A group of residents in Anchorage is organizing to change the city’s response to homelessness. They say the current approach is too narrowly focused on long-term housing, and has allowed lawless camps to persist along popular trails. The frustration has turned once sleepy public meetings into increasingly contentious events. And one couple is at the center of the efforts.

Even by the standards of public municipal meetings, the Anchorage Assembly’s Committee on Homelessness used to be dull. Members would typically listen to briefs on data and observe elaborate flow charts of social service programs. Occasionally, a member or two of the public would testify about an issue causing them grief.

Now, those same committee meetings have become markedly more dramatic, routinely packed with standing room only. A group of older residents, many of them retired and active in local community councils, has started filling out the audience, grumbling, testifying and chiding the Assembly members if they don’t speak loudly enough.

Russ Webb and his wife Stephanie Rhoades are at the front of the fight.

Webb’s frustration peaked at a meeting in August over a set of policy proposals introduced two months earlier that the Assembly has continually delayed taking up.

“I would have brought that draft proposal to this committee for discussion today,” Webb said at the meeting with a note of exasperation in his voice.

Webb and Rhoades are unlikely antagonists in a fight over homeless issues. Both voted for Mayor Ethan Berkowitz. Webb even maxed out his contributions to the re-election campaign. Before retiring, both had long careers working for the state on topics like mental health, homelessness and substance abuse.  Now, with more time on their hands, they’re working long hours to try shaping the city’s response to the issue.

During an interview inside their home in the well-to-do South Addition neighborhood between downtown and the Chester Creek trail, Webb explained a 12-point plan for dealing with nearby homeless camps he is pushing the Assembly to consider implementing.

“The proposals are intended to push the municipality to develop a system, to actually comprehensively and continuously identify camps, engage campers, move folks who need help to the systems that will help them and to enforce the prohibitions against all the public nuisances within and emanating from the camps,” Webb said.

The 68-year-old is extremely organized. The 12 points touch on everything from adjustments to municipal codes, expanding shelter options, increasing funding for specific jobs and even thinning vegetation along trails to improve sight lines. Along with the one-sheet of bullet points, Webb also submitted a supplemental document explaining each one in depth. It is 22 pages long.

Rhoades is a former judge who helped establish a mental health court. She knows what mental illness, substance abuse and personal tragedy look like. The people she encounters in the camps, though, don’t all fit those categories.

“There is a tremendous pocket of crime that is a subset of the folks who are camping,” Rhoades said.

The couple know the camps better than most. They go in, take pictures, talk with people, occasionally get into arguments and have generally tried to educate themselves about what’s happening on the trail system they use so frequently.

Their main criticism is that the Berkowitz Administration has become overly focused on getting hard-to-house residents into permanent housing and connected with social services. And they say that has come at the expense of effectively curbing illegal camping that is ruining residential life and allowing misery to go unchecked in the woods.

“It’s just too slow of a process to be able to adequately address the encampments and the issues that are impacting the community,” Rhoades said.

Since coming into office, Mayor Ethan Berkowitz’s administration has made significant progress on a “Housing First” model that creates new permanent residential units. According to City Homelessness Coordinator Nancy Burke, the policies have helped more than 300 people get into housing over the last few years. They have plans house 270 more by 2021.

Burke says the city is making progress on the issue, even though that is not always readily visible to residents.

“We agree there is not enough that’s happening,” Burke said. “However, in the last three years we’ve built the foundation for us to take the camp abatement process and actually (assist) people to move out of those locations.”

Burke pointed out the administration and assembly recently revised the city’s strategy for evicting campers, increased waste removal by public employees and improved data collection on where camps are being established.

She and several sympathetic Assembly members regularly point out to critics that the municipality is constantly trying to balance the demands of residents for clean, safe public parks with respect for campers’ civil rights, a matter that has come before the courts in the past.

“We have chosen to focus on the solutions that will end this problem for Anchorage so we’re not having this same conversation in five years,” Burke said.

Recently, Burke has been attending community council meetings around town where residents are discussing whether or not to formally support for the 12-point plan. All measures, she stresses, need to be part of the broader public process.

Legal experts have said the right for women to have an abortion is firmly protected by the Alaska Constitution. But it’s become an issue in the election for governor, and the candidates have different ideas about it.

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Gov. Bill Walker recently wrote a commentary for the Anchorage Daily News saying that while he’s pro-life, he would veto legislation seeking to restrict abortions.

“My personal views haven’t changed but I will not put my personal views in front of the constitution, which is extremely clear,” Walker said. “Alaska has one of the strongest constitutions on, you know, personal, individual rights, which includes a woman’s reproductive rights, so that will remain unchanged in our administration.”

Walker, who’s an independent, said he supports other steps that he considers to be pro-life, like supporting access to birth control and health care.

“And that’s why did what I did to accept Medicaid expansion,” Walker said. “I knew I was going to be sued by some in the Legislature. I was, in the Senate majority. We prevailed in that litigation and, today, 44,000 Alaskans have that coverage.”

Walker said he would veto any bill restricting abortions. He expects the attorney general would advise him that it’s unconstitutional. But while the governor doesn’t have a formal role in amending the constitution, he’s also skeptical of changing the constitution to restrict abortions.

“I’d have to see the amendment,” Walker said. “I didn’t run for governor, I’m not in this office to change anything (from) the way it is today. And so, I can’t anticipate, you know, what an amendment would look like. If it restricted it, I would not be in favor. … That issue, I’m not going to address that as governor, because I think it’s well-settled.”

Former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich is the Democratic candidate. He said abortion rights are an issue this year.

“I can tell you that I hear about it a lot,” Begich said. “I’m the only candidate that’s been endorsed by Planned Parenthood, the only candidate that has a 100 percent record when it comes to pro-choice issues and women’s reproductive rights and I think it will be an issue that women and men care about.”

Begich acknowledged that the state constitution protects the right to an abortion. But he said the Legislature can take other steps.

“They’ll whittle away in a way that your right won’t touch the constitutionality, but will do other things,” Begich said.

Begich cited a law Walker chose not to veto that allows school districts to prevent Planned Parenthood from providing sex education. And the Walker administration has defended another abortion-related law facing a legal challenge. This law makes it more difficult for Medicaid recipients to receive coverage for abortions. The legal challenge remains in court.

And Begich said it’s important for the Alaska governor to push back against any steps taking by the federal government to restrict abortions.

“Even if we protect our right constitutionally to women’s reproductive rights, we need to make sure the government on the federal end isn’t passing some regulation that limits or restricts health care for women – and the governor has to be on the front line, pushing back everywhere you can,” Begich said.

Republican candidate and former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy said in an interview last month he doesn’t expect Alaska’s abortion law to be affected by President Donald Trump’s current choice for U.S. Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh.

“The nomination of Kavanaugh, I don’t think is going to change this dynamic,” Dunleavy said. “I could be wrong but I’d be surprised if it did.”

On a personal level, Dunleavy considers himself to be pro-life, including opposing abortion in cases of rape and incest.

“The question for me is: Should an innocent human being, should their life be ended because of circumstances?” Dunleavy said. “I struggle with that. I really do struggle with that. I don’t think a person’s life should be ended, an innocent human being’s life should be ended, just because of the circumstances by which they were conceived or they are being carried to term.”

Governors in other states have reshaped how state constitutions are interpreted through their choices of state supreme court justices. But in Alaska, the process for selecting judges limits the governor’s choices.

This summer cruise ships have been falling afoul of Alaska’s air quality standards. The cruise industry says it can and will do better.

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“This summer it seems like there’s been a lot more pollution in the channel,” said Suzy Cohen, who has lived and worked in downtown Juneau since 1992. “Some mornings I’ve woken up and looked out and just seen this heavy, blue cloud hanging over the channel and it’s kind of worrisome. You don’t know what you’re breathing and it seems like it’s coming up into the neighborhoods.”

Cohen is among more than 134 people this year who’ve phoned the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s cruise ship hotline.

“This season we’ve received a lot more complaints,” Ed White, head of the DEC’s cruise ship air quality program, said.

Some of the calls, White said, were about relatively harmless steam coming from the ships’ stacks.

“But we were also receiving more complaints now about things like smell, about the smoke in addition to the steam,” White said.

The state’s air quality standard for cruise ships is measured by opacity. Basically that’s how see-through the plume coming out of a ship is.

Last year the state collected $75,000 in fines for two ships that violated this standard. This year it’s already sent nine violation notices for ships in Juneau, Ketchikan, Skagway, Haines and Seward. One violation can carry a fine of around $46,000, though companies often settle with the state for less.

The cruise industry admits it has a problem.

“We’re disappointed that we are not able to get the visual plume to where we want it to be,” Cruise Lines International Association Alaska president John Binkley said during a Thursday speech addressing civic and business leaders at Southeast Conference in Ketchikan. “And we’re committed to continue to work on that, regardless of what it takes.”

There are multiple reasons for more plumes, one is just a matter of volume.

“A couple years ago maybe we’d have four ships. Now we have six ships in port and they’re bigger ships as well,” White said. “So there’s more input into the air.”

But state and industry officials also point to a more technical explanation. About three years ago, cruise lines installed systems called “scrubbers” that mix exhaust with water to filter out emissions. It was in anticipation of stricter federal sulfur standards.

“We’re in compliance in terms of the sulfur limits but we’re not happy with the (scrubber) systems,” Binkley said.

Ed White said his agency recognizes that its current method of measuring air quality has limitations.

“Unfortunately, the opacity standard is often more of an indicator where we can look at that there’s smoke present,” White said. “But knowing what is in that and the potential health risks, that would be something that takes more study and more data.”

That’s why state regulators are investigating ways to update its methods and possibly the standard itself.

In the meantime, coastal residents like Suzy Cohen in Juneau, said anyone who witnesses apparent cruise ship pollution should speak up.

“I think that citizens really need to call when they think that there’s a problem, call into the DEC,” Cohen said. “They have a hotline and make sure that you report it.”

Alaska continues to grow in popularity with cruise lines. During Binkley’s speech in Ketchikan, he said next year’s cruise season is projected to bring 1,361,400 cruise ship passengers — a new all-time record for the third year running.

Imagine a wave as tall as the ConocoPhillips building in downtown Anchorage. It happened just three years ago in Southeast Alaska.

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A new scientific paper makes the case that climate change could increase the likelihood of these events. It synthesized the findings of a rag-tag crew of scientists who descended on the remote fjord where the tsunami happened.

Three years ago, Bretwood Higman heard about a tsunami set off by a landslide. It was so far away from civilization that it was only detected by two Columbia University scientists using earthquake monitors.

Higman lives with his family in a yurt in Seldovia, off the road system near Homer. He has a PhD in geology, and he’s fascinated by tsunamis and the landscape of Southeast Alaska. So he started scheming about how he could go take a look.

“Sort of dirtbag style, like, find, you know, $3,000, $4,000. Logistics are expensive out there, but that would be enough to get a plane out there, drop me off with my packraft,” Higman said. “Go paddle around, dig holes, collect some sand and gravel, and I’d figure out what to do next.”

The tsunami happened in a place called Taan Fiord. The nearest town is Yakutat, population 600, about 60 miles away. And Yakutat itself is way out there: Juneau is another 200 miles to the southeast.

Higman figured he should call the two Columbia scientists who first noticed the tsunami. It turned out they were organizing their own expedition and wanted help with logistics from Higman, who’s adventured all over Alaska with his wife, author Erin McKittrick.

With money from the National Science Foundation, a team of scientists converged on the fjord two summers ago. One of them was Peter Haeussler, an Anchorage geologist who motored across the Gulf of Alaska on the Alaskan Gyre – a salmon fishing boat turned research vessel.

“We’d trade off cooking meals,” said Haeussler, who works with the U.S. Geological Survey.

When Haeussler got to the fjord, he could see the aftermath of the tsunami. It happened after a gigantic landslide crashed into the water at the toe of the Tyndall Glacier. It sloshed as high as 600 feet above sea level.

Haeussler said the first thing he noticed is what’s called a “trimline.”

“All of the forest that you would normally expect to find up on the mountainside is gone. It’s just wiped clean. You’re coming in and it’s like, it’s just clear there were giant waves on each side of the bay,” Haeussler said. “You definitely think, ‘Boy, I’m glad I wasn’t here when this was happening.’”

Some of the scientists looked at the landslide deposits left on land. One chunk was so big they named it: Edgar.

Others looked at the path of the tsunami. Haeussler’s research focused on the landslide remnants that ended up underwater, determining their size and characteristics. From the boat, he mapped the ocean floor, using technology called “multi-beam bathymetry.”

“It’s really neat because the topography on the ocean bottom just reveals itself as you go along so clearly,” Haeussler said. “You can see, ‘Oh, here you’re in flat fjord bottom. Here’s this blocky stuff that clearly looks like landslide debris.’”

The goal was to understand the specifics of the landslide and wave to give scientists a better sense of how this kind of event happens. One of the paper’s take-home messages is that global warming will make them more likely, since retreating glaciers can leave behind unstable slopes.

In Alaska, scientists are now thinking about how they should apply the paper’s findings to management of public land and water.

For Mike Loso, a geologist with Wrangell-St. Elias National Park who worked on the study, the issue is personal. He explained how by talking about Hoof Hill, the spot in the fjord where the water reached its highest point.

“I spent my honeymoon with my wife on Hoof Hill, based out of sea kayaks,” Loso said.

Loso said he doesn’t think it’s appropriate to close places like the fjord where the tsunami happened, or other areas where scientists think there could be risks of similar events, like in Glacier Bay National Park, which is popular with cruise ships.

Scientists might not ever understand this type of tsunami well enough to issue warnings, or to predict them, according to Haeussler.

And they’re not very likely to occur in places where there are people, Loso said.

But Loso does think managers could give out more information about the risks of landslides and tsunamis, even if they’re small.

“An important role of the Park Service is to allow people to take those risks if they choose to. But we want to make sure they’re well-informed,” Loso said. “So, the better we understand these things, the better we can convey those hazards to the public and let them make decisions, whatever a good decision is for them.”

The 11th annual Rain Forest Festival wrapped up in Petersburg this weekend. This year’s theme focused on salmon. There were many workshops and field trips on and off the water.

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About 20 miles south of Petersburg by road, a few Chinook salmon are slowly swimming in a very shallow gravel creek. They’re not looking very fresh at this point.

Megan McPhee is leading our small group. She’s with the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“Oh, there’s digging right there, you see the female on her side?” McPhee said. “She’s flopping and so what she’s doing is digging a depression in the gravel. And that does two things. It makes a little hole that she could put the eggs in. And also you’ll notice when she does that you’ll see a cloud of silt come up in the water and then float away. So it cleans the silt out of the water.”

Too much silt isn’t good for the eggs because it can suffocate them.

Salmon are an unusual fish because while most species take days to weeks for their eggs to hatch, salmon take months. They overwinter in the gravel. Today, the effort to nest the eggs is everything these salmon are living for.

“They’re hormones are just going nuts, their stress hormones are off the charts,” McPhee said. “Their body’s decomposing, their immune system’s gone. They start to get covered in fungus because their scales reabsorb into their bodies so they have calcium in their bodies and they, yeah, they just fall apart. It’s really interesting and kind of sad.”

McPhee gave the festival’s keynote address at the town’s auditorium. She’s done a lot of salmon research around Alaska and has studied why salmon are smaller than they used to be. She says there likely several reasons why. One is because they’re returning to spawn at a younger age. Studies show that salmon are growing faster and returning to spawn earlier. And that makes them smaller.

“So it’s kind of a paradox,” McPhee said. “A faster growing fish will actually be among the smaller of the adults because they surpass a threshold for size at an earlier age where their internal status tells them it’s time to mature.”

Another reason could be an increase in predators targeting larger salmon specifically, like killer whales and salmon sharks. There are a lot of unknowns. She says there’s much more research that needs to be done.

But just today’s information alone has taught Arian Pregenzer a lot about salmon. She’s visiting the Rainforest Festival from New Mexico.

“Any little thing– you can ask question–and they’re telling you stuff and so your mind starts generating more questions,” Pregenzer said.

Petersburg resident Lori Dial says she’s learned a lot too.

“The most amazing thing about salmon is how they can find their way back,” Dial said.

“The olfactory map,” Pregenzer chimes in.

“Yeah, they smell,” Dial said. “But you know, I couldn’t find my way back based on that. That’s amazing.”

It’s relatively easy to study salmon when they’re spawning here in a creek but it’s much harder when they’re hundreds of miles away in the deep ocean. There’s a real lack of data for that part of their lives. McPhee says a big challenge is the technology to track the fish. Some tagging projects have actually attracted salmon sharks to the fish because of the large batteries they’re carrying. So, really, what could help is a better power source for the tags.

“If you could somehow use the energy of the fish-swimming-muscles to somehow recharge something that would maybe work,” McPhee said, laughing. “But I’m not an engineer so I’m talking nonsense!”

In any case, McPhee says what is definitely needed is an international effort in ocean-going surveys, having a lot of people in a lot of places working on the same goal. To find out what does happen to the salmon out there. And then they can share that knowledge with the public in a festival like this.

The Rainforest Festival was held in Petersburg September 6-9

This week we’re hearing from Bobbie Sue Wolk in Anchorage. Wolk is originally from California and was the state’s first licensed professional coach with the International Coaching Federation. Today she helps health professionals manage their stress.

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WOLK: Let’s say I was young and needed a change, and I had no idea what Alaska was going to hold for me. And I fell in love with it, surprise to me of all people. So I’m still here.

I quickly was realizing I didn’t really have any skills, so I went back to the University of Alaska majoring in accounting. Not that I loved accounting, but I needed a job at the end of college, so that’s how I got into my accounting profession.

So I was in my mid-40s when I went back and got my master’s in Industrial Organizational Psychology. That’s when I learned about coaching. And so for the past 15 years, I keep learning more and more about coaching and people and getting certifications along the way.

The medical community is under such high stress. Doctor burnout is at a record high. Health care professionals are burning out. They’re super stressed out. So the well-being coaching will actually help them. I have tools and ways to work with them to help alleviate their stress.

Only in Alaska could a single person at 32 start their own accounting business, and people believed enough in me to give me a chance. Only in Alaska can I start a new career at 45, and people give me a chance. And only in Alaska, at now 48, I’m starting the health and well-being coaching.

I don’t think I could’ve ever achieved the success, or have the opportunities that I have here, if I would’ve stayed in California.

Golden Valley Electric Association’s chief executive says the 50-megawatt Healy 2 power plant is finally fully online and commercially operational after successful testing of repaired/updated systems.

Golden Valley President and CEO Cory Borgeson said Thursday he expected Healy 2 to reach an important requirement overnight that will qualify the coal-fired powerplant to be declared commercially operational.

“As of midnight tonight, GVEA’s Healy Unit 2 will have hit the milestone set by the Regulatory Commission of Alaska,” Borgeson said.

The RCA, which regulates the state’s utilities, required Healy 2 to operate for at least 30 days at 85 percent or higher “availability.” The availability factor of a power plant is based on the amount of time it’s able to generate electricity dependably over a given period.

“The RCA wanted us to meet at least 85 percent availability for the 30-day period. So we far exceeded that,” Borgeson said, referring to the nearly 95 percent rating.

Golden Valley workers and contractors have been slowly stepping-up operation of Healy 2 since July, after they’d completed $20 million worth of repairs and modifications to the system that feeds coal into the boiler. That’s the system that malfunctioned and caused two explosions during test runs over the past couple of years. Borgeson says the problem appears to be fixed.

“We feel fairly confident,” Borgeson said. “We think we finally have it right.”

Borgeson says the power plant and all its many subsystems also are running well.

“It really operates extremely well. It runs very smoothly,” Borgeson said. “If they want to set is at 45 megawatts, it goes to 45. If they move it up to 50, every minute it goes up half a megawatt, like clockwork.”

Coal is the cheapest fuel available for generating electricity, so Borgeson says Healy 2 will enable Golden Valley to cut operating costs by reducing use of its diesel and oil-fired generators. He says ratepayers should see those cost savings reflected in their bills as of December 1st.

“It doesn’t move the needle very much, one way or the other,” Borgeson said. “But as the cost of power drops like that, they might see a five- to 10-dollar change on their monthly bill.”

The coal-feeder system problems were the latest of many malfunctions at the power plant, which was completed in 1997 at a cost of $300 million in mainly federal and state funding. The plant began operation in 1998, but it failed to run dependably and economically, so it was mothballed in 2000. Thirteen years later, Golden Valley bought it for $44 million in a deal with the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. That’s part of the $175 million total that Golden Valley has spent on upgrades at the plant, including systems to reduce emissions.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski still isn’t saying how she’ll vote on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. But Wednesday, a powerful voice joined the Alaskans urging her to vote no: the Alaska Federation of Natives. Alaska Public Media’s Washington correspondent Liz Ruskin spoke with Alaska News Nightly host Casey Grove about the action.

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GROVE: Liz, how significant is it that AFN wrote Murkowski a letter urging her to vote no on Kavanaugh?

RUSKIN: AFN doesn’t usually weigh in like this, so I’m sure she noticed. But will it determine how she’ll vote? On its own, probably not. She says she is going over everything Kavanaugh has written so she can decide for herself and so she doesn’t have to rely on what other people tell her he wrote. But AFN is an important constituency to her. In 2010, AFN was part of that massive effort to get her elected as a write-in

GROVE: What was AFN’s reasoning in asking her to reject him?

RUSKIN: It closely parallels a white paper written that Heather Kendall Miller wrote a Native American rights attorney, so their reasoning is very heavy on constitutional law, specifically about Congress’s power to pass laws for the benefit of Indians.

Kendall-Miller recorded a radio ad for an anti-Kavanaugh group. And let’s play a bit of it:

Demand Justice Radio Ad: Kavanaugh has a history of suggesting that Native Hawaiians shouldn’t qualify for the same constitutional protections that Lower 48 Indian tribes receive. If Kavanaugh believes that Native Hawaiians don’t qualify for the same benefits and protections as other indigenous people, is there any question what he thinks about Alaska Natives?  

GROVE: Liz, you’ve got to unpack some of that.

RUSKIN: So what we know about what Judge Kavanaugh thinks about Native Hawaiians comes from a 1999 op-ed he wrote. It was in the Wall Street Journal and he was the co-author. In this op-ed Kavanaugh disputes that Native Hawaiians fit the definition of “Indians” as set out in the U.S. Constitution. Part of his argument is that they don’t live on reservations. And, according to his op-ed, if they’re not Indians as the Founding Fathers understood the term, any federal laws or programs that aim to improve the lot of Native Hawaiians are in danger of being judged as race-based privileges, just elevating one race over another, which would be unconstitutional.

The concern is that he would treat Alaska Natives as non-Indians, too, since the Constitution says nothing about Alaska Natives, and Alaska Natives don’t live on reservations either, most of them.

GROVE: So what would be the effect of that?

RUSKIN: According to Heather Kendall Miller, If Alaska Natives are no longer covered under the “Indian umbrella” under the term as it’s understood in the Constitution, the court could overturn most of the federal laws passed to help Alaska Natives, and she says it could even result in overturn the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

GROVE: Wait. Isn’t that far-fetched? Undo the 1971 settlement? Dissolve the Native corporations?

RUSKIN: I know it sounds far-fetched. I challenged one person who is raising this concern about Kavanaugh and he said, yes, it does sound unlikely. But as he put it, things have been taken away from Native people since the country was founded.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Over the past two weeks, the top challengers campaigning to be Alaska’s next Governor have outlined their positions on the state’s future needs. Now it’s the incumbent’s turn. Independent Bill Walker joins us to make his case for keeping the job of Alaska’s top elected official. What would he focus on if he wins a second term?

HOST: Lori Townsend

GUESTS:

• Bill Walker – Independent Governor of Alaska
• Byron Mallott – Lt. Governor of Alaska

• 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 18, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

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

State and federal wildlife officials have apologized to Alaska Natives for the enforcement of migratory bird regulations that failed to consider the effects on subsistence practices.

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The Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued the joint apology Thursday for the consequences of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which prohibited the spring and summer harvests of migratory birds and their eggs during the 1960s and 1970s.

Greg Siekaniec is the regional director for the Alaska Region of the Fish and Wildlife Service. He said he was thankful for Native groups for “educating” the departments about how they were affected by these regulations.

“It’s because of you and your elders that we are publicly acknowledging this history, and we’ve been given the opportunity to heal from past mistakes,” Siekaniec said.

Officials say the prohibition caused Alaska Natives to lose an important food source, causing many to hunt illegally to feed their families. The law was changed in 1997.

Alaska Fish and Game Commissioner Sam Cotten says the regulations were misguided.

“We got it wrong,” Cotten said. “We regret that. We caused harm. We’re happy that that’s being resolved.”

The officials made the apology at a meeting of a migratory bird management council that has representation from the state and federal groups, and Native groups. Officials from the Native groups said they were grateful for the apology.

But they also said there’s still work to do to loosen federal regulations so that they better align with Native subsistence traditions. Jennifer Hooper is natural resources director at a Bethel-based village organization.

“In our region, there’s several villages that are very strong in their beliefs in how regulated and how pressured they are to fit into, you know, this Western system of management,” Hooper said.

Hooper said there’s still some dissatisfaction with an annual 30-day hunting closure to protect nesting birds. That’s because the dates of the 30-day closure are the same across her whole Yukon-Kuskokwim delta region, even though different parts of that area might have different needs and nesting patterns.

“It’s not a one size fits all system. So, out on the coast, their appropriate 30-day closure may be this timeframe, but then more Interior, it was two weeks before that or two weeks later,” Hooper said.

Hooper says Native organizations are trying to raise more young Alaskans to help fill some of the jobs at the agencies that regulate subsistence hunting.

Alaska’s Energy Desk’s Nathaniel Herz contributed to this report. 

Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan says he has spoken to Brett Kavanaugh amid Kavanaugh’s pending nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court about concerns raised by the Alaska Federation of Natives this week.

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AFN announced Wednesday it opposes Kavanaugh’s appointment to the high court, citing his past opinions on Native rights. AFN is the oldest and largest Native organization in the state. Alaska’s other senator, Lisa Murkowski, is seen as a potential swing vote in Kavanaugh’s confirmation. But Sen. Sullivan has said – and, after talking to Kavanaugh, still says – he will vote to confirm the Trump nominee.

Speaking to reporters today in his Anchorage office, Sullivan said that if he thought Kavanaugh was hostile or opposed to Alaska Native interests, he would not support his confirmation.

“And yesterday, I asked judge Kavanaugh directly if he held such views. And he said no, and I believe him,” Sullivan said.

Part of AFN’s opposition had to do with a memo Kavanaugh wrote about Native Hawaiians not being legally recognized as tribes. Asked if he thought Alaska Native tribal recognition would be safe with Kavanaugh as a justice on the Supreme Court, Sullivan said yes.

“I’m not saying that’s an illegitimate line of reasoning, but they are apples and oranges, legally,” Sullivan said. “I think the Hawaii case is completely non-applicable to Alaska Natives.”

Sullivan was traveling from Washington D.C. to Alaska today as news broke about allegations against Kavanaugh that he sexually assaulted a woman in high school, something Kavanaugh strongly denied. Sullivan said he was still getting caught up on the news but would have serious concerns about voting to confirm Kavanaugh if the allegations turned out to be true.

A rat is loose on St. Paul Island. And that’s a big deal because the Pribilof Islands have always been rat-free.

Steve Delehanty, Refuge Manager for the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, says rats bring significant economic and environmental concerns.

“They damage people’s property. They damage food storage. They damage ship and boat electronics. They damage wildlife,” Delehanty said. “They eat birds, they eat bird eggs, they eat chicks. They can also transmit diseases.”

For more than two decades, the Pribilof Islands have had a rat prevention program to keep the island rat-free.

“They maintain year-round, 365-day-a-year, traps in strategic locations near the docks at St. Paul, so if a rat comes off a boat hopefully it will be captured right away,” Delehanty said.

During that time, six rats have been killed, but Delehanty says this is the first to make it past the traps near the docks.

A rat sighting was first reported August 28 at the Trident fish processing plant and is still at large. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working alongside Trident, and the city and tribal governments to find it.

The quick response, Delehanty says, may help stave off the worst case scenario: breeding rats.

“If there’s more than one rat there and they are breeding, then they’re already having babies,” Delehanty said. “We want to get at it when there are two rats on the island, or six or eight rats, not when there’s 56 rats or a 1,000 rats.”

For now, organizations on island are working diligently to find the intruding rodent. They’ve set up a game camera and they’re planning to send a “strike team” of experts to the island next week.

Not only do they want to eradicate any rats, they hope to determine the source of the rodent.

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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Sen. Sullivan defends support of Trump nominee Kavanaugh

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan says he has spoken to Brett Kavanaugh amid Kavanaugh’s pending nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court about concerns raised by the Alaska Federation of Natives this week.

As administration pursues ANWR drilling, Trump official accuses federal employees of creating ‘road bumps’

Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

In an interview last month, Balash described what he called a “really difficult management challenge” with Fish and Wildlife Service employees. He said during a recent meeting with the agency in Alaska, he felt employees weren’t eager to carry out the new law.

Dunleavy absent from candidate debates, speaking events

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

The candidates for governor have been invited to seven debates or speaking events since the primary. Independent Governor Bill Walker and Democratic former U.S. Senator Mark Begich have been at all seven. Republican former state Senator Mike Dunleavy has been at three.

State and federal officials apologize to Alaska Natives for effects of bird regulations

Wesley Early and Nathaniel Herz, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Officials issued an apology for the consequences of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which prohibited the spring and summer harvests of migratory birds and their eggs during the 1960s and 1970s.

Meet the married retirees pushing Anchorage to change homeless policy

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

An increasingly organized group of residents say the current approach is too, and has allowed lawless camps to persist along popular trails.

AK: Petersburg’s Rainforest Festival teaches the public about salmon

Angela Denning, KFSK – Petersburg

The 11th annual Rain Forest Festival wrapped up in Petersburg last weekend. This year’s theme was salmon, but there were many events on and off the water.

49 Voices: Bobbie Sue Wolk of Anchorage

Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

This week we’re hearing from Bobbie Sue Wolk in Anchorage. Wolk is originally from California and was the state’s first licensed professional coach with the International Coaching Federation. Today she helps health professionals manage their stress.

The candidates for governor have been invited to seven debates or speaking events since the primary. Independent Gov. Bill Walker and Democratic former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich have been at all seven. Republican former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy has been at three.

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On Thursday night, the Anchorage Downtown Partnership and other community organizations hosted a candidate forum. Walker, Begich and Libertarian Billy Toien sat at a table. There also was an empty seat — in case Dunleavy changed his mind.

Partnership marketing director Penny Smythe said Dunleavy’s campaign said they had penciled in the event well ahead of time, before saying he wouldn’t come.

“We certainly were looking forward to hearing from all candidates,” Smythe said.

Dunleavy also hasn’t shown up at the Alaska Municipal League’s conference in Healy, the Alaska AFL-CIO’s conference in Fairbanks, and the Accelerate: Alaska event in Anchorage, which was focused on growing Alaska businesses. He has attended chamber of commerce events in Juneau and Anchorage and the Southeast Conference in Ketchikan.

The organizers for Accelerate: Alaska, the AFL-CIO and the municipal league all said they received tentative confirmations from the Dunleavy campaign before he either canceled or – in the case of the AFL-CIO – didn’t show up.

Dunleavy’s campaign said the downtown partnership knew well in advance that he had a scheduling conflict on Thursday and that he had never committed to attending.

The campaign gave this written statement from Dunleavy: “Throughout this campaign I’ve participated in nearly two dozen town halls, debates and forums – even more public events – two dozen meetings with the press, 100 radio call-ins and dozens more fairs, festivals and sporting events where I heard directly from Alaskans.”

Dunleavy also said Walker skipped the primary and Begich skipped the last four years of discussion.

For their part, the other candidates criticized Dunleavy.

Begich speculated on Dunleavy’s reasons for not attending.

“He doesn’t want to answer the detailed questions that are required, to explain his extreme views on how he’s going to solve the budget, which I think is a challenge him, (and) I think his ability to talk about his positions on social issues, because he has very extreme positions there,” Begich said.

Begich said he’s been raising Dunleavy’s positions in the events where he’s absent.

“He’s realizing that debating on these issues means you actually have to answer the questions and have specifics, and he doesn’t want to do that,” Begich said.

Walker said Dunleavy’s absences were consistent with his record.

“I’m not surprised,” Walker said. “You know, he’s not showed up at a lot of things. He didn’t show up at the legislative session last year. The toughest of the four years was last year, the fourth quarter of the game, and he wasn’t there for that either. So, I don’t know, he seems to not show up.”

Walker said the Alaska governor should speak to all groups.

“I think he points out how he would govern when he doesn’t show up,” Walker said. “He’ll govern to his friends, and not the whole state, (which) is the problem.”

The next scheduled candidate forum is hosted by the Anchorage NAACP on Thursday.

Late last year, Congress ordered the federal government to hold oil lease sales in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Defying opponents who say the land is too ecologically fragile to drill, the Trump administration has prioritized carrying out the new law.

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Now, without offering many details, a top Trump administration official is accusing federal employees of making that job more difficult, saying they seem unhappy about the prospect of oil development happening on land they’ve managed as a refuge for decades.

Joe Balash is Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the U.S. Department of Interior and a former natural resources commissioner for Alaska. He’s one of the top political appointees at the Interior Department, and he’s overseeing the process to begin oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge.

In an interview last month, Balash described what he called a “really difficult management challenge” with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees. He said during a recent meeting with the agency in Alaska, he felt employees weren’t eager to carry out the new law.

“You could just tell from all of the nonverbal communication going on in the room that they were not happy to see us, they were not happy to talk about this, they still weren’t necessarily prepared to accept this new reality,” Balash said.

Balash is the head of some divisions within the Interior Department, including the Bureau of Land Management, but the Fish and Wildlife Service doesn’t report to him. He accused Fish and Wildlife employees of causing challenges for his agency as it works to pursue oil development in ANWR, creating “some little hiccups and road bumps along the way.”

Balash gave just one specific example: this spring, the Washington Post obtained plans to begin the search for oil in the refuge that were submitted to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Balash thinks those documents were leaked from a Fish and Wildlife Service employee.

“I think that’s evidence that there’s some unhappy campers,” Balash said.

Balash didn’t cite any direct evidence to prove the documents came from the Fish and Wildlife Service. And in the story, it’s not clear exactly where they came from — a Washington Post reporter who worked on the piece declined to say.

Still, Balash said he’s asking management at the Fish and Wildlife Service to address what he views as a problem in the agency, “taking steps, every so often, to help remind people that there’s a real need to be professional and not allow those very human feelings to get in the way of doing the job the American Congress has charged us with.”

“I think with each successive month and with each effort that we make, [we will be] able to show these employees that we are taking care to look out for the things that matter here and that are potentially affected if leasing occurs,” Balash said, adding, “I wouldn’t say that we’re ever going to get them on board.”

Balash did not threaten retribution over this issue. He said Interior needs the knowledge of longtime Fish and Wildlife Service employees to carry out the oil leasing program.

A spokesperson with the Alaska office of the Fish and Wildlife Service office declined to comment on Balash’s remarks.

But Rosa Meehan, a former longtime Fish and Wildlife Service manager in Alaska, said she’s confident workers at the agency are acting appropriately.

“I absolutely believe in the integrity and professionalism of the Fish and Wildlife Service and all my colleagues in the Service,” Meehan said.

Meehan said she’s concerned about Balash’s words about employees not being “on board” with oil lease sales in the refuge. The federal environmental review process is meant to be an objective, scientific discussion of all potential impacts, she added.

She said that includes impacts that could be viewed as negative, and it’s the Fish and Wildlife Service’s job to point out them out, no matter what.

“It makes it sound as if you don’t really want to that hear anything that could be interpreted as opposing or saying this is really a bad idea – or pointing out significant impacts, or potential impacts,” Meehan said. “And that’s what’s really uncomfortable about this.”

Interior aims to put out a draft environmental review on oil leasing in ANWR in the coming months. Like all environmental reviews, it will present a “no action alternative” — the option to do nothing. But it’s not a real option.

No matter what that analysis says, Congress ordered Interior to hold the first oil lease sale in the refuge by the end of 2021, and the Trump administration wants to get it done even sooner than that.

Rickets is a condition that causes soft or weak bones in children. Usually, too little vitamin D is the cause. It’s a rare condition in the United States. About one in 100,0000 children is hospitalized with the condition nationally, but researchers think it occurs a lot more often in Alaska.

“During 2001 to 2010, Alaska Native children aged less than 10 years, living in Alaska, experienced almost double the rate of rickets associated hospitalization of the U.S. pediatric population aged less than 10 years,” explained Dr. Joe McLaughlin, Chief of the Alaska Section of Epidemiology. “We don’t have as much data that’s been reported on non-Native children, so that’s another area of research that we’d like to get more information.”

There are a number of factors that can put a child at greater risk for rickets. Among them are lack of sun exposure, darker skin and low vitamin D intake. Researchers found that younger Alaska Native people are eating less vitamin D-rich traditional foods.

“Oily fish, such as salmon, tend to be very rich in vitamin D, as well as other traditional Alaska Native foods coming from marine mammals in particular. That means that people who are consuming less traditional foods are likely taking in less vitamin D,” McLaughlin said.

A workgroup with the Alaska Division of Public Health developed Alaska-specific Vitamin D recommendations. It suggests health care providers consider doubling Vitamin D supplements for infants and more than tripling the amount prescribed for pregnant women—800 international units daily for babies and 1,400 IUs for pregnant women, taking into account vitamin D already contained in infant formula and prenatal vitamins.

To be clear, these recommendations are for medical professionals prescribing supplements, not a recommendation for individuals to buy them at the grocery store or online.

The U.S. Forest Service is on a tour through Southeast Alaska and Anchorage to talk about the prospect of building new roads in wilder parts of the Tongass National Forest. The controversial initiative, which was announced in August, is up against a November deadline. That’s when the state hopes to have a proposal ready for environmental analysis.

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On Thursday, Sept. 13, the forest service held its first public meeting in Juneau.

The forest service wasn’t taking any formal public comment from the crowd of more than 50 people. Instead, there were maps stuck to walls with blue tape to spur discussion.

After some presentations from the forest service, the floor was opened up for a roughly 40-minute Q&A.

In 2016, a forest service plan for the Tongass included moving away from old growth logging.

It was created with years of community input from people on both sides of aisle, including conversation groups and the timber industry.

Meredith Trainor, the director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, wondered how the possibility of new road building in the Tongass would alter previous plans like the one from 2016.

The prospect of new road building wasn’t on the table then. It’s not for most national forests in the United States.

Alaska has been fighting this for decades, and this latest attempt to green light new roads in the Tongass could potentially change that earlier management decision.

Some in the audience questioned whether that seemed like a good idea.

“It’s a guaranteed slippery slope,” Bart Koehler said. He says he pretty much came out of retirement to make that point.

Koehler used to work for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council during the heyday of large scale industrial logging. During his career, he says he saw some positive changes in the way the Tongass was managed, the Roadless Rule being one of them.

Koehler says he’s upset with how the forest service is conducting its current reevaluation.

“This meeting format is a bunch of B.S. — just a pile of bear scat,” Koehler said. “You come, you’re interested and you want to say something and none of these conversations are being recorded.”

Koehler did get his questions in, though, and he’s going to submit a written comment by Oct. 15 when the deadline closes.

A lot of people attending the Juneau meeting wore green stickers that said, “Keep roadless in the Tongass.” Eric Nichols from Alcan Forest Products in Ketchikan wasn’t one of them.

“I’ve been up looking at timber in other places so Juneau was a stopover because of the plane schedule,” Nichols said.

Nichols acknowledged there didn’t seem to be much representation from industry in the room. But he says these issues extend beyond Juneau, to small communities where people are still employed by logging. It’s estimated there are few hundred timber jobs left.

However, Nichols doesn’t think that will be the case for long — if there isn’t easier access to trees.

“We’ve lost the balance. The balance is totally off the scale,” Nichols said. “We’ve got everything in protection for conversation, but very little for what’s going to generate economic activities.”

The next forest service meeting on road building in the Tongass will be in Ketchikan on Sep. 17. The governor’s office still needs to appoint an advisory committee to help inform the decision.

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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Charges filed against a Kotzebue man in the case of a missing girl who was found dead.

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

U.S. Attorneys charged 41-year-old Peter Wilson with making false statements to federal agents.

Alaska’s U.S. Senators call for more information about sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh

Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Washington DC

The allegations are from a California professor who says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were high school students.

Alaska will see a cut to salmon allocations under proposed treaty with Canada

Jacob Resneck, CoastAlaska – Juneau

Alaska would get a 7.5 percent cut under a proposed 10 year salmon treaty deal with Canada.

Three senior Department of Health and Social Services administrators have resigned

Andrew Kitchenman, Alaska Public Media-KTOO – Juneau

Commissioner Valerie Davidson has named two acting replacements and a new permanent CEO of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute.

Teams of citizen scientists count endangered whales near Anchorage

Nat Herz, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

Federal wildlife managers organized an event over the weekend to count Cook Inlet Belugas

Public meetings start in Juneau over proposal for news roads in Tongass

Elizabeth Jenkins, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

The U.S. Forest Service is on a tour through Southeast Alaska and Anchorage to talk about the prospect of building new roads in wilder parts of the Tongass National Forest.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service works to keep rats off St. Paul Island

Zoe Sobel, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Unalaska

A rat is loose on St. Paul Island. And that’s a big deal because the Pribilof Islands have always been rat free.

High rates of suicide in southwest Alaska where healthcare services are overburdened

Teresa Cotsirilos, KYUK – Bethel

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, and communities aren’t getting the resources they need to cope with it.

Both of Alaska’s U.S. senators said Monday they need to hear more about the allegations of a California professor accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were high school students.

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“I think we should take this seriously, regardless of the length of time, the passage of time,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said.

Professor Christine Blasey Ford alleges Kavanaugh pinned her down more than 30 years ago and tried to rape her in an isolated room while a party was underway. She claims his movements were hampered by intoxication and she managed to escape. Kavanaugh denies the allegation and says he never attended the party she describes.

Murkowski said facts can be hard to establish after more than 30 years. And she said teenagers often do things that are impetuous, foolish or just plain dumb. But she said bad high school behavior could be a factor in a person’s fitness for the Supreme Court.

“Is there a statute of limitations that says once you hit this age, anything that happened before that time is kind of off the books?  No, I don’t think that is the case,” Murkowski said. “But I do think we need to be fair with this.”

Murkowski is closely watched as one of only two Republican senators considered possible no votes on Kavanaugh.

Sen. Dan Sullivan announced he’d support Kavanaugh after meeting with him this summer.

But keeping women safe from personal violence has been one of Sullivan’s signature priorities, as a senator and before that, when he was Alaska attorney general. He now says he wants to hear more.

“My view is both professor Ford and Judge Kavanaugh deserve the right to be heard on this matter,” Sullivan said, reading from a prepared statement. “I commend (Judiciary Committee) Chairman Grassley on committing to as much and will be following closely as these claims are evaluated, reviewed and the Judiciary Committee continues to look at them.”

Last week, before Ford stepped forward to put her name on the allegation, Sullivan said he’d have serious concerns about confirming Kavanaugh if the allegation turned out to be true.

On Monday he took one question: Whether he thinks allegations about what one might have done in high school could disqualify a nominee.

“Again, I’m just going to wait for the context,” Sullivan said. “And your question actually opens up a lot of different issues that I think are going to be explored. But it’s not an illegitimate question to ask.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a public hearing Sept. 24 on the allegation.

On Monday afternoon, federal officials announced charges against a Kotzebue man in the case of a missing girl who was found dead last Friday.

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U.S. Attorneys are charging 41-year-old Peter Wilson with making false statements to federal agents. In charging documents from the U.S. Attorney’s office, FBI Special Agent Michael Watson said investigators tracked the movement of a GCI cellphone that belonged to 10-year-old Ashley Johnson-Barr. Based on geo-location data from the phone, searchers looked in a secluded patch of tundra about two miles outside town and found the young girl’s body Friday afternoon.

By that point, the FBI had interviewed Wilson about his potential involvement in the disappearance. According to Chloe Martin, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Anchorage, Wilson broke the law by intentionally misleading federal agents.

“They caught him in the lies, as alleged in the criminal complaint,” Martin said.

The documents suggest Wilson knew Johnson-Barr, something he denied when interviewed by agents. He was allegedly borrowing a four-wheeler at the time the young girl went missing on September 6th. Wilson had Johnson-Barr’s cellphone in his jacket pocket that same evening, according to an acquaintance of his who spoke to investigators. Wilson was arrested and brought to Anchorage over the weekend.

Federal investigators have been working closely with state and local officials on the case.

As of Monday afternoon, no murder charge has been filed in the case.

“The investigation is on-going,” Martin said. “We have been talking to the state the whole time, and everyone agrees to the current federal charge. As to other charges, we’ll have to see what evidence develops.”

Wilson has a hearing in federal court in Anchorage on Tuesday.

Kotzebue is a close-knit community, and the eight-day search for Johnson-Barr brought an outpouring of support from all over rural Alaska.