The Anchorage School District has immersion programs in languages like German, Spanish and Japanese. But until recently, there were no immersion programs for Alaska Native languages. A kindergarten class in Anchorage has taken the first step in a Yup’ik program this week, with plans to continue all the way through high school graduation.

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In Lorina Warren’s kindergarten class at College Gate Elementary, students are learning the first letter of the Yup’ik alphabet: A (pronounced like ah).

The kids are sitting in a circle, passing a ball around and saying a, and then the word for ball: angqaq. While some of the students whisper in English to each other, Warren is only speaking Yup’ik.

It’s part of a new language immersion program where the students spend half of their day learning in Yup’ik. The classes are modeled after the Lower Kuskokwim School District, where Yup’ik is spoken more commonly. Warren teaches one class in the morning and another in the afternoon. The idea is that these kids will spend their entire school careers in a program like this, ending high school as fluent Yup’ik speakers. Warren sees teaching language as a way to preserve culture.

“I believe language is very important because that’s how our ancestors grew up speaking,” Warren said. “And right now we may have lost a lot but what we have right now, I think it’s important for these kids to learn it.”

College Gate principal Darrell Berntsen grew up in Old Harbor on Kodiak Island, and is Alutiiq. Berntsen regrets that he didn’t learn his native language as a child. Berntsen has seen firsthand just how fragile Native languages have become in the last few decades.

“My first wife… her grandmother was the last known Eyak speaker in the state of Alaska,” Berntsen said. “And when she passed, which unfortunately was about ten years ago, when she passed we know that the last person that had the knowledge of the Eyak language was gone.”

Berntsen says groups like the University of Alaska Fairbanks are working to preserve languages in a historical context, but that isn’t enough. He thinks the best way to ensure languages don’t die is by teaching children how to speak them fluently. He says the time was right to teach a Native language in the Anchorage School District.

“Over 11 different languages offered in the Anchorage School District,” Berntsen said. “This is the first one that represents a people of Alaska.”

Berntsen says typically in language immersion programs, the students start behind their peers, but eventually catch up and surpass those in more traditional schools.

“I think the people that got on board with this that are non-Native or non-Yup’ik understand that it doesn’t matter what language is being taught,” Berntsen said. “As long as they’re accessing two parts of their brain, their child is going to benefit from it in the long run.”

Back in the classroom, the students have moved on to numbers, rolling large dice, hoping to roll a one, or Atauciq. Warren says even though about half of the students in the class are Yup’ik, they all primarily speak English at home.

“They may speak Yup’ik but they’re speaking to their kids in English,” Warren said. “And I think having their kids in the Yup’ik program will make the parents try to speak to them in Yup’ik at home”

While currently there is only the kindergarten class in the immersion program, the plan is to add a new grade and instructor every year through high school graduation. Parents who want to send their children to the Yup’ik program enter the school district’s lottery system. The lottery for next year opens January 1st.

Two oil developments in the Arctic are likely to get the final go-ahead from the Trump administration this fall.

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The federal Bureau of Land Management today released its final environmental review for an oil drill site in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, west of Prudhoe Bay. Called the Greater Mooses Tooth 2 project, it’s being proposed by ConocoPhillips.

The other project nearing approval would be the first offshore oil production in federal Arctic waters.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released its final environmental review for the proposed Liberty Project last week. Oil company Hilcorp aims to build the Liberty Project in the Beaufort Sea, just east of Prudhoe Bay.

Before signing off on the oil developments, the Trump administration has to wait 30 days after the final environmental reviews are published.

That means both the Liberty Project and Greater Mooses Tooth 2 could get the green light as soon as Oct. 1.

Last month, the U.S. Forest Service announced it would be taking steps to build new roads in the Tongass National Forest. Now, the agency is asking for public comments.

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Federal legislation prohibits most states from constructing roads on national lands. But Alaska has been in a decades-long battle to change that.

One of the reasons is having enough access to harvestable timber. Over the summer, Sen. Lisa Murkowski visited the last large mill in the region. But the forest service maintains that Southeast Alaska’s dying timber industry isn’t the only reason the agency is considering the state’s ask. There are other economic opportunities, like mineral exploration, which would benefit from new roads.

This process has drawn sharp criticism from environmental groups and tour operators, who say this conversation shouldn’t be rehashed — especially since the forest service has already gone to great lengths to collaboratively manage the Tongass.

The forest service hopes to have a decision on Tongass roadbuilding by 2020.

The agency will be holding public meetings throughout Southeast Alaska in September and taking public comment until Oct. 15.

Public meetings are planned for Juneau on Sep. 13, Ketchikan on Sep. 17, Hoonah on Sep. 17, Craig on Sep. 18, Angoon on Sep. 18, Point Baker/Port Protection on Sep. 19, Wrangell on Sep. 24,  Sitka on Sep. 24, Petersburg on Sep. 25, Yakutat on Sep. 25, Kake on Sep. 26,  Anchorage on Sep. 26, and Washington D.C. on a date to be determined.

Recently, an argument over whether hatcheries are causing more harm than good has been heating up. The debate is nothing new. But an Alaska Department of Fish and Game study is about to take a step toward answering a question central to the debate: do hatchery fish that spawn with wild populations pose a threat to those stocks?

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“You want to make two cuts: one to get at the heart and one to get at the otoliths,” Pete Rand told a group of new filed staff.

Rand is a research ecologist with the Prince William Sound Science Center, and he’s explaining how to sample pink salmon carcasses on the banks of Hartney Creek just outside of Cordova.

Rand picks up one of several pinks lined up on the rocks in front of him and cuts just behind its gills before using a pair of tweezers to tear off a tiny piece of its heart. Then, he cuts into the skull or “brain case” as he calls it and extracts two white otoliths or ear bones. They’re smaller than the head of a pin.

“I put my fingers in the eye socket and you basically want to take the top of the head off,” Rand said as his knife crunched into the decomposing skull of a pink salmon.

Under a microscope, Fish and Game will be able tell from the ear bones if each fish was raised in a hatchery.

In just a few days, three field crews will travel to five remote streams on the western side of the sound where they will repeat this ritual thousands of times.

“We sample from the very beginning of the spawning season all the way to the end, and we sample daily. The objective there is to sample as many of the spawning pink salmon as we can,” Rand explained.

This study and previous work has shown that the closer a wild stream is to a hatchery, the more likely hatchery fish will stray into that system. Rand says some streams near Prince William Sound’s four major pink salmon hatcheries can see high stray rates, varying from 70 to 90 percent each season.

The big concern is that when those strays spawn with wild fish, they’re passing on genes that could reduce future generations’ genetic fitness. In other words, “does having a hatchery origin parent influence” a wild salmon’s ability to survive in nature.

“That’s the ultimate question we’re trying to get at with this field project,” Rand said.

To answer that question, the samples are shipped to Fish and Game’s genetics lab in Anchorage. Any heart tissues belonging to hatchery fish are discarded, but the ones from wild pinks are processed.

“We take a small piece of that heart and then put it in a tube, add a bunch of chemicals, go through a bunch of different reactions and pull out the DNA,” Chris Habicht, who manages the lab, said.

Habicht explains that after about a week of processing, his team can identify lineages of wilds pinks and fish with varying degrees of genes passed down from hatchery stocks.

The number of returning offspring each family tree produces will indicate whether hatchery fish reduce the productivity of the wild stocks they spawn with. But that’s about as far as the answers will go.

“If we do find a difference between these natural-origin, hatchery-origin fish in terms of how many progeny they produce, we won’t know what the mechanism for that difference is,” Habicht noted.

While that may be a step forward in Fish and Game’s eyes, the study has its critics. They argue the project, which received a large chunk of funding from hatchery operators and processors, is biased. Critics main issue with the project is that it doesn’t include a control stream with little or no hatchery influence to compare results to.

Bill Templin is Fish and Game’s chief fisheries scientist. In his Anchorage office, he acknowledges some of the study’s shortcomings.

“It’s very difficult to find a control. What we did though is controlled for high stray-rate streams and low stray-rate streams. So, you get some idea of a contrast,” Templin said.

Templin said what the study does provide shouldn’t be overlooked. He said the results will be valuable to the department and the Board of Fisheries when hatcheries request production increases or other permit changes.

But Templin cautions against any notion that this study will spark a major shift in hatchery management. He said it’s just a first step and that the results alone might not be the best way to answer the question at the heart of the hatchery debate.

“Questions of how much is too much or whether there’s harm or not are very difficult to answer,” Templin noted, “because they also require human valuation, human judgement. That has to be worked out in a different venue than in a scientific study. “

Those decisions may play out on the board of fish, which is scheduled to hold its first work session on hatcheries in October. However, it may do so without any results from Fish and Game’s hatchery-wild study. The first report is due in December.

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

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Two major Arctic oil projects near approval

Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

Two major oil developments in the Arctic are likely to get the final go-ahead from the Trump administration this fall.

In the air with NASA: studying environmental change from 40,000 feet

Ravenna Koenig, Alaska’s Energy Desk

There’s a whole host of environmental changes the project is examining, like the severity and frequency of forest fires, insect activity and wildlife migration.

Comments leading to closing the Fairbanks North Star Borough admin building not deemed criminal

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

Communications that prompted the Fairbanks North Star Borough to close its administrative center two days last week, do not rise to the level of criminal threats.

Forty Mile caribou hunt breaks record

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

This year’s Forty Mile caribou hunt has yielded a record harvest. The herd size is estimated at about 72,000 animals, the largest it’s been since peaking in the hundreds of thousands nearly a century ago.

Snow begins trickling down Alaska Range

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

A sign of fall, snow is creeping down the Alaska Range, as low pressure pushes across the interior today.

New roads in the Tongass? Here’s a chance to weigh in

Elizabeth Jenkins, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

The federal agency hopes to have a decision on Tongass road building by next year.

What risk do hatchery fish pose to Prince William Sound’s pinks?

Aaron Bolton, KBBI – Homer

An Alaska Department of Fish and Game study is about to take a step toward answering a question central to the debate: do hatchery fish that spawn with wild populations pose a threat to those stocks?

Chignik fisheries disaster declared

Isabelle Ross, KDLG – Dillingham

Last week, Gov. Walker declared an economic disaster for the Chignik fisheries region, prompted by devastatingly low sockeye returns.

Pogo Mine owners transfer interest to Australian company

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

Officials with the Japan-based companies that own the Pogo gold mine northeast of Delta Junction have transferred their interest in the mine to an Australia-based firm for $260 million.

Future uncertain for crumbling historic buildings in Anchorage

Erin McKinstry, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The Government Hill Wireless Station played an essential role in Alaska’s history. The Station used to connect Anchorage with the rest of the world. But now, it’s just three dilapidated buildings sitting in an overgrown lot surrounded by suburban homes.

Anchorage School District begins Yup’ik language immersion program

Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

A kindergarten class in Anchorage has taken the first step in a Yup’ik immersion program this week, with plans to continue all the way through high school graduation.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is best known for its exploration of the world beyond our planet. But on a recent NASA science flight over Interior Alaska the plane never left earth’s orbit and the thing being studied was the ground. It’s part of project called the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) that NASA is leading to look at environmental changes in Alaska and northwest Canada, many of them driven by climate change.

At Eielson Air Force Base, the spot where the plane takes off from, it’s spitting rain as the six-person NASA team files onto a small business jet.

If you’d expect a NASA science plane to be all polished steel and shiny computer screens, you’d be wrong. There are some metal racks with monitoring equipment mounted on them, but this plane was built in 1983 and looks it: there’s old wood paneling and beige leather seats with brass seat belts.

“It’s a former air force plane… it used to fly generals around and NASA got it as a government surplus,” Peter Griffith, an earth scientist with NASA, said. His colleagues refer to him with a chuckle as the “S.O.B” or “scientist on board.”

So, what science is being done on board this airplane?

It has to do with a piece of equipment we can’t see from inside. A super fancy radar stuck to the bottom of the plane that jumps into action once we’re up at 41,000 feet.

“So the radar is now shooting off the left wing of the plane. It’s picking up the vegetation structure, it’s picking up the ground surface, and it’s picking up a little bit of information about how much soil moisture is in the top of the soil,” Griffith explained.

That information — whether there’s forest, shrub or tundra below us, whether the ground is rising or sinking, and what the soil moisture is — will help NASA answer a larger question.

“The information that we’re getting on this flight will help us understand on a much broader scale how permafrost thaw is occurring across this area,” Griffith said.

Permafrost isn’t the only thing that the ABoVE campaign is studying. There’s a whole host of environmental changes the project is examining, like the severity and frequency of forest fires, insect activity and wildlife migration.

NASA’s big strength is collecting information from way above the earth, which lets them look at a huge area. The ABoVE domain is 2.5 million square miles.

But they’re also partnering with dozens of institutions to conduct research on the ground that ties into what they’re collecting from the air. The University of Alaska Fairbanks is one of their partners, as is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the National Park Service and the Department of Energy among many others. Griffith shows me a slide on his computer with the full list.

“When I put this slide together we had 379 U.S. science team members,” Griffith said.

That’s not counting additional collaborators in Canada.

At the end of this flight campaign, NASA and their partners will have a ton of data about how things are changing in a huge swath of the north.

But they’re not going to conduct these flights forever; they’re expensive. So another goal of the project is to refine some of the technology they’re using so it can be mounted on satellites.

That way, NASA can monitor these changes on a regular basis going forward.

Gov. Bill Walker and former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich are competing for many of the same voters in this year’s election for governor. Tuesday is the deadline for candidates to drop off of the ballot, and supporters of Walker, Begich and those who are fine with either candidate are concerned about a three-way race with former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy.

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Puanani Maunu is a Juneau resident who supports Walker, who’s an independent. She said his decision to cut permanent fund dividends was particularly courageous.

“I think it’s easy to criticize Gov. Walker, and that’s why I admire that he was able to make that difficult decision, because the state Legislature was just not moving, one way or another,” Maunu said.

But Maunu voiced mixed feelings as she talked through whether Begich, a Democrat, should drop off the ballot before the deadline.

“I mean, I don’t think Mark Begich or Gov. Walker should drop off on either end to try to consolidate one or the other, because each represents, you know, a segment of people that are going to be voting for them. And I think it does weaken the Democratic and independent side. But I think that … I’m not sure,” Maunu said.

And Maunu is where a lot of centrist and left-of-center voters are.

The math in a three-way race favors the Republican Dunleavy. It’s nearly unprecedented for conservative and Republican candidates to share less of the vote than former Gov. Sean Parnell had four years ago. That’s when he lost to Walker in a close race with only two major candidates. Other than the first election for Alaska’s governor, only once have conservative and Republican candidates combined to have less than the 46 percent that Parnell received. That was in 1998, when Republican candidate John Lindauer and write-in Republican Robin Taylor combined for 37 percent.

Power brokers who supported both Walker and Begich four years ago when Begich was running for U.S. Senate have been choosing sides. The Alaska AFL-CIO labor federation endorsed Walker.

AFL-CIO President Vince Beltrami said Walker’s stands on a complete fiscal plan, administrative orders favoring workers, and the proposed natural gas pipeline made him unions’ choice. Beltrami would like to see Begich withdraw.

“In our opinion, a three-way race is just a recipe for ending up with Mr. Dunleavy as the governor,” Beltrami said.

Anchorage Democratic state Sen. Berta Gardner also sees the math as a problem. But she said Begich is the stronger candidate. In part, that’s because Walker’s approval rating fell after the PFD was cut — once through a Walker veto and twice by the Legislature.

“In a head-to-head Walker-Dunleavy race, I don’t think the governor can win,” Gardner said. “And I believe that Mark Begich has a much better chance of winning.”

Gardner said that Walker would make things easier if he withdrew. Walker’s campaign has consistently said he wouldn’t drop out. Begich also has so far resisted calls to withdraw.

Anchorage Democratic state Rep. Andy Josephson gave money to Walker’s campaign before Begich joined the race. He said both are strong candidates.

“I think they would both do a good job as governor,” Josephson said. “And I am profoundly and deeply concerned about their splitting votes. There are thousands of Alaskans that would vote for either gentleman. And that’s a problem. And I’m hoping that in the next, oh, three or four days, one of them withdraws.”

While Begich and Walker have taken similar positions on many policy issues, the campaign has put a spotlight on their differences. Planned Parenthood Votes endorsed Begich. Alaska state Director Jessica Cler said Begich will stand strong on women’s health care and reproductive rights. The organization supported Walker’s decision to expand Medicaid eligibility. But it opposed other Walker administration decisions. They include the defense of limiting Medicaid funding for abortions, and the decision against vetoing a law that limits sex education.

“Yes, we’re concerned about Mike Dunleavy becoming governor, but also concerned about another term of Bill Walker being governor,” Cler said.

Two of the more prominent Democrats in Juneau have taken opposite sides.

Former Mayor Bruce Botelho signed a petition asking Begich to withdraw. He credits Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott with working with tribal organizations. And he said many Alaskans may not like the PFD cuts, but they understand them.

“Most people, I think, understand that as unpopular as these decisions are, they’re also necessary, in terms of being able to keep Alaska’s government and economy, frankly, moving in a positive direction,” Botelho said.

Botelho said Walker could be stronger on women’s reproductive rights, but said the state Supreme Court has consistently protected these rights, and Walker has repeatedly acknowledged this.

But former Tongass Democrats chair Kim Metcalfe said Begich is the best person on the issues that she cares about, including women’s issues. Metcalfe’s the chair of a new group, Begich for Alaska, supporting the candidate.

Metcalfe said she trusts Begich’s analysis on whether he can win a three-way race.

“I have great faith in him and I think that he can pull this out,” Metcalfe said. “I know it’s not going to be an easy race. You know, everybody knows that, but I think people are coming around to our way of thinking, when they really start thinking about the issues.”

Fellow Juneau Begich supporter Beth Stewart recalled supporting Ernest Gruening’s unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign in 1968.

“So I’m used to working on issues that might not always win,” Stewart said. “But I have a set of principles that I stick to. And I’m not going to compromise those.”

The withdrawal deadline has been significant in the past. After winning the Democratic nomination, Mallott merged his campaign with Walker’s at the deadline in 2014.

A bar in Juneau claims it has a pistol that belonged to one of history’s most notorious gunslingers. But does the story check out?

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Wyatt Earp was among the most famous frontier lawmen. In 1881, he and his brother fought alongside Doc Holliday in a deadly confrontation with outlaws at the Shootout at the O.K. Coral in Tombstone, Arizona which has been dramatized countless times for film and television.

A decade after his death, the 1939 film Frontier Marshal was one of the earliest in a long line of films about his brutish style of justice.

By the turn of the century, he was already a celebrity of sorts. That about when when Wyatt Earp and his wife Josephine traveled to Nome at the height of the gold rush to start a saloon.

Legend has it Earp briefly passed through the gold mining town of Juneau. And left something valuable behind: a Smith & Wesson No. 3 revolver that to this day is a kitschy tourist attraction in a downtown bar.

According to the legend, the revolver was confiscated by U.S. Marshals when Wyatt Earp was changing steamships in Juneau.

Given the man’s fearsome reputation as a gunfighter, federal marshals demanded, or so the story goes, that Wyatt Earp surrender his weapon while in town. His boat to Nome in the morning left earlier than the federal offices reopened. The gun went unclaimed in federal custody.

Eric Forst owns the modern-day Red Dog Saloon where the pistol’s been a fixture for decades.

“So the story that I got… back in the early 1900s, early teens or ’20s. The gun was part of what was then this Territorial Museum,” Forst said.

Forst said the story is that a museum employee – or at least someone with access to its treasures – had a bit of a drinking habit.

“And he would periodically pay off his bar tabs with stuff out of the Territorial Museum,” Forst said. “And at one point he had a significant bar tab at the Red Dog Saloon and he paid that with that gun.”

The Territorial Museum would later become the Alaska State Museum. Steve Henrikson, curator of collections humored my question.

“I can’t rule anything out but I have been through the records pretty thoroughly over the last 30 years and I’ve never seen it listed either as something that belonged to the museum or as a loan,” Henrikson said.

There’s something else that doesn’t add up. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on May 20, 1900 that Wyatt Earp and his wife set sail on the S.S. Alliance to return to Alaska. Back then, Nome-bound steamships mostly transited through Unalaska in the Aleutians on their way to Cape Nome. I asked state archivist Zachary Jones if there’s any record of Wyatt Earp passing through Juneau.

“We have records that document him in Nome,” Jones said. “But documenting a short stop on his way to Nome is a little more difficult.”

The only written account of Wyatt Earp’s time in Juneau comes second-hand. It’s contained in the official history of the first 50 years of the Alaska State Troopers and references federal records discovered in the 1960s.

“And those letters purportedly say that U.S. Marshals had a … firm discussion with Wyatt Earp when he arrived in town,” Jones said. “If that’s true, it’s really interesting. I still don’t understand why a U.S. Marshal would want to accost and sort of run off a retired law officer.”

Not only is it questionable the pistol belonged to Wyatt Earp. Now there’s doubt he was even ever here. I didn’t find timetables. But there’s a trove of old newspapers on microfilm in the state archives. I thumbed through Juneau’s Daily Alaska Dispatch. I had a date and the name of the steamship: the sign on the wall said he’d been disarmed on June 27, 1900. He supposedly sailed two days later on the S.S. Senator.

Juneau’s newspapers around that time are full of news about miners heading to Nome. And ads for Rainier beer.

But there’s nothing about Wyatt Earp or that ship. But I was looking in the wrong place. There’s an item in the Nome Daily News reporting on Wyatt Earp’s arrest in a drunken brawl. It’s dated June 29, 1900 – the day he supposedly left his gun in Juneau.

So there’s a hole in the story right there.

But just because the dates are wrong doesn’t mean the whole story’s bunk. But it probably is. From the get-go, bar owner Eric Forst said he bought the saloon but not necessarily the legend around Wyatt Earp’s pistol.

“The reality as of how it got to the Red Dog Saloon may be lost to history,” Forst said. “The story as I’ve been told, is what I told you, but I’ve never seen any documentation of how it ended up from one place to the other.”

This week we’re hearing from Stephanie Seber in McCarthy. Seber is a massage therapist who moved to McCarthy in 2009 from Colorado.

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SEBER: It was I guess tragedy actually that got me here. The bottom falling out of life. It just seemed like the right time to make a move.

I did some rambling through the Lower 48, mostly to the mountain states: Montana, Idaho, I spent a little time in Vermont. And I feel like it was always just kind of in the plan to come to Alaska. It just felt like the direction my life was moving.

I ended up driving up the Alcan in the very beginning of March, I believe, in a Jetta. A fully loaded Jetta. So it was an adventure to get here, couple snowstorms. I found myself in McCarthy, Alaska, which was this great little net, and felt like a warm hug for my soul.

My first winter was awesome. I actually got to stay in my neighbor’s cabin, because it was before I built mine. And so it was still like living out of a duffel, which I had done for years. But it was great. It was cold. The Northern Lights that winter were off the charts. McCarthy in general has a pretty strong sense of camaraderie, and I think that in the wintertime, it’s just exemplified even further.

I may wish that all my water was hauled, but I actually have to go and do that: haul the buckets, clean the buckets. There’s steps here to living that aren’t like other places.

It was great to be able to just slow down and to read a book for an entire day maybe, or go cut some trees down for an entire day, without the thought of, “Oh. I have this to do tomorrow.” Again, this cumulative list of things to do doesn’t really exist here in my mind. It’s just doing.

A Fairbanks woman is charged with killing her two infant children. Fairbanks Police report that 23-year-old Stephany LaFountain faces first and second degree murder charges in the suffocation deaths of a four-month-old in 2015, and a 13-month-old last year.

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Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Fairbanks Police Chief Eric Jewkes says the child murders leave law enforcement at a loss for words.

”How do we even imagine that? How do we as a justice system? How do we make this right? Unfortunately, there’s just nothing we can do to make everything right, to make it better,” Jewkes said.

Police say the 13-month-old was brought to the hospital not breathing on November 20th, 2017. That resulted in police looking into the September 2015 death of LaFountain’s four-month-old, who died of similar symptoms.

Police say their investigation found that LaFountain had done internet searches for “ways to suffocate” and other topics that indicated she was researching how to kill. Chief Jewkes noted extensive police work that went into the case.

”There’s the work you see and there’s the work you don’t see. And this is a prime example of the work that you don’t see,” Jewkes said. “Our detectives have been working this case for nine months, thousands of hours. And we’ve estimated that if we printed this report out, it would be over 100,000 pages. That’s the amount of work that goes into a case like this that no one sees, that we don’t talk about.”

Jewkes also credited the victim’s family for their help with the investigation.

”They trusted us. They stuck with us,” Jewkes said. “And they allowed us to work this case, entrusted that we would bring this to where it is now. and we were able to do it. They shouldered the grieving process alone and we’re gonna bring this out to light and hopefully bring some closure to them.”

Stephany LaFountain was arrested yesterday, and arraigned on murder charges today.

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, Begich supporters eye withdrawal deadline

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

It’s nearly unprecedented for conservative and Republican candidates to share less of the vote than former Gov. Sean Parnell had four years ago.

Final Pebble scoping report released

Avery Lill, KDLG – Dillingham

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released its final scoping report today for the proposed Pebble Mine’s environmental impact statement. The 90-day scoping period ended June 29.

Controversy abound as Roadless Rule debate rages on

Robert Woolsey, KCAW – Sitka

Ever since the state filed a petition in January of this year for a roadless exemption, opponents have argued that the move reopens a debate that was finally closed in 2016.

Fairbanks woman charged with the murder of her two children

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

A Fairbanks woman is charged with killing her two infant children.

Military plans exercises in Gulf of Alaska for spring despite widespread opposition

Daysha Eaton, KMXT – Kodiak

After requests from Gulf of Alaska communities that the U.S. Military reschedule or cancel its Northern Edge exercises in the Gulf, officials recently announced they’ll go ahead and hold the training this spring.

Salvage team refloating F/V Pacific Knight

Avery Lill, KDLG – Dillingham

The 58-foot vessel, which was operating as a tender near Clark’s Point, sank July 25. After more than a month at the bottom of the Nushagak Bay, a salvage team is lifting the ship and will tow it to Dutch Harbor.

AK: Did Wyatt Earp really lose his pistol in Juneau?

Jacob Resneck, CoastAlaska – Juneau

A bar in Juneau claims it has a pistol that belonged to one of history’s most notorious gunslingers. But does the story check out?

49 Voices: Stephanie Seber of McCarthy

Erin McKinstry, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

This week we’re hearing from Stephanie Seber in McCarthy. Seber is a massage therapist who moved to McCarthy in 2009 from Colorado.

The field is set for the general election and the campaign for Alaska’s next Governor is in full swing. Talk of Alaska will feature the three gubernatorial candidates over the next few weeks, starting with Republican Mike Dunleavy. What is his vision for the future of our state?

HOST: Lori Townsend

GUESTS:

• Mike Dunleavy – Republican candidate for governor

• 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, September 7, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

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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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NOAA works to modernize state nautical charts

Rashah McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

Nautical charts play a necessary role in Alaska’s economy and lifestyle. Their accuracy affects the tourism industry, the fishing industry, and resource development.

UAF celebrates new power plant that replaces unreliable 56-year-old facility

Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks

Officials with the University of Alaska Fairbanks and more than a hundred invited guests gathered Wednesday at UAF to celebrate completion of the $245 million power plant.

Alaska governor signs bill allowing cities to ban cellphones

Associated Press

It is already against the law in Alaska to text while driving. It also soon may be a crime to talk while behind the wheel.

SEARHC and Wrangell deal goes to the voters

June Leffler, KSTK – Wrangell

After months of negotiations between the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium – known as SEARHC – and Wrangell’s city officials, the city says it’s ready to make a deal.

Mineral exploration company begins assessment of a possible mine site north of Haines

Henry Leasia, KHNS – Haines

The assessment is the first of three studies, and assesses at the potential of the site, which is the subject of a lawsuit about future impacts of mine development.

Facebook adds Inupiaq as language option

Associated Press

An Inupiat Eskimo language option is now available on Facebook, thanks to Alaskans who made it a reality through the social media giant’s community translation tool.

Wildlife officials work to coax stray sea lion back to sea

Associated Press

Wildlife officials came up with a new plan to coax a Steller sea lion back to the ocean after it has been shuffling through neighborhoods in the southeast Alaska city of Sitka since Friday.

Invasive grass is taking over the Brotherhood Bridge meadow

Jacob Steinberg, KTOO – Juneau

Biologist John Hudson says reed canarygrass conquers meadows and leaves them sterile. He said it’s like replacing a forest with a parking lot.

Community health aides: Alaska’s unique solution for rural health care

Anne Hillman, Alaska Public Media – Anchorge

Fifty years ago, Alaska had a really big problem: it was hard to get medical care in small, rural communities. To solve it, the Indian Health Service worked with local governments and Congress to create the Community Health Aide Program. And it’s still making communities healthier.

Biologists successfully returned a Steller sea lion to Sitka’s waters on Monday, after it spent the weekend wandering down roads and into woods. Biologists with NOAA Fisheries Service believe the adult male lost the ocean. They encouraged the sea lion’s return with tranquilizer darts and some patience.

The Steller sea lion stayed put on Japonski Island, an area of Sitka that houses Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital, for four days. A night shift employee was the first to document the animal, lumbering down a watery roadway on Friday at 2 a.m. The video quickly made the rounds. Law enforcement and marine mammal experts were on scene shortly after.

Sitkans warmed to the lost creature almost immediately, trying to account for his behavior. Comments to Friday’s KCAW story included, “Maybe he’s heading to the bar for a couple of shots?” “Maybe he’s looking for an emergency room?” The real story is more of a mystery, one that scientists are still trying to solve.

“Some of our marine mammal experts think it’s possible that he didn’t know where the ocean was. Where he was on land was not within sight of the ocean,” Julie Speegle, a Juneau-based spokeswoman for NOAA Fisheries Service, said.

The sea lion showed no signs of injury. The animal is eight years old or older, weighing between 1,500 and 1,700 lbs. It’s normal for sea lions haul out of the water to regulate their body temperature, but only for a few hours — not for days. Locals were perplexed too, taking videos of the animal sunbathing or hidden behind salmonberry.

Law enforcement attempted to coax the sea lion from hospital property on Saturday around noon. He was approximately a quarter mile from the water. They sprayed the sea lion with a fire hose. He initially went in the right direction, pushing his flippers against the grassy lawn, but stopped the moment he got to Airport Road.

“He veered off into the woods and then he would not budge,” Speegle said.

The sea lion stayed in those woods for the next 24 hours, visibly exhausted and hungry. He ventured a little, but never across the road.

Video of the sea lion returning to Sitka Sound, recorded by Al Duncan

On Monday at around 1 p.m., marine mammal experts with NOAA and the Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network decided to sedate the sea lion and bring him home. Dr. Vickie Vosbrg from Pet’s Choice Veterinary Hospital helped administered tranquilizer darts and SEARHC loaned a front-loader, lifting the animal and driving him on a flatbed truck to the shoreline’s edge.

When the sea lion awoke, after some hesitation he entered the water. Responders on scene cheered.

“He didn’t even look back and they watched him for awhile and saw him catch a fish. So that’s a good sign,” Speegle said.

Speegle also thanked the public for keeping a safe distance during the sea lion’s four-day saga. NOAA hasn’t lost complete sight of him. They attached a satellite tag to track the sea lion’s movements and will look for clues about his health in the scat he left behind.

Constantine Metal Resources recently announced it is beginning a Preliminary Economic Assessment for a potential underground mine in the Chilkat Valley. The assessment will examine the viability of mineral resources at the Palmer Project, an exploratory site upstream from the Klehini River about 35 miles north of Haines.

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The Palmer Project has seen some opposition from residents in the Chilkat Valley.  The Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan and three conservation organizations filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management for approving an expanded exploration plan for the project in 2016. The complaint claims BLM failed to consider future impacts of mine development.

So far, Constantine has been drilling holes at the Palmer Project to determine the kinds of minerals available and where they are located. Mostly they have found copper, zinc, gold and silver. Liz Cornejo is the Vice President of Community and External Affairs for Constantine Metal Resources. She said the Preliminary Economic Assessment, or PEA, will be the first analysis of the economic viability of the project.

“It’s a document designed for investment for people to compare one project to another,” Cornejo said. “It’s a starting point that analyzes the resource, the minerals that you have in the mountain, and then the economics of actually getting those out. So it’s an investment document, it’s not a permitting document.”

The assessment is part of a trio of studies to see if the mine is worth developing. The pre-feasibility and feasibility studies come later. These more comprehensive documents analyze the actual technical and economic feasibility while the PEA looks at the potential of the site.

“From the results of the PEA it will help determine the future plans for the project as far as where we’re going to be putting our energy for engineering work or environmental work or exploration work or economic work to help advance the project,” Cornejo said.

The assessment will be completed by two third-party mining firms. Constantine has contracted JDS Energy and Mining and Klohn Crippen Berger to carry out the analysis. JDS is an engineering, project and construction management firm that has worked with mining projects all over the world.

Klohn Crippen Berger, or KCB, has been involved in the waste management of several mines including the Highland Valley Copper Mine in British Columbia, the Jackpine Mine in Ottawa and the Ok Tedi Mine in Papua New Guinea. KCB will complete the water and waste management design components of the assessment.

“They’ll come up with potential places for waste storage and potential methods for water treatment,” Cornejo said. “Once you develop those potential locations and methods then you can estimate the cost of the construction of that particular method.”

When asked if KCB’s waste management designs for the assessment will be used if the mine moves forward, Cornejo said plans may change as more information becomes available.

“Those conceptual plans may stay very similar throughout the process towards the permitting, or they may change significantly if we learn something new about the site,” Cornejo said. “Throughout the whole process from PEA, to pre-feasibility to feasibility, there will be conceptual design plans that’ll become more and more realistic because we’ll have more site-specific information.”

The PEA doesn’t have a defined timeline, but Cornejo said Constantine is hoping it will be completed this winter.

Twice a year a review panel that advises the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, on its marine and coastal mapping programs meets to talk about what’s next.  In late August, they met in Juneau and talked about Alaska’s priorities and a developing focus on the Arctic.

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The Hydrographic Services Review Panel took public comment on each day of their meeting and heard from business community and members of the public who use NOAA’s maps and charts to get around.

Every summer,  tour operators take boatloads of sightseers along the coastline of the Kenai Fjords National Park.

There are these moments that the guides are looking for — when someone spots a bear or a colony of sea lions or when they motor up to a glacier. The captains slow down and they drift closer.

It’s this type of interaction with nature that plays out over and over again with tourists in the state.  But captains have to be cautious.

“There’s a lot of local knowledge required to work these places,” Kenai Fjords Tours Marine Operations Manager Eric Simpson said.

In a business where the whole point is to get close to the shoreline — accurate nautical charts, maps of the sea and the shoreline are hugely helpful.

And, in some places in the Kenai Fjords, like Aialik Bay — Simpson said the charts just aren’t detailed enough. There, the tidewater glacier has changed a lot since the last time it was charted. Now there are reefs and shoals that don’t appear anywhere on the nautical charts.

“You know, it’s not necessarily that the information that’s there is wrong, it’s just that it’s not complete,” Simpson said. “There’s places where the water is deeper than the chart would indicate. Places where there are rocks that stick out further than the chart would indicate. ”

For boaters who don’t know the area, relying on the charts could cause an accident.

And, this is a problem for a lot of Alaska. The state has more than 40,000 miles of mappable coastline.

There are a lot of data gaps. Places where the maps haven’t been updated for decades. Or, in the case of the U.S. Arctic, places where the mapping data was last updated in the 1800s.

It’s NOAA’s job to provide the charts, maps and tide tables that sailors use to navigate the nation’s waters. And twice a year, a group of marine navigation and mapping experts meet to talk about NOAA’s navigation goals.

At the meeting in Juneau they focused on Alaska and the Arctic. They talked about everything from surveying the Arctic to moving away from paper charts to monitoring coastal erosion.

The meeting gave people like Simpson with Kenai Fjords Tours the opportunity to weigh-in on what they think those priorities should be.

The panel also heard from tug and barge operators, cruise ships, the fishing community — the people who make up what’s called the blue economy.

“You hear the buzzwords of ‘blue economy.’ But what does that mean for Alaskans?” Fugro Alaska General Manager Rada Khadjinova said.

Fugro is a geoservices company that gathers and processes mapping data all over the world. She said Alaska’s mapping backlog — both land and sea — is daunting. But, she is focused on coastal mapping.

“I mean, we are a state that relies on resource development,” Fugro said. “When an operator is looking to site a mine or to explore new area — say ANWR — the coastal component is a must.”

It’s not just an economic necessity. The panel also heard from stakeholders in Alaska’s coastal communities who rely on coastal maps for subsistence fishing.

Khadjinova said the addition of a rapidly changing Arctic adds thousands upon thousands of miles of areas that need to be explored and mapped.

So far, NOAA said it has modern maps of just over 4 percent of the U.S. Arctic waters.

Former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich announced that he’s staying in the race for governor. This sets up a three-way race between Begich, former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy and Gov. Bill Walker.

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“Alaska’s never given up on me, and I won’t give up on Alaska,” Begich said at a press conference in Anchorage on Tuesday. “For those that are wondering, I’m staying in this race for governor.”

Both power brokers and conflicted voters have expressed concern that the Democratic Begich and independent Walker will compete for the same voters.

A recent poll commissioned by the Alaska AFL-CIO found Dunleavy, a Republican, would win a three-way race by 10 points, but would lose to both Walker and Begich in a two-way race.

Both Begich and Walker resisted calls to withdraw. Begich said he will fight for women’s right to make their own health care decisions. He also highlighted his support for protecting permanent fund dividends. And he said he would work to fully fund education and to reduce crime.

“It’s a three-way race, so get used to it,” he said. “We are focusing on what this race is about: the people of Alaska. Alaskans will need to make their choice of who they will support and vote accordingly. You cannot cut a deal on your values, just to make sure that one person or another becomes governor.”

Begich wouldn’t answer questions about how his decision to stay in the race could lead to Dunleavy winning.

Begich has criticized recent cuts to PFDs made by Walker and the Legislature. Walker and lawmakers said they made the cuts to help close the gap between what the state spends and what it raises in oil royalties, taxes and fees.

Both Begich and Walker have said they would make up for any long-lasting budget gap with new revenue. Neither have campaigned on a specific tax proposal.

Dunleavy opposes new taxes. He has said he would use permanent fund earnings to pay for higher PFDs. But he hasn’t said how deeply he would draw down permanent fund earnings.

Four years ago, Democratic nominee Byron Mallott joined his ticket with Walker, and the Alaska Democratic Party supported Walker and Mallott.

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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Rep. LeDoux, Alaska GOP try to fill in blanks in disputed state House race

Nathaniel Herz, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

Alaska’s political world can’t stop talking about the results in one particular state House district in East Anchorage.

Begich stays in governor’s race, says ‘get used to it’

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

Both power brokers and conflicted voters have expressed concern that the Democratic Begich and independent Walker will compete for the same voters.

After four-day shore leave, confused sea lion returned to sea

Emily Kwong, KCAW – Sitka

Biologists successfully returned a Steller sea lion to Sitka’s waters on Monday, after it spent the weekend wandering down roads and into woods.

Four dead in multi-vehicle Parks Highway collision

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

Alaska State Troopers report that 40-year-old Cary Taylor Bloomquist of Palmer was driving a car that crossed the center line and hit two oncoming motorcycles near Cantwell around 4:30 p.m. Monday.

Interior bison herd faces setback

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

A bison reintroduction project in the Western Interior has suffered a setback.

Pacific Northwest cities outsource policing of Airbnb-type rentals

Tom Banse, NNN – Oregon

Cities in the Pacific Northwest are looking at several startups to help police the proliferation of vacation rentals in their communities. Two cities in Oregon recently checked online listings: about 80 percent of advertised rentals were unlicensed.

Old Harbor garden bears veggies, residents hope to keep it going

Daysha Eaton, KMXT – Kodiak

This summer, the community of Old Harbor on Kodiak Island harvested vegetables and fruit from their farm in significant quantities for the first time.

In Kaktovik, sea ice loss means a boom in polar bear tourism

Jennifer Pemberton, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

That’s when outsiders started showing up in Kaktovik: tourists, who wanted to see polar bears before they went extinct.

State election officials have wrapped up their vote-counting from last month’s primary. Now, they’re preparing to move on to the general election.

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But Alaska’s political world can’t stop talking about the results in one particular state House district, in East Anchorage. Questions are swirling about one of the candidates, Republican Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, and a political consultant she hired to help her get-out-the-vote in the district’s Hmong community.

Elections officials say they’ve asked prosecutors to investigate evidence of voter fraud, including seven absentee ballots requested in the names of dead people. The state also says it has suspicions about 26 more absentee ballots — all 26 of which were votes for LeDoux.

But they’ve released few other details, like the names of those voters, which makes it difficult to determine who could be responsible.

To Republicans, who are trying to get rid of LeDoux because she caucuses with Democrats, it’s still an easy game of connect-the-dots.

“All signs point to the one person who benefits from the fraud, which is Gabrielle LeDoux,” Alaska GOP chairman Tuckerman Babcock said.

But LeDoux said it’s too early to draw conclusions.

“I do not understand what’s happening at this point,” LeDoux said. She added that she’s looking forward to state prosecutors finishing an investigation of the “irregularities” identified by elections officials.

Beyond the numbers themselves, Republicans are also posing quesitons about LeDoux’s political consultant from California, Charlie Chang.

Chang didn’t respond to requests for comment. But LeDoux agreed to talk about him. She said a friend put her in touch with Chang nearly a decade ago. That was when she was first running for office in Anchorage and wanted help getting out the Hmong vote in her district.

“I talked to him on the phone and he knew all sorts of things. You can tell when somebody’s asking you: ‘Do they have absentees? Early voting in Alaska?’” LeDoux said. “Seemed like he really knew what he was doing, and he had relatives here so I thought, ‘Okay, let’s bring him up.’”

Since then, LeDoux said she’s become friends with Chang and visits him and his wife annually for a Hmong New Year’s festival.

This year, LeDoux flew Chang up to Alaska twice, once with his wife, and paid him more than $10,000. She said she told Chang to cross his T’s and dot his I’s, because the election was going to be closely watched. But she also said it wasn’t her responsibility to keep track of Chang’s every move.

“I can’t be doing day-to-day monitoring,” LeDoux said. “All I can say is, I had no reason to believe that there was anything illegal or improper going on.”

LeDoux said Chang was responsible for helping her turn out Hmong votes both in-person on Election Day, and by absentee ballot.

A quick refresher: The Hmong are an ethnic group from Asia, some of whom fled to the U.S. during the Vietnam War era. LeDoux has a whole section of her re-election page devoted to Hmong issues.

The Republicans targeting LeDoux say they’re skeptical about more than 30 absentee ballots issued to people with Hmong names in two different mobile homes off Muldoon Road. A man named Charlie Chang mailed in an absentee ballot from one of them, as did eleven other Changs registered at the same place.

“The number of people who applied to vote from different trailers is preposterous on its face,” Babcock said.

But Anchorage Democratic Sen. Bill Wielechowski, who represents the same area, said people should be cautious about drawing conclusions based on the numbers alone. Two or three generations of the same Hmong family can sometimes live in the same household.

“One of the first meetings I had with members of the Hmong community was when I went to someone’s trailer and there were literally, probably, 40 or 50 people at this meeting in a little trailer,” Wielechowski said. “They have trailers where they have a lot of people living in them. That is not uncommon.”

Then there are Alaska’s voting laws, which Wielechowski described as relatively permissive. In Alaska, the law allows people to vote absentee even after they move out of state, as long as they intend to come back at some point.

That’s how Dan Sullivan, who’s now a U.S. senator, voted in the Alaska election in 2008, when was working as a top State Department official. Sullivan lived in Maryland and declared his home there as his principal residence for tax purposes. But he still voted absentee in Alaska.

“There are many people that move out of state to go to college. There are many people that move out of state to take care of sick parents. And they still maintain their addresses here and they still vote in the state of Alaska,” Wielechowski said. “If we’re going to have this conversation, let’s not just limit it to the Hmong.”

The elections division has referred its suspicions about “irregularities” with the House race to state prosecutors for investigation — a process that could take months. Meanwhile, a Republican write-in candidate, Jake Sloan, announced Tuesday that he’s challenging LeDoux in the general election.

Four people were killed in a Parks Highway accident on Monday. Alaska State Troopers report that 40-year-old Cary Taylor Bloomquist of Palmer was driving a car that crossed the center line and hit two oncoming motorcycles near Cantwell around 4:30 p.m.

Motorcyclist Jeffrey Esley, 63, and his wife and passenger, 60-year-old Charlene Esley, both of Fairbanks were killed. The other motorcycle’s driver, 62 year old David Fulton of Fairbanks, suffered critical injuries, and was transported to an Anchorage hospital.

After the impact with the motorcycles, Bloomquist’s car was hit by an oncoming truck driven by Fulton’s wife, 50-year-old Heidi Fulton. The second impact killed Bloomquist and her five-year-old daughter Adeline Bloomquist, who was passenger in the car.

Heidi Fulton was not seriously hurt. Her 10- and three-year-old children, who were passengers in the truck, were injured and transported to a Wasilla hospital.

Troopers say next of kin have been notified, and that the accident is being investigated.