiaġvik, a growing erosion problem may soon outpace local efforts to slow it

Ravenna Koenig, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Fairbanks

“We know that the berm isn’t the long-term solution,” Scott Evans with the North Slope Borough said. “But that’s what we have the ability to do right now. So that’s what we’re continuing to do because we know it’s slowing everything down.”

The federal Bureau of Land Management last week kicked off the environmental review process for what could be one of Alaska’s biggest future oil developments — ConocoPhillips’ Willow project, in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, or NPR-A.

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In the past, this process has taken years and thousands of pages of analysis. The Trump administration wants to make that process go faster and dramatically reduce the amount paperwork involved. But environmental groups worry a faster review won’t do enough to protect the Arctic wilderness.

Top Interior Department official Joe Balash thinks paring down the government’s environmental review process makes sense.

“When it comes to a decision maker such as myself, who has to make decisions on multiple fronts every week, you can’t legitimately sit down and read through 2,500 pages of analysis,” Balash said in a recent interview.

Federal environmental reviews are meant to look at all the potential impacts of projects like mines and oil developments on federal land, and try to avoid — or at least minimize — those impacts. But Balash argues the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, has gotten way out of hand.

“These complex, mind-numbing NEPA documents have become a field for very specialized consultants and litigants. And it really is not serving the public interest,” Balash said.

Republicans have long argued environmental groups use NEPA to slow or halt development. So last year, the Interior Department put forth an order to speed along the NEPA process. Among other things, it caps the number of pages agencies can fill with analysis about environmental impacts at 150, or 300 “for unusually complex projects, excluding appendices.” It also says environmental impact statements can’t take longer than a year to prepare.

Previous environmental reviews in Alaska have been well over 1,000 pages, and have taken multiple years to complete.

“If we can’t describe the project, the alternatives, the affected environment and the impacts in 150 to 300 pages, then we’re probably using too many words to describe something,” Balash said.

One of the first projects in Alaska to benefit from the Trump administration’s truncated environmental review is a major oil development ConocoPhillips is proposing on the North Slope. Last year, Conoco announced a huge oil discovery in the federally-managed NPR-A. Conoco’s plans to recover all that oil involve a central processing facility, an airstrip, pipelines and up to five drill pads with up to 50 wells on each pad, according to the Bureau of Land Management. It’s a big deal, and it’s called the Willow project.

“It’s not just a step forward in the NPR-A — it’s one of those big leaps forward,” Audubon Alaska policy director Susan Culliney said.

Audubon keeps close tabs on NPR-A because the area encompasses important habitat for a huge number of migratory birds. Culliney thinks it’s a mistake for the Trump administration to apply a faster, shorter environmental review to the Willow project.

“These public lands that belong to us — they belong to people on the North Slope, they belong to people all over the U.S. — they’re important and we need to take the time and the consideration to think about these things,” Culliney said. “Especially for a place as complex and sensitive as the Arctic landscape.”

Culliney said Audubon doesn’t oppose the Willow oil development at this point — it is waiting to see how things play out. But she thinks the Trump administration’s streamlined environmental review could mean they miss something important in the process.

“That’s the risk of doing something too quick, too hasty. You open yourself up to those errors,” Culliney said.

Another environmental group, the litigious Center for Biological Diversity, is also objecting to how the Trump administration is going about its environmental review for Willow. The group is against the project.

“Skirting comprehensive review to drill hundreds of oil wells on Alaska’s rugged, unpredictable northern frontier is a recipe for disaster,” Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an emailed statement.

Balash said Interior isn’t trying to invite lawsuits by putting limits on environmental reviews.

“Certainly we’re not doing this just to get tossed out in court,” Balash said.

For its part, Conoco thinks an environmental review that takes less time doesn’t mean it will cut corners. In an emailed statement, spokesperson Natalie Lowman said, “ConocoPhillips supports a robust and efficient analysis of the Willow development in line with the requirements of NEPA and the BLM’s Integrated Activity Plan for the NPR-A.”

The National Transportation Safety Board issued a preliminary report on the flightseeing crash that killed five people earlier this month.

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On the evening of Aug. 4, a DeHaviland Beaver operated by K2 Aviation was on a one-hour flightseeing tour when it crashed into a steep ridge southwest of Denali known as Thunder Mountain.

The pilot, later identified as Craig Layson, reached K2’s Talkeetna offices by satellite phone a few minutes after the crash.

Layson told ground personnel that the plane had impacted a mountain, and the people on board needed rescue.

The first call only lasted a couple of minutes before the signal was lost. After multiple further attempts, contact was re-established.

Layson said at that time that he was trapped in the wreckage of the plane, and there were two possible fatalities on board.

Later that evening, the National Park Service launched a search-and-rescue helicopter, but poor weather conditions prevented rangers from reaching the crash site.

Park Service and military aircraft continued to attempt to spot the downed plane for the next 36 hours.

On the morning of Aug 6, Denali National Park mountaineering ranger Chris Erickson was able to reach the crash site while suspended from a rescue helicopter.

Erickson confirmed that four of the five people on board were deceased, but could not see the plane’s fifth occupant.

With the weather closing in, Erickson had only about 5 minutes to survey the wreckage.

Four days later, a longer short-haul mission was launched, and rangers were able to locate the fifth and final occupant of the plane. All four passengers were Polish citizens. Their names have not been released.

NTSB investigator David Williams traveled to the accident scene, and writes that the airplane broke into multiple pieces after colliding with the ridge.

In a statement last week, National Park Service personnel stated that conditions on Thunder Mountain are too dangerous to attempt to recover the aircraft and its occupants.

Edie Grunwald is a retired Air Force colonel who’s running to be the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. She also was fired at the direction of former Gov. Sean Parnell. The dismissal was part of the fallout from the Alaska National Guard scandal that contributed to Parnell’s defeat four years ago.

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On Oct. 20, 2014, Grunwald lost her job as human resources director for the Alaska National Guard. Two others were also fired. The dismissals came after a report by the Guard’s Virginia-based Office of Complex Investigations. The report detailed how Alaska National Guard leaders failed to address reports of sexual assault, among other problems.

Then-Gov. Parnell spoke with Alaska Public Media’s Lori Townsend about the firings the next day.

She asked him: “How did this decision come about, that led to this dismissal yesterday?”

Parnell replied: “The issues identified in the report that I asked for, that I asked the National Guard to bring in their Office of Complex Investigations. The report was pretty scathing, with respect to the troops and airmen not having the trust and confidence in their leadership. And clearly that played a role in this.”

Parnell cited the confidentiality of personnel records when he said at the time that he wouldn’t comment further on the firings.

Earlier this month, Grunwald noted that her name didn’t appear in the report. However, the report generally didn’t name individuals.

Grunwald said Parnell made a mistake.

“I think that he had to show that he took action in the Guard,” Grunwald said, adding: “It was a wrong action on his part, but it was because, I think, he got the wrong advice.”

Grunwald said Parnell apologized to her over what happened. For his part, Parnell said he expressed sorrow to Grunwald over the murder of her 16-year-old son, and that he may have expressed sorrow of her losing her job in the public eye. But he said he doesn’t recall apologizing to her over any action that he took.

Grunwald said she lost her job because those above her in the chain of command were looking to take a symbolic action as a result of the scandal.

“I happened to be low-hanging fruit,” Grunwald said, later adding: “Usually the people at the top or around the top or is viewed at the top, you know, it looks like you’re making change when you take them down. I say take them down, you remove them from their position.”

As human resources director, Grunwald was responsible for making sure that personnel actions made by commanders met federal regulations. She did hear reports of wrongdoing.

“There’s several occasions where people would reach out to me on things that were going on and I immediately reported it to that commander that may have been in charge,” Grunwald said.

Grunwald also said she’d follow up to make sure an investigation was done.

According to the Alaska National Guard, Grunwald had no oversight of sexual assault allegations.

Grunwald said she did what she was responsible for doing.

“I thought we did an excellent job,” Grunwald said. “We just didn’t have the support of higher authority and the commanders of the units.”

Parnell has endorsed Anchorage state Sen. Kevin Meyer in the lieutenant governor’s election.

The primary is Tuesday.

Like many communities in Alaska, the Village of Kake has an on-again, off-again history of local law enforcement. A year after the tragic death of a teenage girl – a case that still hasn’t been solved – the lights in the Village Public Safety Office are now back on. At least, they will be again in November, when the VPSOs return from training.

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Driving around Kake is something Joel Jackson spends most weekend evenings doing. He is the Kake Tribal Council President and sort of an unofficial guardian for this town of 600. When he was younger, Jackson was the Village Police Officer, but over the decades the town has often gone without any.

“They come and go,” Jackson said. “And when we didn’t have any police officers I answered calls. Because nobody else was doing it.”

Jackson volunteers with Emergency Medical Services, so he’s one of the first people to know when someone needs help in Kake. Like last August.

“I got a text message saying there was a young lady that was unresponsive,” he said.

The young lady was Jackson’s cousin’s daughter, Jade Williams, who had turned 19 just three days earlier. Her father was away working on a fishing boat and her grandmother was also out of town. There was a party at their house. By 9:30 that evening, the neighbors were calling Alaska State Troopers because Williams wasn’t breathing.

“By the time I got there they had already started CPR on her,” Jackson said, “And then they brought her up to the health center.”

Williams was pronounced dead at the center. A year later, the case still has not been solved. State Troopers will not comment on an open investigation, but the incident report classified Williams’ death as suspicious. Jackson said there was alcohol involved and neighbors later told him it had sounded like people at the party were fighting.

“From when I talked to the troopers here, it was a homicide. Somebody killed her. Blunt force trauma,” Williams said.

A Wildlife Trooper responded by boat from Petersburg, 65 miles away. Blue-shirt troopers – the state police trained to investigate people crimes – arrived the next afternoon from Juneau, traveling more than 100 miles.

“It was a little bit faster than the last one,” Williams said. “Probably about 12 hours. Something like that. And same thing, we posted people around the house so no one could get in.”

When Williams referenced “the last one,” he was talking about Mackenzie Howard, a 13-year-old who was murdered in Kake five years ago. Her family has planned a memorial for her in August. Howard’s and Williams’ cases exist alongside thousands of Native American and Alaska Native women who have been murdered or gone missing. It is widely known that many of these cases go uncounted. Howard’s case was solved, and a local teenager was charged for her murder.

“’Pretty tough time for us. Still is. We kinda walk around on pins and needles because we know both families,” Jackson said. “We’re trying not to say anything that would get one or the other upset.”

Small-town relationships are one challenge to having law enforcement across Alaska. It can be an intense, lonely job. Jackson was police officer during an especially difficult time, and quit after only about two years.

“The last year-and-a-half I was chief of police we had 15 suicides. We were known as the suicide capital of the United States,” Jackson said. “After the last one I just decided I had enough.”

Jackson was the first on the scene every time something terrible happened in a town where he knew everyone. The suicide crisis in Kake ended, thanks in part to a group of community leaders who started brainstorming solutions.

“Culture camp for the kids was one of the first ones. We just had our 30th anniversary of the culture camp. So that’s kind of a testament to trying to get our young people back into the culture – back into our way of life,” Jackson said.

All this to say, Kake has pulled through hard times before, and the interconnectedness of the community has not just exacerbated grief; it has also aided in resilience.

The day after Jackson was interviewed by KFSK was the day of Kake’s 24th Annual Dog Salmon Festival. Multiple people remarked there that was nice to see friends and family all in one place, having fun, and not at a funeral. One of the town’s new Village Public Safety Officers, Dean Cavanaugh was there, sitting in civilian clothes above the dunk tank. There was a line of mostly teenagers who paid five bucks to try and knock him in.

Cavanaugh grew up in Kake, spent the last few years in Anchorage, and moved back in 2017.

“I got a family now,” Cavanaugh said: “Two boys and a fiancé.”

Cavanaugh needed a job, and a couple of local leaders suggested he take the open VPSO position. It meant something that they thought he could do it, plus, “this was one of the more secure steady jobs, full-time. You get to get all of your hours every week,” Cavanaugh said.

VPSOs are paid through state grant funds, generally hired by native nonprofit organizations, and trained by State Troopers. After training they can be armed with tasers, spray and batons, but not guns. Central Council Tlingit and Haida recently hired two VPSOs for Kake.

Cavanaugh’s partner Ruel Hines said their duties actually go beyond law enforcement.

“We’re the public servant for the area, so wherever we could help we lend a hand,” Hines said.

Officially, they work as EMTs, search and rescue, firefighters and police. Until mid-November, Cavanaugh and Hines will be away from Kake attending a four-month training. As non-profits grapple with how to fill vacant VPSO positions across Alaska, Kake residents will be waiting for theirs to return. Also waiting is Jade Williams’ family. Her father and grandmother have left town to heal and wait for answers on the death.

This week we’re hearing from Cece Esparza in Kodiak. Esparza has been a social worker all over the state and is the longest volunteer host at KMXT in Kodiak. She’s originally from California.

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ESPARZA: I left when I was 17. At that time, I had a boyfriend who had a sister who was a mother superior in Mexico City, and so I was going to go to Mexico City and be the secretary for the convent. And so, I was all set to do that and then the bishop in Mexico decided that, because I was like 19 or 20… at the time we were talking about it, that I had to live in the convent. And I said, “No way, Jose. I ‘ve not been under anyone’s thumb since I was 17.” It was very, very restrictive. And I said I can’t live like that.

I had just decided then that I was going to apply to Berkeley because I had not gone to school other than high school. And I made an application to Berkeley, when this opportunity to come to Alaska happened, so I came to Alaska.

Today is my 50th anniversary of coming to Alaska. I came to Alaska June 1, 1968. I had a one-way ticket, I had $90 to my name, I had a suitcase of clothes and I had a temporary place to stay.

In Anchorage, in those days, many of the side streets, the fronts in town, were not paved. That was before the Parks Highway opened and there was just two lanes. And that was before they cut all the trees down by Elmendorf. Because I can remember crying when I went down the road because they had chopped all the trees down to make four lanes, at that time. Now it’s six or eight lanes. But yeah. It was a long, long time ago… far, far away.

A $12 million budget boost from Congress will help modernize the instruments that protect transcontinental jet planes from threats posed by volcanic ash.

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Leaders at the Alaska Volcano Observatory say new technology will help them issue more precise forecasts, which would translate into restrictions for smaller areas or shorter periods of time.

Alaska has dozens of active volcanoes dotting the Aleutian Islands and Cook Inlet, just west of Anchorage. The observatory, a partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey, the state and University of Alaska Fairbanks, is charged with watching them.

Ash from eruptions poses a mortal threat to jets; in 1989, a KLM 747 flew through volcanic ash from Mt. Redoubt and lost all four of its engines. It dropped more than two miles before pilots could restart two engines and land in Anchorage.

The observatory monitors Alaska’s volcanoes through a network of seismic sensors installed on the sides of volcanoes. But the system for transmitting data from the sensors is obsolete, according to Tom Murray, who works at the U.S. Geological Survey and oversees the observatory.

“It was obsolete 20 years ago, and it’s more obsolete now,” Murray said.

The current system sends data with an analog signal, which Murray compared to using an old telephone. The analog signal can pick up noise and static that interfere with scientists’ ability to interpret the information.

The cash from the federal government will pay to convert the system to a digital one, Murray said. The digital signal will allow scientists to capture a broader range of seismic activity, from low rumblings to big explosions.

Some sites, especially those that are more accessible, have already been converted; the rest, including far-flung sites in the Aleutians, will take three to four years to finish. Many of the remote monitoring sites can only be reached by helicopter.

When researchers at Recorded Future found evidence of Chinese surveillance of networks in Alaska — they weren’t exactly looking for it.

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Instead, the companies’ data scientists, intelligence analysts and engineers were trying to figure out what a compromised network in Tibet was being used for.

“Well that kind of led us down sort of this other rabbit hole that takes us to the rest of the report which is what we see as malicious activity that’s coming from this university in China, Tsinghua, which is essentially the equivalent of China like MIT, you could say,” Priscilla Moriuchi said. She’s the Director of Strategic Threat Development and supervises the team at Recorded Future that put out a report on the surveillance.

The report details evidence that computers at Tsinghua University in Beijing were being used to gather information on networks in Kenya, Brazil, Mongolia and Alaska.

In Alaska, the report documents over one million connections between the Chinese university and several networks in the state including the Alaska Communications Systems Group, or ACS, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and the State of Alaska Government.

There’s no evidence that any of those connections successfully penetrated a network in Alaska — no evidence of a successful hack.

When reports of the scanning activity were made public, a spokesperson from Governor Bill Walker’s office said it was routine anonymous activity. Basically, someone checking to see if the doors are locked on Alaska’s networks.

Moriuchi disagrees.

“There are computers and networks that literally do only one thing and that is scan every single person’s computer that’s connected to the Internet looking for vulnerabilities.  That’s, sort of, one type of scanning which is like … checking to see if the doors are locked,” Moriuchi said. “This is a much different type of scanning. We would actually refer to it more like reconnaissance which is this type of scanning that is very targeted… so it’s a bit more than just checking to see if the front door is locked, right? It’s like knocking on all the windows, looking at your security system, poking around in the sand around your house… also doing it while you’re not home and they know you’re not going to be home.”

Moriuchi says the scanning was very targeted and pointed at a specific number of ports in Alaska networks that are exploitable.

“So, it’s highly focused, very, very high volume, extensive and very peculiar,” Moriuchi said. “Tailored right to these Alaskan network vulnerabilities that the Chinese actors were looking for.”

Walker’s administration is also doubling down on the idea that those scans may not have come from China.

When reached via text on Friday, Walker’s press secretary Austin Baird wrote that no one from the state’s office of information technology was available to talk about the issue and that Walker’s administration still does not believe that the surveillance came from China.

Moriuchi and other cyber-security experts are questioning the wisdom of ignoring signs that someone in China is attempting to spy on Alaska.

Moriuchi said there’s no question that the scanning came from the Chinese university. What isn’t clear, she said, is whether it came from university students or, at the behest of the Chinese government.

“People will say that ‘university students do all kinds of things on the university networks.’ And you know, ‘how is it possible that you could suspect that this would be a Chinese kind of state-sponsored activity,’” Moriuchi said.

Moriuchi says the timing of the scans — between April 6 and June 24 – indicates that Alaska was targeted before and after Walker’s trade mission to China in late May.

At the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, Chief Technologist Joseph Lorenzo Hall said it is common for this type of scanning to originate from China. Usually, he said, it is followed up with attacks on the networks.

“And you know it seems a little dismissive of the Alaskan government to say, ‘we’re not even sure this is from China.’ If you know Recorded Future and other folks like that have global infrastructure that can see certain kinds of data flows and they drop in that report,” Hall said. “The actual IP addresses … you can look for yourself and see that that IP address is allocated matching Tsinghua University.”

Hall said the state should dig deeper and make sure there weren’t any successful hacks.

“You know, while I can imagine the Alaska government saying, ‘hey, nothing to see here whatever from the PR perspective.’ I really hope at the same time they’re going back and looking at logs and stuff from that time period,” Hall said.

Both Hall and Moriuchi said Alaska should be vigilant against further attempts at surveillance, especially as it continues commercial negotiations with China to build a natural gas pipeline.

“So while this is not a way of telling Alaska that your network has certainly been victimized, it’s a good indicator and we were kind of putting it out there to warn the state government that you guys, just in case you didn’t know … the state government is a target for Chinese hackers,” Moriuchi said.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @AKPublicNews

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Walker administration doubles down as cyber-security experts warn of China’s threat to Alaska

Rashah McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

Governor’s office says there’s no conclusive proof China is spying on Alaska.

Man in custody for fatal Alaska apartment fire

Associated Press

A 30-year-old Alaska man has been taken into custody in connection with a 2017 Anchorage apartment complex fire that killed three people and injured others.

Alaska man faces life in prison for Florida airport shooting

Associated Press

An Alaska man faces a life prison sentence in the January 2017 Florida airport shooting that left five people dead and six wounded.

Kodiak-based district sees challenger to caucus-switching Republican

Andrew Kitchneman, KTOO – Juneau

The Alaska primary on Tuesday could help determine who sets the agenda for the next legislature. Most of the contested primaries are among Republicans.

Napakiak gets federal funding for erosion, climate change impacts

Teresa Cotsirilos, KYUK – Bethel

The village of Napakiak received $449,000 in federal funding on Thursday that could help them respond to the “imminent threat” of climate change.

Cash from Congress will boost Alaska-based system that protects planes from volcanic ash

Nathaniel Herz, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

A $12 million budget boost from Congress will help modernize the instruments that protect transcontinental jet planes from threats posed by volcanic ash.

Unalaska approves plastic bag ban, to take effect Jan. 1

Laura Kraegel, KUCB – Unalaska

Starting next year, Unalaska retailers won’t be allowed to distribute single-use plastic bags to their customers. If they do, they’ll be hit with $100 fines each time.

AK: One year after tragedy, stakes are high for Kake VPSOs

Alanna Elder, KFSK – Petersburg

Like many communities in Alaska, the Village of Kake has an on-again, off-again history of local law enforcement. A year after the tragic death of a teenage girl – a case that still hasn’t been solved – the lights in the Village Public Safety Office are now back on. At least, they will be again in November, when the VPSOs return from training.

49 Voices: Cece Esparza of Kodiak

Daysha Eaton, KMXT – Kodiak

This week we’re hearing from Cece Esparza in Kodiak. Esparza has been a social worker all over the state and is the longest volunteer host at KMXT in Kodiak. She’s originally from California.