Alesha Tangman uses an ulu to cut a dark red piece of bowhead whale meat into small cubes at her aunt and uncle’s kitchen table in Wasilla. It’s a marine mammal, but it smells like fresh fish.

She snacks on a plate of light pink tail meat–known as aqikkaq or the flukes– and then passes it around the table to her family members. It tastes like sushi.

“Well, I grew up on Native food because coming from the village everything at the store was so expensive, so we relied on caribou and whale and geese,” she said.

Tangman moved to Big Lake about five years ago from Nuiqsut, but her relatives and friends bring her Native foods when they visit from the North Slope. She said she wants her three-year-old daughter to grow up loving the foods, unlike her nephews.

“Now they’re older, they haven’t had it since they were babies, and now they don’t like it,” she said.

Hopefully, that won’t happen with her daughter, thanks in part to a local spice blend company run by a woman from the North Slope. Kunniak’s Spices is doing more than building bank accounts–it’s also connecting people with Native dishes in new ways.

Tangman used to eat many of the dishes she grew up with plain or with salt. When she saw her friends talking about the company on Facebook, Tangman added herself to the company’s group page and then she won a sample.

“I used it on everything up there, even on salads and then in soups and then with eating Native food, it tasted even better,” she said.

She said she shares pictures on the page to show how much she enjoys the dishes, and is happy that she can support a Native-owned business owned by someone from the same region.

The company’s owner, Kunniak Hopson, moved to Chugiak 11 years ago from Utqiaġvik, which she calls Barrow. When she was growing up, her family always put McCormick’s Salt ‘n Spice on Maktak, which is frozen whale blubber and skin. But then McCormick’s stopped making it, and she had to find an alternative.

“They kind of put their recipe online. And well I took it from there and altered it just a little bit, you know, just to make it mine, so I don’t get in trouble,” Hopson said.

[Related: To feed elders, traditional foods take untraditional route]

At first, she was just making it for herself, but then her sister shared some with friends. Before Hopson knew it, people from other parts of the state were asking for the blend. She didn’t have any business experience, but she taught herself Quickbooks and got a food workers card.

“And from there, I started my own whole line of spices, which I now have 11 different flavors,” she said.

Metal shelves stuffed with bulk spices line the walls of Hopson’s kitchen. Flavors range from lemon to garlic to ghost pepper. Hopson stands at the head of a sturdy wooden table, where she mixes spices and fills clear plastic containers decorated with forget-me-nots. She ships 300 to 500 bottles of spices a month to customers across rural Alaska and to Canada. She fills them all with help from her daughters.

Hopson’s Facebook group has more than 1,300 followers. People post pictures daily, mostly of Alaska Native dishes that they’ve paired with her spice blends. Business has nearly quadrupled in the last six months, she said, mostly because people share the page with friends and family, and she hosts giveaways. For now, the business primarily lives on Facebook. She said she doesn’t have any plans yet to sell to restaurants or in stores, though she’s open to the idea if the business keeps growing.

Hopson works a full-time job but sometimes spends five hours a day on the side business. The hard work has paid off. The business has funded trips back home, most recently to sell her spices at the Inuit Circumpolar Council general assembly meeting.

“There’s a lot of people that I have no idea who they are, they come up to me and say ‘hi’ and tell me that they’re one of my customers, and so it feels really good. It feels almost like a celebrity, almost,” she said.

[Related: Mixing science with traditional knowledge, researchers hope to get seal oil on the menu]

The best part, she said, is hearing how much people enjoy them, especially their kids.

Like Tangman’s daughter, Lucy. She darts in and out of the kitchen, stealing bites of Maktak dipped in Kunniak’s Salt and Spice blend, her favorite.

“So we eat it together,” Tangman said. “She’ll choose this over chips or junk food.”

Finally, Lucy grabs an entire plate full of ruby chunks and takes it in front of the television, licking the salt and spice off her fingers after each bite.

Want to hear more Solutions Desk stories? Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or NPR.

A few years ago, residents of the Mat-Su Borough identified child abuse and neglect as one of the area’s major problems. In response community organizations teamed up with government agencies, schools and judges to develop a comprehensive solution and build connections throughout the region.

This episode is part of Alaska Public Media’s Solutions Desk, where you can find more stories about what’s working to make Alaska communities stronger.

HOST: Anne Hillman

GUESTS:

• Desiré Shepler, Director of R.O.C.K. Mat-Su
• Mark Lackey, Executive Director of CCS Early Learning
• Dawn Adams, Regional Permanency Specialist for the Office of Children’s Services

• Call 550-8422 (Anchorage) or 1-800-478-8255 (statewide) during the live broadcast
• Post your comment before, during or after the live broadcast (comments may be read on air).
• Send email to talk@alaskapublic.org (comments may be read on air)

LIVE Broadcast: Tuesday, August 21, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

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

After filing for bankruptcy protection last summer, PenAir has been ordered to sell off its assets to avoid a shutdown.

A federal judge has scheduled the auction for early October, following an emergency motion by the trustee appointed to oversee the airline’s bankruptcy proceedings.

In the motion filed Wednesday, Trustee Gerald McHale argued for the “expedited sale schedule” in light of PenAir’s “quickly deteriorating cash position.”

Court documents indicate the company owes at least $10 million to more than 200 creditors, including the State of Alaska, the City of Unalaska and Alaska Airlines.

PenAir is one of Southwest Alaska’s largest air carriers — and the only one connecting Unalaska and most Aleutian and Pribilof communities to Anchorage.

McHale told KUCB Friday that he’s confident PenAir has “enough financial backing” to remain afloat through November and that he already had bidders lined up.

McHale has also assured Vice Mayor Dennis Robinson that Unalaska’s flights will continue normally during the sale. But he said “that remains to be seen” for the carrier’s seven other routes, which include Dillingham, Cold Bay, and St. Paul Island.

PenAir CEO Danny Seybert is currently traveling and unavailable for comment.

The airline expanded to the Lower 48 in 2011, but closed its hubs in Portland, Oregon and Denver, Colorado last August after filing for bankruptcy protection.

Court documents show PenAir has taken out $4.5 million in loans since then.

Ryan Sinkey is the boat captain at George Inlet Lodge, close to where South Tongass Highway ends. We’re in a skiff going up George Inlet near Beaver Falls Cannery.

His job usually means taking out tourists to catch lunch.

“Mostly we take them up George Inlet about six miles. We pull up some crab pots and look at the crabs that are there. Release the crabs that we don’t want, and then we come back to George Inlet for a crab lunch,” Sinkey said.

But this trip is a bit different. We’re heading to see a former mine site of the Londevan Prospect, where miners in the early 20th century tried to mine for silver and lead, but didn’t find much.

Once we get on shore, Sinkey and I bushwhack through the alders to get to the site. We finally get up to the clearing where there are rusted barrels everywhere, sunken into the ground. Some are even punctured. Old mining equipment is strewn about. A tin shack is still standing in front of us.

We have to be careful where we step because this is one of 22 contaminated sites the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said still needs to be cleaned up in the Ketchikan-Gateway Borough.

Hazardous chemicals remain in some of those rusted, leaky barrels.

An Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation official said there are about 2,300 contaminated sites in Alaska that still need to be cleaned of petroleum, heavy metals and other contaminants.

Ann Marie Palmieri is with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and specializes in contaminated mine sites. Palmieri said mines in Alaska can be difficult to clean up for many reasons.

“These [mines] are typically in remote areas. And another issue is that there are high levels of naturally occurring metals in these areas, so differentiating between these metals and contamination can be challenging,” Palmieri said.

This site was discovered in 1980 by the DEC and was last visited by Bureau of Land Management officials in 1998. It was determined then that some cleanup needed to happen. But since then, the site has been sitting untouched.

One of the reasons cleanup can take so long is that some contaminated sites in the borough are determined to have less risk of spreading contamination and hurting people or wildlife.

John Halverson is the Contaminated Sites Program Director at DEC. He said sites like these have lower priority compared to more dangerous sites.

“Those do tend to end up sitting unfortunately for an extended period of time and not being addressed because the state doesn’t have resources to do cleanup on those if there are higher priority projects that we’re trying to deal with,” Halverson said.

DEC’s job is to identify these contaminated sites and hold the landowner responsible for the cleanup. Sometimes it’s a private owner who’s responsible. Other times it’s a federal agency. But who the landowner is can be unclear.

DEC in its database lists the longitude and latitude of the Londevan Prospect site on U.S. Forest Service land. The U.S. Forest Service claims the site is on private land. Many thousands of dollars in cleanup is at stake.

U.S. Forest Service Spokesman Paul Robbins does point to the success of cleanup at the former Mahoney Mine site just north of the Londevan Prospect.

The mine is on Forest Service land, and lead was last removed from the soil in 2008. And while testing shows there are still elevated levels of lead at the Mahoney Mine, wildlife is recovering.

“What we saw was a variety of plants, spruces, alders and blueberries have taken root and are proliferating. So that’s an example of closures, actions being effective,” Robbins said.

Robbins said just like any agency, there’s only so much manpower and funding at the forest service to deal with lower-priority contaminated sites.

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

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One of the races that could have an impact across Alaska is in a district that includes Kodiak, Cordova and Yakutat.

When Louise Stutes entered the Legislature in 2014, she joined a House majority of mostly fellow Republicans. She said she believes in Republican values and has been a member of the party for 42 years. But she said the caucus didn’t make progress on a long-term plan for the state’s budget. She said the caucus wasn’t willing to compromise.

“And the partisanship, it was just unbelievable,” Stutes said. “And what did we get done? Zero. We got nothing done.”

Stutes said that’s why she joined a new majority with two other Republicans, two independents and 17 Democrats. She noted that the Legislature then passed a bill to draw money from Alaska Permanent Fund earnings that closed most of the gap between what the state spends and what it brings in.

Stutes’ caucus switch — and her votes — draw criticism from her primary challenger, Rich Walker.

“You know, that was pretty bad as far I look at it — and so do a lot of other people,” Walker said. “If you look at her record, there’s a lot of things that she voted for that I totally don’t agree with, which is cutting the permanent fund, and taxes.”

Walker said he hopes he’s part of a broader change in the Legislature.

“I think we need a fresh new start down there and hopefully we’ll get a bunch of us down there this year to Juneau and work together,” Walker said.

Walker supports restoring permanent fund dividends to the full amount under the formula used before cuts in the last three budgets. He said that any gap in funding state government shouldn’t come out of the pockets of middle- and lower-income Alaskans.

Stutes said full dividends would force the state to either draw down savings that would eliminate PFDs in the long run, or require deep cuts to government.

“What that tells me is, ‘Goodbye, Alaska Marine Highway System. Goodbye, airport maintenance, which means fewer flights in and out. Goodbye, snow removal in the winter. Goodbye, public safety,’” Stutes said.

The sources for campaign contributions for the two candidates reflects a broader trend in the state. Rich Walker has received support from the Alaska Republican Party. Labor unions are among Stutes’ campaign donors.

Another Republican who switched caucuses, Anchorage Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, also is facing a challenger, Aaron Weaver.

The third House member who was a Republican who switched caucuses is Paul Seaton of Homer. He’s running as a registered nonpartisan in the Democratic primary.

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

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Napakiak’s shoreline is eroding at an alarming rate, even by Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta standards. The small village has lost 50 feet of its shoreline since May, mostly due to a single storm, according to Tribal Administrator David Andrew.

“Some of us actually went down there at the time,” Andrew said. “We walked down there and went to check it out.”

The storm destroyed Napakiak’s boat and hovercraft landing, which residents relied on for food and supply deliveries. Andrew says that the village has been getting its food flown in ever since, which is much more expensive. Erosion also threatens the community’s school and fuel depot, so Napakiak turned to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for help.

The federal funding will help the community design and build a new landing for hovercraft, barges and residents’ boats. Andrew says that the community is grateful for the funding, but adds that Napakiak will need more support over the next year. He says that the village will need to move. Again.

“When I was a little boy, Napakiak used to be way down there,” Andrew recalled. “There was a school, and it was torn down because of erosion. And now they’ve built another one over here, and it’s in danger from erosion. Our community moves any infrastructure that is in danger from the erosion, we just keep moving them back.”

Many of these moves have happened quietly, without much publicity or federal or state funding, Andrew says. Napakiak held a fiddle dance recently to raise enough money to a move a house, which was dangerously close to the river’s banks.

A fierce primary battle is playing out in one of the most conservative parts of the state.

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Eagle River Sen. Anna MacKinnon is retiring from her District G seat, and the campaign between two house members to replace her is growing increasingly malicious, with both candidates accusing the other of slinging mud. Over the past few months, the primary has turned into a fight over what it means to be a true conservative.

Rep. Dan Saddler has lived in the Chugiak-Eagle River area for 26 years, during part of which time he had a career as a newspaperman at the now defunct, right-leaning Anchorage Times. He and his primary opponent have a long list of issues on which they are generally aligned. Saddler wants to reform education and cut government services in order to fix the state’s deficit.

“To those people that say we’ve cut to the bone, I would say: balderdash,” Saddler said in a phone interview. “I know there’s places to reduce more spending, and those are not even the harsh cuts. Those are difficult but not harsh.”

Saddler wants school vouchers, cuts to Medicaid and for the state to court more investment from oil companies. Though he originally voted for Senate Bill 91, the omnibus crime reform bill designed to slow prison spending, now Saddler is campaigning for a full repeal.

Saddler maintains that he and his opponent, Rep. Lora Reinbold, have largely consistent values but extremely different ideas about how to put them into practice.

Saddler points to his record of working within the Republican caucus to bring results to his district. He holds up his committee assignments, bills he’s helped guide through the House, and specific budget reductions he’s helped implement. Saddler’s core argument is that voters should pick him over his opponent because he’s proven himself more adept at pulling the levers of power in Juneau.

“Senator is by nature a complicated job that involves work in an established institution with lots of rules. If you can’t play by the rules you cannot be an effective senator. You might be a gadfly, you might be an iconoclast, but you’re not actually doing the things, and accomplishing the things you claim to want to do,” Saddler said.

Call it effective, call it establishment, but Saddler is positioning himself as the insider candidate. And he’s got the high-level Republican endorsements to prove it, including from MacKinnon, the seat’s outgoing holder.

Implicit in this argument is the suggestion — sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly — that this is the approach to governance his challenger lacks.

“While my opponent is more polarizing and gets more publicity, I’m much more productive,” Saddler said. “I’m much more of a work horse, and far less of a show horse.”

The jab is at Reinbold, and refers in part to when she was booted from the majority caucus in 2015 after voting against the Republican-drafted budget. Even though it cast her out into the wilderness, Reinbold sticks by the move, because she believes the spending bill didn’t align with the party’s values.

“Our caucus principles said that we will save for future generations,” Reinbold said. “I think if we have principles we need to stick by our principles.”

Similar to her opponent, Reinbold sees public safety imperiled because of SB91, thinks the state education system needs to be reformed, and believes that the outgoing senate majority didn’t do enough to tighten the state’s belt. Also, like candidates on both side of the partisan divide, she wants more money for the Permanent Fund Dividend, determined by the old legal formula.

Reinbold grew up in Alaska, went to Anchorage public schools and worked in business and healthcare.

If Saddler is casting himself as the insider, Reinbold is appealing to voters as the insurgent, touting her record of speaking up for “true conservative” values even when it might come at the expense of efficacy.

“He doesn’t represent the constituency, he represents the good ol’ boys club in Juneau,” Reinbold said of her opponent.

The primary contest between the two has gotten vicious. In interviews, both candidates complained about the other’s negative campaigning, but offered unprompted attacks at the others’ voting record, character and conduct. Both have leveled accusations of misleading mailers and unfair attack ads put out over social media and the radio.

There is a third self-described conservative in the race for Senate District G, but he’s running as a Democrat. Oliver Schiess is a retired U.S. Marine who vacationed in Alaska during his childhood, and moved permanently to Eagle River with family three years ago.

“I’ve voted Republican in the past,” Schiess said in regards to his platform. “I consider myself to be conservative. I just have some problems with the party within the state of Alaska. Also on certain social issues I’m more left-leaning.”

Schiess is the sole Democrat running, and faces no primary contest on August 21st. He’s attracted donations from several prominent Dems, as well as the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.

No matter what, heading toward the November elections he’ll have an uphill battle running against either Saddler or Reinbhold. They’ve spent months persuading voters what the right kind of conservative leadership is for a deeply red district.

A separate Republican primary race in Anchorage has descended into acrimony and personal attacks.

That three-way contest is for District 26, encompassing large parts of south Anchorage. Over the weekend, two political blogs reported that a group connected to candidate Joe Riggs sent a mailer to voters that claimed to be from one of his opponents, Albert Fogle. The mailer features an unflattering picture of Fogle and touts his support for gay rights. In a Republican primary within a relatively conservative district, the move is seen as trying to discredit Fogle because he’s married to a man.

Riggs did not respond to multiple messages Monday. The action drew a rare rebuke from Alaska GOP Chairman Tuckerman Babcock, who said the mailer “crossed a line.”

A third candidate, Laddie Shaw, is also running in the primary race.

Today was the first day of school in Anchorage, and for the second year in a row, teachers are starting the year without a new contract. Teachers aren’t talking about a strike but they did hold awareness building events this morning.

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Dozens of community members, students and educators gathered outside of Creekside Park Elementary eating donuts and celebrating the first day of school. Principal Tim Andrew told the crowd that the teachers are starting the year without a contract and asked for their support. Then the group walked into the school, linking arms.

First grade teacher Crystal Whitney says the union hosted walk-ins across the district because they want people to know that teachers are still at work and still care for the students, despite the added stress of no contract.

“It’s just adds some extra burdens. You feel a little disrespected. You feel like you’re not heard. You feel a little undervalued,” Whitney said. “You feel like you have to fight a little bit harder, so you’re going to extra meetings for the board to hear you. You’re going to extra meetings for the district, the community… all of that to hear you.”

Whitney says the negotiations are not just about money. They are also about working conditions and making sure that students are in small classes.

Some of the union’s requests include additional support for children with special educational needs, and giving teachers more flexibility in their lesson planning to accommodate different learning styles. That includes allowing teachers to plan for more recess time if they think their students need it.

Todd Hess is the Chief Human Resource Officer for the Anchorage School District. He says he met with the teachers’ union six times over the summer and that negotiations are continuing.

“We’re engaged in a collective bargaining process and that’s a give and take process and and it takes time to work through the issues and the school board has to look and address the needs of the entire community,” Hess said. “And try and do what’s best for all of our students.”

Hess says the district cannot afford the pay increase the union is asking for, which would total about $57 million over three years. He is confident that they will reach an agreement. Teachers are currently continuing under the one-year contract that was signed in early 2018 and expired on June 30.

The primary election for state Senate District E is between two candidates involved in a messy appointment process earlier this year.

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Now, Republican voters from the northern section of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and a stretch from Delta Junction and Valdez must decide between borough Assemblyman Randall Kowalke and Air Force veteran pilot Mike Shower, who currently holds the seat.

The contest has its roots back about six months ago, when Gov. Bill Walker first tried to appoint Kowalke to the seat vacated by Sen. Mike Dunleavy, who resigned to focus on his gubernatorial campaign.

Kowalke was not on the list of recommended appointees that district republicans sent Walker, and members of the GOP Senate majority rejected him.

“I was disappointed,” Kowalke said. “I guess when the governor calls you up and ends the phone conversation with, ‘Hope to be working with you soon, Senator,” you think, ‘OK, well, this worked out,’ and then of course it all blew up.”

Gov. Walker reportedly passed over a sitting representative from the Valley who was on the shortlist after he hung an inappropriate poster outside his office in the capital. After Kowalke’s rejection, the governor appointed an extreme conservative on the list, only to have that potential appointee withdraw once Facebook posts surfaced in which he compared women to dogs and appeared promote violence toward abortion providers.

Then, in swooped Mike Shower, the outsider with a clean but very thin political record and a Libertarian streak, who had only changed his party affiliation from “undeclared” to Republican a short time before he was appointed.

“The governor probably regrets appointing me, and the Senate might regret confirming me but, you know, you let a guy in the front door that can think fast on his feet, collect the sum weight of information,” Shower said. “But I have a rebel streak in me. It is, ‘Don’t tell me what I’m going to do,’ and, ‘I’m not going to play your game, especially if I don’t think it’s right.'”

Both Shower and Kowalke said they support repealing controversial crime legislation known as SB91 and want an amendment to the state constitution that would protect the Permanent Fund Dividend.

But — like Dunleavy, who walked away from the Senate majority caucus over what he said was a bloated budget — Shower decided not to caucus with the Republican majority either.

Kowalke, on the other hand, intends to join the caucus. He said he wants a seat at the table.

“We need to be developing that budget, rather than let other people drive our fate,” Kowalke said. “I’m not second-guessing what Mike Dunleavy did at the time he did, but I don’t see my doing a service to this district if I plan to spend the next four years in the broom closet.”

Kowalke also said he doesn’t consider himself a politician and repeats that he’s only been a borough assemblyman for “a thousand days,” like that limited amount of time working in government can only be a good thing.

At the same time, Kowalke questions Shower’s lack of political experience.

“Do I think he deserves the Senate seat? No. I think he literally parachuted in, had no record on much of anything, politically, and boom, he’s the senator,” Kowalke said.

Kowalke touts his accomplishments on the Assembly, things like getting a more-reliable school-funding formula and working to cap property taxes.

Kowalke wants the state to do more to foster full staffing of the Alaska State Troopers, a problem felt acutely in his Assembly district. He proposes the state help pay off student loans for criminal justice graduates who want to become troopers.

Kowalke wants to”right-size” government. He said a hard spending limit should only come after deeper analysis of state programs and their costs, including guaranteed increases in union contracts.

According to Shower, that’s one of the biggest differences between them.

“If you don’t come in with something that constrains government growth and just does what Randall is suggesting, which is, ‘Well, you know, we right-size,’ what does ‘right-size mean? Another billion (dollar) increase? That’s a very broad term to me,” Shower said. “We already went up half a billion dollars this year. Can you afford to go up another half a billion when you’re $2 billion short?”

Shower said the other big difference between the two of them is the caucus question. He sees it as unethical to essentially trade votes for influence.

“The caucus stands against repeal and replace of SB 91, protecting the Permanent Fund in the constitution, it stands against any kind of balanced budget act,” Shower said. “So if Randall says, ‘I support those things,’ but he also says he’s going to join the caucus, then clearly he doesn’t understand how that works.”

There may be an even more practical difference between the two candidates: Shower says he doesn’t plan to quit his job as a pilot for FedEx and will have to use extended leave time to attend legislative sessions. As a retiree, Kowalke has fewer work responsibilities.

Unless Tuesday’s primary for District E is too close to call, it will be clear who Republican voters in the district want squaring off with Susan Kay, the lone Democrat filed for the November general election.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski is one of the few Republicans in Congress who goes out of her way to talk about climate change and says we need to reduce emissions.

On climate, the Republican senator stands to the left of her party, as she does on abortion and health care. But climate advocates say her deeds don’t match her words.

Climate change wasn’t always so partisan. There’s this goofy ad from 2008. It shows former Speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich, a Republican, and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, sitting on a loveseat in front of the Capitol.

Pelosi: “We don’t always see eye-to-eye. Do we, Newt?” 

Gingrich: “No. But we do agree: Our country must take action to address climate change.”

It wasn’t just Gingrich. Back in the mid-2000s, Republican senators like Richard Lugar and Lindsey Graham called for climate action. John McCain made it part of his 2008 campaign for the White House.

In 2009 it seemed like a bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions had a real chance. That summer, the Democratic-controlled House passed a cap-and-trade bill. (That’s where the government would put a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and let industries buy and sell the rights to send CO₂ and other gases into the atmosphere. The idea is, if it cost money to emit, companies will cut back.)  A bipartisan group in the Senate was working on a compromise version.

Murkowski must have seemed like a natural to join their efforts. For years, she’d called climate change a problem. She acknowledged Alaskans were already seeing the effects, and she called reducing carbon emissions “the right thing to do.”

But she wasn’t on board.

Two years prior, Murkowski had sponsored a bill that included limited cap-and-trade. But now she had a different emphasis:

“When we talk about what we’re going to be doing to reduce our emissions, we also need to be stressing our energy independence in this nation,” she said in a 2009 interview on C-SPAN. 

And the key to energy independence, Murkowski said, is increasing domestic oil and gas production, along with renewables and nuclear power.

A Reuters reporter tried to pin her down. What if a bill expanded nuclear power, offshore drilling and renewables AND capped carbon emissions?” Would she vote for it?

“It depends how the cap-and-trade piece is structured. Because I have noted on several occasions, I am quite concerned about how, through the process or the procedure that would be put in place, there’s opportunity for manipulation out there that I think we need to be very, very careful about,” Murkowski said. She went on to detail other reservations.

In short, she wouldn’t be pinned down.

Murkowski does passionately support money for energy innovation. But what she has always resisted is a tax on fossil fuels, or any regulation of carbon that she says would damage the American economy.

“We’re not just going to be able to shut the whole thing down and say ‘this is what we have to do to save the planet,’” she said back then.

In other words, her climate solutions are all carrot, no stick. And really, who likes sticks? Murkowski says raising the cost of energy would hit especially hard in Alaska, where power and fuel prices are already in the stratosphere.

In the end, the 2009 cap-and-trade bill fizzled in the Senate, and in the decade since, no carbon regulation bill has gotten anywhere near the finish line. And Murkowski hasn’t pressed for one. In fact, when Obama’s EPA moved to regulate carbon, she led the charge to derail it.

“It’s pretty clearly, for a decade now, just been talk,” Joe Romm said of Murkowski’s stance on climate.

Romm writes a climate blog. He’s a former deputy secretary of Energy from the Clinton administration. He said Murkowski’s carrots-only approach is not a solution because it’s too slow to prevent catastrophic warming.

“And every time she’s had a chance to actually take some serious action to deal with climate change, she has either done nothing or been an outright opponent,” he said.

Romm said Murkowski seems to be following an old Republican playbook.

“The way to sound like you care about the climate but don’t have to do anything it’s to say that the solution is innovation and not regulations,” Romm said. “And the problem is climate change is an existential threat.” 

If limiting or taxing greenhouse gases would hurt the economy, Romm says letting the planet warm out of control is even more expensive, with wildfires, storms and real estate lost to the sea.  

In other words, Romm said, climate change is an issue where extreme moderation won’t do. What we need, he said, is real action, and to him, that means limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

Sen. Murkowski declined our requests for an interview focused on climate change. But we did have a chance to ask her whether she might support cap-and-trade again, or any policy that seeks to put a price on carbon.

Murkowski said a national policy raising the cost of energy would be bad for people in Alaska villages, like the struggling mom she met this year in Aniak, who already pays a fortune for heating oil.

“I can’t go back to her and say, ‘for purposes of a national policy, I’m sorry, we’re going to have to increase what you’re paying,'” Murkowski said.

She didn’t exactly say no. But bottom line: Murkowski isn’t pushing to regulate or limit CO₂. So if that’s how you define taking action on climate, Murkowski doesn’t support it.

This story is adapted from Episode 2 of the podcast Midnight Oil: The Big Thaw. Subscribe on iTunes, NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts.

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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Protesting lack of new contracts, Anchorage teachers’ union hosts walk-ins

Anne Hillman, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Today was the first day of school in Anchorage, and for the second year in a row, teachers are starting the year without a new contract

Ahead of Tuesday primary, Republicans jockey for ‘true conservative’ clout

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

A fierce primary battle is playing out in one of the most conservative parts of the state.

Supporters of full PFD aren’t clear how they’d pay for it

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

It would cost a lot more to pay the full amount under the formula –  $840 million.

In District E, once-spurned Kowalke vies with outsider-turned-appointee Shower

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The primary election for state Senate District E is between two candidates involved in a messy appointment process earlier this year.

New study says global models sharply underestimate permafrost emissions

Nathaniel Herz, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

Some scientists said the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, underscores the limitations and uncertainties of climate modeling – and how policymakers might need to take more aggressive steps if they want to keep global temperatures under control.

What can Alaska learn from Connecticut’s green bank?

Elizabeth Jenkins, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

Establishing an Alaska green bank is one of the goals included in a draft policy, which is expected to be submitted to the governor next month.

The primary Tuesday will be the first time that Alaska voters weigh in on lawmakers who voted for lower Permanent Fund dividends. Many of the candidates running for office – including three prominent candidates for governor – have pledged to increase dividends. But it’s not clear how they’re going to pay for them.

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This fall, Permanent Fund dividends are going to be a lot smaller than they would have been until two years ago.

Dividends would be just over $2,900 under the formula that was used until then. That’s compared with the $1,600 dollars set by the Legislature. It would cost a lot more to pay the full amount under the formula –  $840 million.

Republican candidate Mike Dunleavy said he supports the full PFD.

“I think we have the money where we can afford a full, statutory PFD,” Dunleavy said.

His Republican rival Mead Treadwell also backs using the formula, which is based on half of the fund’s average earnings over the previous five years.

Democratic candidate Mark Begich also supports a higher PFD, just not as high as the Republicans.

Begich would change the formula, setting dividends at half of draw under a new law passed this year to pay for the state budget. So dividends would be tied to how much is being drawn from the fund, not on earnings as under the existing formula.

“And then you would put it in the constitution, so then the formula is there, so it’s very clear,” Begich said.

This year, Begich’s formula would have steered another $300 million toward dividends. So individual PFDs would be a few hundred dollars more this year.

The one candidate who hasn’t promised higher dividends is the incumbent, independent Gov. Bill Walker. He was the first to lower the PFD, when he vetoed half of the money in June 2016. He did that because the state has been in an ongoing budget crisis. He noted projections that the permanent fund’s earnings reserve would get lower over time without deep cuts to state-paid services. Ultimately, PFDs could entirely disappear.

“I cannot subscribe to a concept that we’ll always be able to reach into a savings account, because those are almost gone,” Walker said.

None of Walker’s challengers have spelled out exactly how they would pay for higher PFDs. And the size of the problem is significant. Separate from the $840 million cost of a full PFD, there’s already a $600 million gap in the state budget. The existing gap is set to be covered by the rapidly shrinking piggy bank that’s covered state budget shortfalls in the past, the Constitutional Budget Reserve.

The combined shortfall would be $1.4 billion, more than a third of the $3.9 billion the Legislature budgets for all state agencies.

Dunleavy said that he would look to the permanent fund’s earnings reserve. And if the numbers don’t add up, he said he’d turn to Alaskans.

“The thing is, if we want to change the statutes, in my opinion, we should engage the people of Alaska, at least in an advisory vote,” Dunleavy said.

But the state has the new law, which already draws $2.7 billion from the earnings to pay for state government. Any additional draw is likely to lower the overall value of the permanent fund in the future.

Mead Treadwell said some of the funds to cover the shortfall that would be created by higher dividends would come from developing the state’s economy.

“And if we do that, we’re going to have a corporate income tax that’s going to help pay our bills,” Treadwell said.

A problem with relying on economic development is that anything that creates new jobs would also draw families to the state that rely on public services. And without a broad-based tax like an income tax or statewide sales tax, new residents could actually cost more money than they pay to the government.

While both Dunleavy and Treadwell have said they support the statutory formula, when pressed for how they would pay for it, both mentioned scenarios in which PFDs would be based on half of the total permanent fund draw. That’s more similar to the lower PFD that Begich has proposed than the current formula.

But both Dunleavy and Treadwell cited total draws of roughly $3.5 billion, a draw that would be much higher than what the state is making this year. They based these hypothetical draw amounts on the permanent fund’s total value being somewhat higher than it currently is. And the new law actually bases the draw on the fund’s average value over the past five years, which is a much lower number. That formula is used to smooth out the effects of the fund’s value going up and down over time.

Begich said he would look to make more cuts to state government, but that any cuts would be small.

“The key word here is ‘sustainable’ dividend, because if you don’t create a sustainable dividend, then you’re selling a false good,” Begich said.

Both Begich and Walker said they would make up for any long-lasting budget gap with new revenue. While the House passed an income tax bill last year, it died in the Senate.

But Walker said it’s important that his challengers be more specific than they have been about how they would pay for shortfalls they’d create by increasing dividends. He said deep spending cuts would be difficult, especially when more spending on public safety is needed.

“I think we have to be careful about the suggestion that we can cut our way out of this,” Walker said.

One organization that will be watching what the state government does next closely is the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation’s board of trustees. It passed a resolution this year saying that sticking to a rules-based draw on the fund is critical to the fund’s future.

A new study led by a Fairbanks-based scientist suggests global climate projections have been drastically underestimating carbon emissions from permafrost.

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Such projections had previously shown the Arctic absorbing as much or more carbon than it emits, thanks to enhanced plant growth that comes, in part, from warmer temperatures. But the new study found that permafrost emissions could more than double once models start accounting for methane that bubbles up from thermokarst lakes, a special type of lake that forms in permafrost.

“If we take into account these lakes, we realize, ‘Oh, we actually have a pretty significant source of permafrost carbon this century,’” Katey Walter Anthony, the lead author and associate professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks, said in a phone interview.

Other scientists said the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, underscores the limitations and uncertainties of climate modeling – and how policymakers might need to take more aggressive steps if they want to keep global temperatures under control.

While such global models currently describe permafrost as an insignificant source of carbon, Walter Anthony’s study said permafrost emissions could rival those from land use change like forest-clearing and burning – the second-largest human source of emissions, after fossil fuels.

“The models that we’ve used to construct these carbon budgets, of how much CO2 we can emit and stay below a certain temperature threshold that we say is the edge of where things go from bad to really bad – those carbon budgets are probably made with models that are incomplete and may, in many ways, be very optimistic,” said Charlie Koven, a scientist who works on climate models at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. “The magnitude of the uncertainty is really large.”

Scientists have long known that permafrost, the frozen ground beneath most of Alaska, holds huge amounts of carbon. One study estimated that there’s twice as much carbon in permafrost as there is in the air.

If global warming helps thaw the permafrost and puts more of that carbon into the air, it could warm the earth even more.

But global climate models currently show permafrost thawing slowly, from the top down. And they also show increased plant growth, suggesting the plants are absorbing more carbon than is being released in the Arctic.

Those models, however, don’t include the thermokarst lakes examined by the new study.

Thermokarst lakes are formed when permafrost thaws and the ground sinks, forming a pool of water. The pool thaws more permafrost below and around it, in a process that happens much more quickly than the gradual, top-down thaw.

Microbes then eat the thawed soil and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Accounting for thermokarst lakes boosts projections of permafrost emissions in the later part of this century by as much as 118 percent, according to the new study.

Why haven’t thermokarst lakes been included in global climate models before? Scientists have known about them for a long time; Walter Anthony has been studying them for years, using helicopters to help map the permafrost near Fairbanks.

But because lakes make up a very small fraction of the overall land area in the Arctic, they’ve been difficult to represent on a global scale, according to Walter Anthony.

Her study calls for the broader climate models to start incorporating thermokarst lakes so that there’s a more “comprehensive projection” of permafrost-related carbon emissions this century.

Model experts said that’s more likely to happen now that the scale of the emissions from lakes has been estimated. But it’s still likely to take several years before the projections of emissions from thermokarst lakes can be refined enough to include, they said.

“We don’t have large-scale data sets of the distribution of how these lakes are changing throughout the Arctic,” Koven, the California scientist, said. Much of the scientific observation of the lakes has been in Alaska, while there’s also a lot of permafrost in Siberia, he added.

Thermokarst lakes are not the only potential source of emissions that aren’t represented in climate models, experts said.

There are all sorts of processes that could stabilize or destabilize the earth’s climate that aren’t included in existing versions.

Insects or droughts could kill trees. Nutrients could flow through soil in unexpected ways. The Amazon rainforest could die off, or absorb more carbon.

“Our uncertainty is a really big problem and we’re doing tons of work all across the field to try to reduce that uncertainty – understand it and reduce it,” said David Lawrence, a scientist who works on climate modeling at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. The study, he said, adds to an “already-large uncertainty range.”

A multi-state salmonella outbreak that impacted Alaska has been linked to an alternative medicine.

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An investigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that the drug Kratom caused nearly 200 cases of salmonella in 41 states — including two Alaska cases. The outbreak occurred between January 2017 and May 2018.

Kratom is a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia and a cousin of the coffee tree. It’s both a stimulant and a sedative, and people use it to treat everything from opioid withdrawal to chronic pain. The FDA hasn’t approved the drug and cautions against using it. It’s currently legal in Alaska and all but six states.

The two Alaskans first reported symptoms this spring. One bought the Kratom online. The other bought it in powder form from an unmarked bin at a store in Anchorage.

Neither was subject to oversight from an Alaska regulatory entity because the packaging didn’t claim that it was edible or therapeutic.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and FDA are currently considering placing the drug on the federal controlled substance list. Reported problems include addiction, seizures and psychosis.

Fifty people were hospitalized, but no one died in the outbreak.

Descendants of Alaska’s westernmost island want permanent access to their ancestral home. The Native people of Attu have been separated from their homeland since World War II.

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In the 1700s, the Russians colonized the community during the fur trade.

Two hundred years later, the Japanese military arrived and took the Attuans as prisoners of war to Japan, where half of them died in captivity.

The U.S. government sealed off the island and forbade survivors from returning home.

Eleven descendants received special permission last summer to visit for the first time.

Helena Schmitz and others couldn’t make the journey.

“I feel like if I were able to go, it would definitely help my soul,” Schmitz said.

Schmitz is asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to offer regular trips back to Attu, the homeland of her grandmother, Angelina Hodikoff. She first made her request this spring at the 75th commemoration of the Battle of Attu.

“I want my children’s children’s children to be able to go back to Attu with no cost to us,” Schmitz said. “Thats the justice that needs to be done on our people. The U.S. government, the Japanese government, and the Russian government took our culture away. And we need your help since (Fish and Wildlife) owns the island.”

The agency oversees the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, which cares for most of the island — although the Aleut Corporation still owns the Attu village site.

Top officials said Fish and Wildlife is open to the idea of descendants returning. They hosted a conference call in late July to begin the discussion. Theresa Deal joined Schmitz in representing the Attu descendants.

“It should not be a once-in-a-lifetime trip,” Deal said. “Would I want to go back again? Yes, I’d be thrilled to get to go back again.”

Deal was part of the group that visited Attu last summer. Her mother, Marina Hodikoff, was born on the island, but Deal grew up disconnected from her culture in the Pacific Northwest. After making the meaningful trip, Deal wants the same opportunity for her children.

“I would have liked to have had my sons there, because then we can all help process the emotions — and how neat it is to be up there,” Deal said.

Deal also would like the trips to be open to spouses and significant others.

They may not be Native themselves, but she said they’re part of descendants’ lives and provide an important support network as they deal with the trauma of displacement.

Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Director Steve Delehanty said he’s ready to listen to these requests. He’s not Attuan, but he understands where they’re coming from.

“We humans have these place connections that mean a lot, so it’s totally understandable that it’s coming from them,” Delehanty said. “I also think it’s quite understandable that they’re reaching out to the Fish and Wildlife Service to say, ‘Do you have any ideas for helping to make this happen?’ Because we were able to do so in a small way last year.”

While descendants made that trip aboard the research vessel Tiglax, there’s also an airstrip on Attu, so it’s possible to fly.

Still, at this point, Delehanty said descendants need to get more specific.

“Is it only the physical ability to walk on the island?” Delehanty asked. “Is it being on the village site itself? Is it more of a cultural connection? Or I don’t know what.”

Delehanty said involving more people may lead to creative solutions and funding. He’s reaching out to other federal entities that have a stake — including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Coast Guard — and inviting them to join the conversation.

“We have to put on the table what the wish is, what the vision is, and then what the possibility is — and see if there’s any overlap,” Delehanty said.

For their part, Deal and Schmitz seek funding from private entities and the possibility of creating a trust for the program.

There’s no set date for when anything will happen, but the group is planning to continue the conversation this fall

Some parts of the forests in Southeast Alaska are a little off color. Hemlock trees are turning yellow and brown from a sawfly outbreak. But scientists say there’s not much to worry about.

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The U.S. Forest Service started getting a lot of calls about yellowish trees on hillsides in Southeast Alaska this month. The color is from dying hemlock leaves, which were damaged by an insect. So, they got their experts to look into it.

Elizabeth Graham is an entomologist who works with the Forest Service in Juneau in a division called Forest Health Protection. And she’s really into bugs.

“This year has just been extraordinary to see the amount of activity,” Graham said. “They are just so cool; the things that insects can do.”

The sawfly’s larvae — which look like tiny green caterpillars — are feasting on hemlock leaves as part of their short life cycle. They gorge on leaves just before creating their cocoons. As they eat, the leaves turn yellow and fall off.

“When they’re feeding in this great abundance like this, it’s almost like you’re standing in the woods and it can sound like it’s raining,” Graham said. “But it’s not actually raining. Larvae are feeding and going to the bathroom.”

The feeding frenzy damages the trees but it doesn’t kill them. The sawflies only eat old needles leaving the new growth alone.

Graham and other scientists have flown aerial surveys and taken samples on several islands—Mitkof, Kupreanof, Prince of Wales and Admiralty. They did see a sawfly infestation. But they’re not that concerned. The main reason is because sawflies are native to the region. So, they’re part of the normal ecosystem. And that means there are other species that keep the sawfly populations in check. One is fungi, which infect the larvae but this summer’s hot, dry weather hasn’t been a good year for them so sawflies have flourished.

Another natural sawfly control comes later in the cycle and that’s the parasitoid wasps.

“Which are really, really cool. They actually lay their eggs inside these pupal cases and so the parasitoid wasp is feeding on the pupae inside the case and then they will eventually burst out of the case, sort of like an alien,” Graham said laughing.

And Graham is hoping that some of those alien wasps will emerge from the sawfly cocoons soon. She’s collected several of the cases to take back to her lab to observe.

There is another insect that can pair up with the sawfly to cause problems. That’s the Western Black-Headed Budworm. They feed on the trees new growth. So, if they are having an outbreak at the same time as the sawfly, that can actually kill the trees. But scientists haven’t seen that this year.

It would take a few years in a row of the sawfly’s population to go unchecked for there to be a cause for concern. And the bugs do play an important role in the forest.

“Birds eat them, rodents, small mammals, it’s an abundant food source,” Graham said. “It’s not something we would want to eradicate.”

This fall, the sawfly pupae will emerge from their brown cases as tiny wasps, but not the kind that sting. They’ll mate up, then lay eggs, which overwinter and hatch in the springtime.

Graham and her colleagues will continue to monitor them to make sure they’re damaging trees but in their normal, good-for-the-forest way.

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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PenAir ordered to sell assets over ‘quickly deteriorating cash position’

Laura Kraegel, KUCB – Unalaska

After filing for bankruptcy protection last summer, PenAir has been ordered to sell off its assets to avoid a shutdown.

Alaska seafood organization seeks comments on US tariffs

Associated Press

An Alaska seafood organization is encouraging industry members to comment on the proposed U.S. tariffs on products imported from China that could negatively affect the state’s seafood industry.

Murkowski accepts climate change. What will she do about it?

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

Sen. Murkowski is a Republican who goes out of her way to talk about climate change and says we need to reduce emissions. But climate advocates say her deeds don’t match her words.

Multi-state salmonella outbreak linked to the drug Kratom

Erin McKinstry, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

A multi-state salmonella outbreak that impacted Alaska has been linked to an alternative medicine.

3 Alaska villagers die in Kuskokwim River boating accident

Associated Press

Three residents of an Alaska village died in a riverboat accident.

New symposium brings military’s attention to the Arctic

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Three-day conference brings together experts to assess new military approaches to the Arctic in coming years.

Code for Anchorage seeks to link citizens with data services

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Code for Anchorage is a group of tech-savvy, civic-minded volunteers who write software to help Alaskans access data and — often — link them to government services.

Descendants, feds explore possibility of continuing trips to Attu Island

Zoe Sobel, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Unalaska

Descendants of the Native people of Attu want permanent access to their ancestral home that they’ve been separated from their homeland since World War II.

Southeast Alaska’s forests yellow from insect outbreak

Angela Denning, KFSK – Petersburg

Some parts of the forests in Southeast Alaska are a little off color. Hemlock trees are turning yellow and brown from a sawfly outbreak. But scientists say there’s not much to worry about.

The U.S. military is looking for new ways to expand its presence in Arctic waters. Last week saw the first ever Arctic Maritime Symposium to be hosted by Alaskan Command at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage. The three-day event brought together senior military officials, academics and civilian leaders to discuss what shifting geopolitics and a changing environment could mean for the nation’s military presence in Alaska.

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One of the main reasons the U.S. needs a better understanding of the Arctic is Russia’s expanding presence in the region and interest in the Northern Sea Route, according to Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, commander for NORAD and defense assets throughout North America.

“We must keep in mind that for the Russians, the Arctic is their front yard, not their backyard,” O’Shaughnessy said during a speech to conference attendees.

O’Shaughnessy told the gathering that the U.S. military will continue conducting large-scale joint exercises in the region, and is analyzing whether to increase resources for early warning and detection systems.

One way the military might expand is an increased maritime presence by Navy or Coast Guard forces in northern waters. Speaking in front of a large naval destroyer docked at the Port of Anchorage last week during the symposium, Alaskan Command’s Col. Mark Schmidt told a small group of reporters that both service branches want to learn more about how their vessels work in the Arctic.

“Right now, we know that the environment is changing, and what that means to us we don’t know,” Schmidt said as fighter jets intermittently roared overhead. “We want to understand and get after what capabilities and requirements are needed in this changing environment.”

Alaskan Command’s Arctic Maritime Symposium wrapped up last Thursday.

Code for Anchorage is a group of tech-savvy, civic-minded volunteers who write software to help Alaskans access data and link them to government services. One example is a free, opt-in service that notifies users via text message each time election returns are updated. Another is CourtBot, which — with help from the Alaska Court System IT department — sends text reminders for court dates.

The group’s captain is Brendan Babb, whose day job is Chief Innovation Officer for the Municipality of Anchorage. Alaska Public Media’s Casey Grove caught up with Babb at a downtown Anchorage coffee shop to talk about Code for Anchorage.

(To get alerts for updates as primary election results roll out Tuesday night, text “vote” to 907-312-1012).

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BABB: Code for Anchorage is part of Code for America. There are a nonprofit out of California, and they have a different brigades which is kind of inspired by like firemen’s brigades, but basically (it’s) local volunteers that work on trying to make government services work better. So, we’ve done a lot of stuff, like you can text in a bus stop number and it’ll tell you when the bus is going to arrive, and just did something CourtBot, which will — you can text in a citation number and it’ll remind you the evening before for your court hearing. So we’ve done a lot of text based stuff.

GROVE: I feel like this is the sort of thing that now is the type of infrastructure of the time that we’re living in. Am I on the right track?

BABB: Yeah, I think so, in terms of working with government to see what information and data they have and trying to make services that people would use, go where people are like, Because it’s gonna be easier to get people to look their. The election one came out of a hackathon we were working on, sending results out, and yeah people have kind of latched on. It basically just watches a web page each minute to see if it’s been updated and then sends out a text to let people know when it’s been updated. Because we noticed at Election Central, people are just constantly refreshing their phones sort of like, ‘”Oh, maybe we could take that part out of it.”

GROVE: Tell me about the hackathon part of that. How does that work? Is that like you throw out a challenge people try to come up with something? Or how does it work?

BABB: We’ve had a couple hackathons in the past, and they’ve kind of been open-ended but some people will present problems and people will work on those, or people bring their own ideas and someone brought an idea of like, “Is there a way to send updates for elections?” And then over a weekend people worked on that problem and came up with something that kind of worked by the end of the weekend. And then Code For Anchorage, we meet every two weeks.

GROVE: Tell me more about the CourtBot. Is that what it’s called?

BABB: Yeah CourtBot is something we just launched about a week ago for National Day of Civic Hacking. If you have a citation number for, let’s say you have a speeding ticket that you can pay, you could text it in and it would tell you when your court date was and you could opt in to get a reminder the day before.

And it also works for criminal cases as well. So if you had multiple hearings, it could send you reminders that evening before for that. The goal is to reduce failures to appear, which can mean if you miss an appointment, it might change into a warrant for your arrest or things might be escalated just because you weren’t able to remember an appointment. I mean, when I get my hair cut I get a reminder a couple days before and just have to text “C” back. So it’s nice to have the court system be as friendly as that.

GROVE: What other stuff are you guys working on or problems that you’ve thrown out that you’re thinking about trying to create similar services for?

BABB: We’re still kind in the early works of looking at other projects. But we’re trying to figure out how to know if a bike rack was full on a bus and trying to think of creative ways to solve that. We have a (Women in Crisis) and (food stamps) pre-screener where you can text “child” in to a number or “food,” and then it’ll give you the list of questions, like eight or nine questions, and help you see if you would likely qualify or not. And then if you would, maybe take the next step to apply there.

GROVE: It strikes me as the kind of thing that, if you’re a coder, it makes sense how you would contribute to something like this, but are folks that are not into coding, are they also involved?

BABB: Yeah, there’s things that we want to test. We want to figure out how to market stuff. Everyone has great ideas on how to solve things, so it’s open to other people and everyone has talents that we can use.