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Enstar still evaluating gas lines following earthquake

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ENSTAR Natural Gas Company provides natural gas to more than 142,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in and around the Anchorage and Cook Inlet area. (Photo courtesy ENSTAR)

The natural gas utility serving the Kenai Peninsula, Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley is still looking for leaks and assessing the damage to thousands of miles of gas lines following Friday’s earthquake.

Enstar spokeswoman Lindsay Hobson said the company put the call out for customers to report signs of leaks.

“That generated quite a number of calls for gas leaks and perhaps people identified them on their own independent of that,” Hobson explained. “Over the course of a few days, we took in a total of roughly 1,400 leak orders.”

Most reports are from Anchorage and the Mat-Su valley near the earthquake’s epicenter. But there’s also calls coming from the Kenai Peninsula. The company called in former employees and extra help from the Lower 48 to inspect homes.

The focus now is on inspecting nearly 3,500 miles of gas lines from Houston, Alaska to Homer.

“A lot of the system has been surveyed. Our first focus was on schools and daycare facilities, and I believe that has been completed,” Hobson said. “The survey of the system on the Kenai Peninsula has already begun and is ongoing. But so far so good and no major leaks detected.”

It’s unknown how long the work will take. Technicians are flying in and traversing remote terrain on snowmachines to do the job.

The company is encouraging customers to inspect gas lines in their homes. Enstar is also reminding homeowners to call the Alaska Digline at 811 before starting any repair projects requiring digging.


Consumer confidence surveys show positive signs — what does that really mean?

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This time of year, we hear a lot about spending.

How much people may be willing to spend at businesses is important for the local economy. Consumer confidence surveys are an attempt to measure this, and in Alaska right now, they’re showing positive signs. But there’s more to the story.

The Anchorage Economic Development Corporation put out its third quarter consumer optimism index this month. The organization is excited about the results.

“In particular, this one I feel very strongly shows a marked improvement in consumer optimism,” said Bill Popp, AEDC president and CEO

Popp said the consumer optimism index is the highest it’s been since 2014 in Anchorage.

The AEDC’s report is based on a survey conducted by Northern Economics. It looks at how residents feel about their own finances, the local economy and what they expect for the future. The company talked to at least 350 households in the Municipality of Anchorage, and asked them to answer a few questions on a scale of one to five:

  1. How would you rate current economic conditions in your community?
  2. How secure do you feel about your, and your family’s, financial situation? Is it getting better, worse, or staying the same?
  3. And, is the economy in your community getting better, worse, or staying the same?

If the index comes out about 50, that represents optimism in the community. This
quarter, that number was 59.3.

Popp said the positive trend has been building over the last couple surveys, and that’s a good sign.

“This is telling us that consumers are feeling like things are starting to loosen up,” Popp said. “That things are starting to turn around.”

How does consumer confidence fit into the greater economy? Why does anyone care? Popp said it’s a way to help determine if people are going to spend their money. Which, of course, impacts business.

“If consumers aren’t optimistic, or are feeling pessimistic, they spend less,” Popp said. “They won’t go to the movies. They won’t buy that new car, they won’t buy that new snow machine.”

The state’s Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development said this renewed confidence in the economy is being felt around the state. Northern Economics gathers the data for the Alaska Confidence Index, too, and the survey questions are similar. The latest survey showed an increase in consumer confidence compared to the same time last year.

That survey looks at how Alaskan’s are feeling about the health of the local economy, personal financial situations, and expectations for the future. In the latest survey, all three were up from this time last year. The index shows increased confidence in the future of local economies and personal finances from the previous quarter.

But economist Mouhcine Guettabi cautions against making too much of these survey results.

Guettabi, who works for the University of Alaska’s Institute of Social and Economic Research, said the surveys can be informative when looked at alongside things like employment and wage data, revenue from small businesses and sales tax data.

“But taking it in a vacuum and extrapolating from it, I find is difficult,” Guettabi said.

Especially because Alaska doesn’t have a statewide sales tax. Guettabi said that makes figuring out whether more confidence means more spending pretty difficult.

Guettabi said these surveys are useful, but imperfect, and need to be interpreted with caution.

Dunleavy names new AG, corrections and public safety commissioners

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced his new public safety team Wednesday morning.

Amanda Price, a victims’ advocate, will take over the Department of Public Safety from former commissioner Walt Monegan. The Department of Corrections is now led by Nancy Dahlstrom, a state legislator from Eagle River. She’ll resign her house seat and replace former DOC Commissioner Dean Williams. Kevin Clarkson, a private practice attorney, is replacing Jahna Lindemuth as Alaska Attorney General.

During the announcement, which Dunleavy made at the state crime lab in Anchorage, the governor stressed the importance of public safety and crime reduction.

“The primary function of any governor and any state government, to be frank, is to keep people safe. And that’s why we’ve taken time to really look at folks that we believe are going to get us there,” he said. “And we’re not rolling out people individually one at a time, we’re working as a package, as group, because we have to start working out of our silos. We have to work as a package, as a team.”

Dunleavy says his team will be working with others to fulfill one of his campaign promises — repealing and replacing SB 91, the criminal justice reform bill passed in July 2016.

Ben Stevens, former Alaska senator investigated by FBI, lands job with Dunleavy administration

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Ben Stevens’ portrait from when he was an Alaska state senator.

Ben Stevens, the former Alaska Senate president once investigated for corruption by federal authorities, has landed a job in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration.

Stevens will work as one of Dunleavy’s three policy advisors, focusing on transportation, legislation and fishing, a spokesman for Dunleavy, Jeff Turner, said in an email.

Stevens didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The FBI raided Stevens’ offices in the summer of 2006, as well those of at least five other state legislators.Stevens is one of three sons of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. Ben Stevens spent five years in the state Senate after Gov. Tony Knowles appointed him to an open seat in 2001; he ran unopposed in 2002, then didn’t seek re-election in 2006 amid the federal corruption investigation.

Attention on Stevens focused on consulting work he said he did for oil-field services company Veco, while he was serving in the Senate. The payments totaled more than $240,000 over five years, and Stevens never said exactly what he did to earn the money.

At the trial of a different state lawmaker in 2007, a Veco executive said on the witness stand that he had bribed Stevens and another senator, John Cowdery. But prosecutors never charged Stevens with a crime, and he always denied wrongdoing.

Last year Stevens said he was considering running in the Republican Party primary for governor, though he never entered the race. He’s been working as president of Cook Inlet Tug and Barge, which operates from the Aleutians to Southeast Alaska.

As a consultant earlier in his career, many of Stevens’ clients came from the fishing industry. They included fish processors, a group of crab processors and an organization representing Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska pollock trawlers.

Gruening Middle School closed for the rest of the school year due to earthquake damage

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Today, the Anchorage School District announced that Gruening Middle School will be closed for the remainder of the school year due to damage sustained during Friday’s earthquake.

ASD Chief Operating Officer Tom Roth says the building is structurally sound. However, concrete facade in the building took major damage.

“Some of that concrete facade has failed, has broken away, particularly where it attaches to some of the structural steel members of the building,” Roth said. “The steel is fine. It performed exactly the way it was designed.”

Roth says there was also a gas leak that the district believes is under concrete near the school’s cafeteria.

Students at Gruening will be relocated to Chugiak High School, where Roth says 17 classrooms have been made available so far. Superintendent Deena Bishop says Gruening staff will also relocate to Chugiak High.

“We are gonna have full staffs because right when this is over, we’re going to have Gruening back again,” Bishop said. “So we don’t look to reduce any positions at this time or make any other transfers.”

Gruening is the third school that will be closed the rest of the school year as a result of Friday’s quake. The other two are Eagle River Elementary and Houston Middle School in the Mat-Su School District.

Bishop says every other ASD school should be ready for students on Monday, December 10.

Disaster aid for Alaska to be linked to relief for Calif. wildfires

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Photo of U.S. Capitol by Liz Ruskin/Alaska Public Media

The federal government has kicked in the first $5 million to help Alaska deal with the immediate effects of the earthquake. But the big money will have to come from Congress. Sen. Lisa Murkowski says disaster funds for Alaska will likely be included in a bill with aid for the victims of the California wildfires.

“What we’ve been told is we’ll have that opportunity when the wildfires are addressed in January,” she told reporters at the U.S. Capitol.

Congress is working on a disaster spending bill that has to pass this month, but Murkowski said it’s mostly for hurricane damage. She’s been reassuring Alaska agencies that they shouldn’t rush their damage assessments of schools and bridges.

“Take the time to get it right. Take the time to get it accurate,” Murkowski said. “We don’t want to be in a situation where we have underestimated what actual damages is.”

Congress is sometimes slow to pass disaster relief bills. Murkowski said it’s good the fate of Alaska’s money will be tied to that for a much larger state.

“There’s a great many people in California that are hoping that we get moving very, very quickly in January with a disaster bill that will address their needs as well,” she said. “So Alaska is not alone in this.”

Murkowski and Sen. Dan Sullivan were in Alaska early this week to view the quake damage and response operations.

Human rights complaint filed over transboundary mining in British Columbia

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A tailings dam holds mine waste from the Red Chris Mine in 2017. The copper-and-gold mine in British Columbia is on the Stikine River which flows into Southeast Alaska. (Photo courtesy of Garth Lenz)

Canadian mines upstream from Southeast Alaska violate the human rights of tribal members. That’s the thrust of a 215-page petition filed Wednesday by a consortium of 15 Alaska tribes and an environmental group.

It calls on the the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to investigate a half-dozen mines — four developed and two planned — it says threatens wild habitat key to the tribes’ livelihood and culture.

Transboundary mining has long been controversial. The Mount Polley mine disaster in 2014 discharged millions of gallons of mine waste in northern British Columbia, which has shared watersheds with Southeast Alaska. The mine’s owner was never fined and mining has resumed.

Mine critics say Mount Polley highlighted the potential dangers of that and other Canadian mines near the border.

“We’re trying to elevate this to an international level just so that we have a little more… legal tools,” said Jennifer Hanlon, the Yakutat-based vice chair of the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Indigenous Transboundary Commission.

“For us this is beyond an environmental issue because our relationship and cultural identity really revolve around our relationship to our ancestral lands and waters,” she said.

The decision to appeal to an international human rights body, she said, is because the tribes said the issue “can’t really be addressed adequately through either the Canadian or American legal system.”

The filing prepared by environmental attorneys from the group Earthjustice calls on the seven-member human rights commission based in Washington, D.C., to visit the region and investigate.

It’s already investigated Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Its report in 2015 called on the Canadian government to hold an inquiry. It said the crimes were part of a larger pattern of discrimination.

Canada and the U.S. have not ratified the American Convention on Human Rights. That means the human rights commission’s recommendations aren’t binding in either country.

Alaska News Nightly: Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018

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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

Kathryn Dodge files appeal after falling behind in HD1 race by one vote

Robyne, KUAC – Fairbanks

The Democratic candidate in the back-and-forth nearly-tied race for a Fairbanks seat in the Alaska statehouse is now appealing the results.

Dunleavy names new AG, corrections and public safety commissioners

Anne Hillman and Andrew Kitchenman, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has announced Amanda Price, Nancy Dahlstrom and Kevin Clarkson as the newest additions to his cabinet.

Ben Stevens, former Alaska senator investigated by FBI, lands job with Dunleavy administration

Nathaniel Herz, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

Ben Stevens, the former Alaska Senate president once investigated for corruption by federal authorities, has landed a job with Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration. He’ll be a policy advisor, focusing on fishing, legislation and transportation.

Got quake damage? Officials outline next steps for claims

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

As residents in southcentral Alaska clean up damage from last week’s earthquake, government officials have one major request: take notes.

Disaster aid for Alaska to be linked to relief for Calif. wildfires

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

Sen. Lisa Murkowski says disaster funds for Alaska will likely be included early next year in a bill with aid for the victims of the California wildfires. “So Alaska is not alone in this,” she said.

Gruening Middle School closed for the rest of the school year due to earthquake damage

Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The Anchorage School District announced that Gruening Middle School will be closed for the remainder of the school year due to damage sustained during Friday’s earthquake.

After Friday’s quake, UAA classes resume in under a week

The University of Alaska Anchorage reopened to students Wednesday after being closed due to Friday’s earthquake. The university had no structural damage or gas leaks, but there was still a lot of cleaning up to do.

Two Anchorage Assembly members are resigning — for two different reasons

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

While it’s unusual for Assembly members to depart before the end of their terms, it’s not unprecedented.

Anchorage Assembly approves $1B sale of ML&P to Chugach Electric

Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The Anchorage Assembly unanimously approved the massive sale of its electric utility to another energy provider.

Wasilla holds celebration for newly-minted Governor Dunleavy

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

Several hundred Alaskans celebrated the inauguration of Mike Dunleavy as governor in Wasilla yesterday.

Two teams of Lower 48 geologists are coming to Anchorage to study quake

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

There’s all sorts of research going on about the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit Southcentral Alaska on Friday, and two teams of geologists from the Lower 48 are heading to Anchorage to study it.


After Friday’s quake, UAA classes resume in under a week

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UAA students and staff evacuate after Friday’s magnitude 7.0 earthquake. (Photo courtesy of UAA)

Naomi Everett is in charge of the Lucy Cuddy cafeteria at UAA. She had just begun her work day when Friday’s earthquake hit Anchorage. Shortly after the initial shock, students and staff quickly assessed the damage.

“Lights were hanging down, the ceiling had come down in several areas in the bakery and our dining area,” Everett said. “Our offices were a little bit shaken but nothing too bad, and our plate room… there were smashed plates everywhere.”

Classes were canceled that day. UAA Chancellor Cathy Sandeen says it only took a couple hours for cleanup crews and engineers to start inspecting the campus. She says one of the inspectors was a UAA graduate.

“One of our engineering alumni, he’s the person who designed the Parrish bridge, which is our newest bridge,” Sandeen said. “He wanted to make sure his design would withstand the earthquake and he was really happy with the results, and so were we.”

The engineering team determined that no major structural damage or gas leaks took place on campus. The university’s incident response team gathered and began the cleanup process. Ryan Buchholdt was in charge of the University’s response team. He says the main priorities were getting fire suppression back online, as well as making sure student housing was safe and livable.

“A big issue was our approximately 900 students that live in our housing area,” Buchholdt said. “Several of our dorms lost heat, so that became a big priority, make sure we have heat in those spaces so students can occupy them.”

UAA power and internet wasn’t down for very long, so university officials were able to send out notices pretty quickly about the closure and what the next steps were.

For Buchholdt, once the university’s internal safety measures were stabilized, the next priority for the teams was getting teaching areas cleaned up and ready for use.

“We know that we could get through a few-day closure, but we’re right at the end of the semester. We have students that need to get through finals. We have commencement coming up very soon,” Buchholdt said. “So, the first priority for a lot of those folks became, lets see what the level of damage is out there so we know how to prioritize what building we need to focus on.”

He says the teams worked through the weekend in shifts that went from 10 to 12 hours, sometimes longer. Not all of the campus has been cleared out and some areas are still blocked off, but enough work has been done to resume classes.

Chancellor Sandeen says that the university was lucky that the whole process went as smoothly as it did.

“And I wasn’t sure about that because I arrived less than three months ago, but the first meeting I had when I was official here as chancellor was with our incident management team,” Sandeen said. “They explained to me what they did. They explained to me how they deploy. And I’m really grateful to be able to say it all worked.”

Sandeen says that as far as costs go, the university has reserve funds for emergencies, but they also have insurance and have been cataloging the damage to apply for federal relief. She says the university plans to discuss how to prepare even better for a future emergency.

When the earthquake hit (left photo) about a fourth of the UAA culinary department’s plates were broken. They put the rest in cages as a precaution during cleanup (Left photo courtesy of UAA. Right photo by Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage)

As for Everett in the culinary department, she and her team have been cleaning, disinfecting and sorting the kitchen areas, making sure that they’re ready for students. She says they lost about a quarter of their dishes, and have taken a small step to ensure the numbers are lower in the case of another emergency.

“We just had the plates on shelving, but we switched out with the shelving units that can actually lock and close because then that way, they’ll stay contained,” Everett said. “Honestly, you can never predict whether things will rattle around enough to break in cages, but at least they wouldn’t be falling on the floor.”

UAA classes in the Chugiak-Eagle River campus have been relocated to the Anchorage campus while building damage is assessed there. Buchholdt with UAA maintenance says that campus is owned by a separate entity that is handling that damage. For the time being Eagle River students will finish their classes this semester at the Anchorage campus. Anchorage School District students who attend the Chugiak-Eagle River branch of Alaska Middle College, which is operated in partnership between with the district and UAA, will also be relocated.

Got quake damage? Officials outline next steps for claims

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Cracks in a ramp by Minnesota and International (Photo: Nathanial Herz – Alaska Public Media, Anchorage)

As residents in Southcentral Alaska clean up damage from last week’s earthquake, government officials have one major request: take notes.

That was one key message at a special Assembly meeting Wednesday addressing how individuals should be submitting claims to state and federal officials in the weeks ahead.

Recouping losses to homes and property in the wake of a disaster involves multiple steps with insurance companies, as well as state and federal relief agencies. For the time being, Mike Sutton with Alaska’s Division of Homeland Security told Assembly members and the public that the state is trying to gather damage assessments from residents.

“The individual assistance program, in our estimation, is the most important,” Sutton said. “Taking care of people, making sure people who don’t have a home that’s livable have options. And we begin to implement our programs and lend assistance to them.”

The state wants people with damage to their homes and what’s deemed “essential personal property” to call a hotline or file claims online. That includes descriptions of the damage, the address affected, as well as insurance and personal information. Evidence, like before and after photos of impacted areas, is helpful. As the state of Alaska begins getting a picture of damage at the residential level it will give an aggregated assessment to the governor, who will then pass it on to federal officials with FEMA.

The state has already received 1,800 applications for relief.

But between now and January 29th, a major aim is getting resources to people who have been driven from their homes.

“Our priority is to work with applications that we see for folks that have houses, homes, primary residences that are severely damaged and unlivable in their opinion,” said Sam Walton with the state’s Disaster Assistance Program. “Folks that just had things broken, those applications are in the system and we’ll get to those as we can.”

It’s not clear yet how many people in Anchorage or the Valley have homes the earthquake rendered unlivable. But one of them is Ayyu Qassataq, who’s lived in her west Anchorage house for more than a decade.

“My home is leaning outward and buckled in the middle,” Qassataq said after testifying to the Assembly during Wednesday’s meeting. “In the case of another major event, it’s very possible that my home would crumple.”

That determination was made by building inspectors, who told Qassataq it was unsafe for her to stay there. She packed a bag, gathered important items, and is now sorting out how to file her claims through insurance and government programs. She said it was helpful to hear from state and federal relief agencies in the Assembly’s forum, but knows it’s only the beginning of a long process.

Residents are encouraged to submit their individual assistance claims online here. Or call 1-855-445-7131.

When a step back into prison is really a jump forward on the road to recovery

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Community members gathered for a conversation at Anvil Mountain Correctional Center. (Photo courtesy of Danielle Slingsby.)

Alexandria Niksik has been in and out of prison for seven years. Her most recent return home only lasted 16 days. But what might look like failure from the outside is actually a key step toward success and recovery from alcohol misuse.

When Niksik was a kid in St. Michael, a village in Western Alaska, she learned some lessons pretty quickly.

“With just violence being a part of growing up in my childhood, it was always my first instinct to react violently,” she said during an interview at Anvil Mountain Correctional Center in Nome in the late summer. “Because I never knew any other way to express my emotions properly.”

Niksik saw some of the adults in her life using alcohol as a way to cope with their trauma from childhood, she said, so she started doing the same thing.

“Either numbing or enhancing my emotions, whether they were negative or positive, I’d always turned to alcohol to express my emotions,” she explained.

By 18, Niksik was involved with the criminal justice system. For a few years, she moved between Anvil Mountain Correctional Center and her village where she stayed with her family and her children. Eventually, she was sent to Hiland Mountain, the women’s prison in Eagle River – a huge change for her. There she received intensive outpatient treatment for alcohol misuse.

“I learned things that my parents didn’t have a chance to learn, and it played a role with how I should be a better person,” Niksik reflected.

She learned things like coping skills and ways to deal with her emotions. And then, she was released. Niksik went back to St. Michael, back to her old friends and her old life. She said she was okay when she was with her children because they motivated her to stay sober. But when they left to stay with other family members, “when they weren’t with me, I felt lost completely.”

She paused, looking down.

“Just lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself when I didn’t have my children around,” Niksik said.

Niksik said she starting hanging out with the same people as before and she gave in to peer pressure to start drinking again.

“It’s hard to change when you’re the only one who knows the steps to change and want to change,” she said. “Because those guys in St. Michael, they don’t have the opportunity that I did. And I was very overwhelmed with the step-up of showing them how to be there for them in the proper way that people were for me.”

After 16 days, the State Troopers took her back to Anvil Mountain.

David Patterson Silver Wolf, a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis, said Niksik’s situation is common. He has worked as a treatment provider and a researcher.

“Behavior changes is hard, right?” Silver Wolf said. “And it’s really hard to do when you have people who are convincing you that you don’t need a change.”

Patterson Silver Wolf is also a person in long-term recovery. He said having a support system of people who understand the changes you are trying to make is essential.

“I had these routines of using alcohol and drugs and doing those things,” Silver Wolf said. “I had to reinvent my whole self, which required that I had to make new friends and go to another community and oftentimes avoid the community where I gave in where it was easy to give in.”

He said he also needed hope and motivation for change, just as Niksik needed the motivation of supporting her children.

Finding new people to hang out with is easier said than done in a village of 400, but Niksik said that her brief trip back to her village this summer actually gave her hope that she could do that.

“With the time that I was home, I learned who to avoid and who I was most vulnerable against when it came to questioning on whether I wanted to party with them or not,” Niksik said.

The experience was a reality check about what she needs to do in the future.

“I not only hurt myself or my parents, but I hurt my son. That hurts me the most because the look in his eyes when the Troopers came to pick me up again. It’s still tearing at my heart,” Niksik said, her voice catching. “He still questions on why I had to come back to jail.”

Now, Niksik is heading to a long-term residential treatment program where she can live with her son. She said she’s ready to focus on her sobriety and prepare herself to return home.

She has plans for her future in St. Michael. She’s going to care for her parents and open a restaurant. And she’s going to be a supportive mother for her children.

Anchorage Assembly to appoint interim member

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The Anchorage Assembly is losing two of its members, though for different reasons. While it’s unusual for Assembly members to depart before the end of their terms, it’s not unprecedented.

Two-term Assembly member Amy Demboski of Eagle River-Chugiak’s District 2 resigned from her seat Monday to serve as a deputy chief of staff in the Dunleavy administration.

Tuesday night’s Assembly meeting was the first without Demboski, who’s been one of the body’s staunchest conservatives for much of her tenure. She built a reputation as a diligent member who sat on a number of committees and easily won re-election by her constituents in 2016. In her 2015 bid for Anchorage mayor, Demboski emerged from a crowded field of candidates in a run-off against Ethan Berkowitz, which she ultimately lost. Her seat will be filled with an interim appointment made by sitting Assembly members, then go up for a regular vote in April’s municipal elections.

West Anchorage Assembly member Eric Croft announced he won’t be running for re-election in April. Croft, a former state legislator, is nearing the end of his first term. He says with their kids now off to college, he and his wife are downsizing and moving to a new home outside of his current district. He will serve until the end of his current term.

Five of the Assembly’s 11 seats are up for election in April.

Alaska Supreme Court to weigh in on final unresolved House race

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State Review Board member Stuart Sliter discusses part of the election certification process with board member Lynda Thater-Flemmer, seated, and House District 1 candidate Kathryn Dodge, D-Fairbanks, in the Juneau office of the Alaska Division of Elections on Nov. 23, 2018. (Photo by Jeremy Hsieh/KTOO)

The Division of Elections ran through every ballot for House District 1 last Friday. Officials counted 2,662 votes for Democrat Kathryn Dodge and 2,663 for her opponent, Republican Bart LeBon.

Following the recount, the candidates had until Wednesday to contest the results of the recount. And the Dodge campaign, just one vote behind, met the deadline to file with the Alaska Supreme Court — thus extending a protracted battle for control of the state House of Representatives.

Dodge said she wants every legal vote to be counted.

“We spent about four days reviewing the decisions, reviewing the ballots, reviewing the facts, and have concluded that there are at least four instances that deserve further review,” she said.

Dodge’s attorney, Patrick Munson, filed an “application for relief” with the Alaska Supreme Court. The court will schedule a hearing and review the process of the recount. But Munson said he’s not sure how they will proceed.

“It’s pretty vague under Alaska law, to be honest with you,” Munson said. “And the court has a lot of leeway to fashion a proceeding that is tailored to the issues that are before them. They’ll come up with a proceeding that works efficiently for everyone to get to the truth.”

The Supreme Court Clerk’s office declined to comment on what comes next as they had not reviewed the complaint yet.

The Division of Elections will be represented by an assistant attorney general, but they don’t know exactly who at this point: The attorney closest to the process has not been retained by the Dunleavy administration.

Dodge’s campaign will be paying for the court proceeding and has started accepting contributions again.

“And we have set up a legal fund, which is the appropriate vehicle, apparently. And we have confidence in this process,” Dodge said.

The outcome of this race could determine control of the Alaska House. If LeBon’s victory stands, there will be 21 Republicans — a slim majority in the 40-member legislative body.

If Dodge’s appeal results in her winning the seat, the House will be split 20-20.

Y-K Delta boarding school discovers cheating on math program

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Yuut Elitnaurviat has housed the Kuskokwim Learning Academy on the second floor of its building in Bethel since the 2015 Kilbuck School fire. (Photo by Dean Swope / KYUK)

Students enrolled at the Kuskokwim Learning Academy, a Bethel-area alternative boarding school, were found to be cheating on their computer-based math curriculum. The problem was discovered after many students were tested in the fall and found to be below the pre-algebra level.

The school’s new site administrator, Walt Betz, says that September’s test scores were terrible.

“We thought ‘well, maybe the kids just weren’t testing well,’ but then we looked at other kids’ scores over a long term period and noticed that students would come into our school with higher math scores than after they’d been here for a year,” Betz said.

The Kuskokwim Learning Academy, or KLA, is the only alternative boarding school in the Lower Kuskokwim School District. Its mission is to “act as a dropout prevention program emphasizing alternative education practices.” In other words, it’s the last stop before dropping out for students in trouble.

The school has 65 enrolled students, but no actual math teacher, so mathematics is taught by computer. Students would spend an hour a day being instructed by a system called ALEKS, then they were free to finish the work on their own. It turns out that this system wasn’t working out so well, Betz says.

“It was commonplace for kids, when they got something they didn’t understand, that they would just Google it, and then it would show the answer, and then they would put the correct answer in the ALEKS question. And I think that was pretty widespread,” Betz said.

This meant that students appeared more competent than they actually were in courses like Algebra and Geometry. As recently as last year, students were receiving credit for classes that they had no mastery in, and were able to graduate based on their ALEKS math test scores. It took the administration a while to figure this out, in part because in the past year, five of KLA’s nine staff members left the school.

“There was, like, a combination of discoveries because we had this huge turnover of staff, and most of the people doing the math weren’t here anymore. And most of the people running the program weren’t here anymore. And so it was a real steep learning curve, and it took a while for us to uncover all of these elements that were contributing to these low scores,” Betz said.

The problem may have existed since 2015, Betz says, when the Kilbuck School fire forced the school to move onto the Yuut Elitnaurviat campus.

“Whenever there’s a catastrophe like a fire, or something like that, it takes time to regroup because it’s a certain shock that teachers and students go through. And I think, finally, the air just started to clear this year and see the road ahead,” Betz said.

Last week, Betz told the LKSD school board that he hopes to address the situation by increasing the schedule to four math classes per semester and moving to a video teleconference system that’s used by many other schools in the state. Betz says that the system has been difficult to set up at the school’s new location, but with the district’s help he’s looking forward to offering teleconference classes in Pre-Algebra and Algebra 2 this spring, and Algebra 1 and Geometry in the fall.

Dunleavy and his supporters celebrate inauguration in Wasilla

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy (center) was surrounded by his family at his inaugural celebration at the Menard Sports Center in Wasilla. From left: his daughter Ceil Ann; his brother Francis, of Houston, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah; Mike Dunleavy; his brother William, of Allentown, Pennsylvania; his brother Patrick of Scranton, Pennsylvania; his daughter Catherine; and his daughter Maggie. His wife Rose is obscured in the photo. (Photo by Andrew Kitchenman/KTOO and Alaska Public Media)

Several hundred Alaskans celebrated the inauguration of Mike Dunleavy as governor in Wasilla on Tuesday.

Gust Larson, a retired operating engineer who lives just outside of Wasilla, came to the Menard Sports Center to celebrate.

“We like Dunleavy, and we’re so happy we got rid of what could have been, you know?” Larson said.

Gust Larson, a retired operating engineer, lives just outside of Wasilla. He came to the Menard Sports Center to celebrate Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s inauguration. (Photo by Andrew Kitchenman/KTOO and Alaska Public Media)

Stephen Holmstock struck a similarly hopeful tone. The gospel musician and prison chaplain based in Anchorage expressed optimism about Dunleavy and Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer.

“My hope is that they’re authentic and real and that they get down to business and cut through all the bureaucracy and streamline,” Holmstock said. “Probably get rid of a lot of the liberal, progressive gridlock.”

Dunleavy told the crowd that his first experience as governor has been watching “what Alaskans are all about — people helping each other” in response to the earthquake. He praised state and local workers who have helped with the disaster response.

Dunleavy chose Wasilla to hold his first celebration after being sworn into office. The swearing-in ceremony was in Kotzebue on Monday. Later that day Dunleavy also visited Noorvik, the originally-planned venue for the swearing-in.

Dunleavy wouldn’t have won without Matanuska-Susitna Borough. His margin of victory in Mat-Su was slightly more than 20,000 votes, while his statewide vote margin was 19,892.

The event drew state and local leaders, including U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, former Gov. Sean Parnell and former Anchorage mayor Dan Sullivan.

Former Mayor Sullivan said former Gov. Bill Walker’s administration provides Dunleavy with an example of what not to do. He also described Mat-Su Borough as the epicenter of conservatism in Alaska.

The governor and his wife Rose Dunleavy live in Wasilla, but they’re moving to the governor’s mansion in Juneau.


After misdiagnosis and amputation, Anchorage woman wins $21M

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The federal government has paid an Anchorage woman more than $20 million after a bad diagnosis led to the amputation of her arms and legs.

Staff at Alaska Native Medical Center in 2011 thought the woman had shingles, when she actually had a worsening skin infection and was in the early stages of sepsis. They sent her home, but several days later, Mardi Strong returned near-death, suffering septic shock. Ultimately, doctors were forced to amputate her limbs.

Strong is a member of the Yakima Indian Nation and was a construction worker in Alaska. She had recently completed a two-year certificate in computer-aided design to become an engineer.

Instead, in the seven years since the misdiagnosis, Strong has been seeking compensation from the Department of Justice, which represents Native hospitals in medical malpractice issues.

“It’s only now that we’re able to get her the care she needs,” said Rick Vollertsen, Mardi Strong’s attorney.

Vollertsen said evidence in the court fight included depositions from hospital staff taken in 2015 for the trial. Those depositions indicated, at least in 2015, that the hospital had failed to review its procedures and did not issue any discipline to the staff involved.

“I was unable to ascertain from these care providers that they’d been properly trained in how to recognize sepsis or that they understood the telltale signs of sepsis,” Vollertsen said. “It’s kind of scary.”

He said the money will help fund her ongoing medical needs. But the settlement should also have encouraged better practices to avoid further misdiagnoses.

Alaska Native Medical Center denied that it failed to properly review the case. That’s according to a written statement the hospital issued, in which ANMC says it, “profoundly regrets the experience of Ms. Strong and her family.”

“While this isolated outcome is in no way representative of the exceptional care ANMC provides to patients, we have taken the opportunity to carefully scrutinize each step of the care we provide for possible improvements,” the statement said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Anchorage, which defended the federal government and eventually agreed to pay Strong, refused to answer any questions for this story.

Vollertsen, Mardi Strong’s attorney, says the settlement amount should be enough to encourage the Department of Justice to require better follow-up from hospitals that have made such huge mistakes, which are called “sentinel events.”

“So the taxpayers have paid this claim,” Vollertsen said. “The concern that I have is that the government has some weight to bring to bear on this hospital system, to mandate that the corporate culture change occurs that quality assurance principles are adopted, with vigor.”

Shortly after the multi-million-dollar settlement this October, Strong was in Colorado undergoing preparations for upgraded prosthetics.

Vollertsen said Thursday that yearlong process, which involves surgery and learning how to use prosthetic arms and legs, continues. Vollertsen said his client continues to heal, both emotionally and physically, now that the settlement is public and finalized.

“I know it was important to her to have this case heard,” Vollertsen said.

Gruening Middle School teachers pack up their classrooms for quake-induced move to Chugiak High

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Binders were left behind by students as they evacuated during the earthquake. Photo by Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage)

Teachers at Gruening Middle School in Eagle River began the process today of relocating to their new classrooms at Chugiak High School.

Concrete near the front of Gruening sustained major damage from Friday’s magnitude 7.0 earthquake and there was a possible gas leak near the cafeteria.

Gruening math teacher Kadra Peterson had a three-hour window to pack up the essentials from her classroom, like supplies, books and lesson plans.

But Peterson said she would have to leave a lot behind.

One of the posters in Kadra Petersons class room made by her students Photo by Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage)

“Everything that makes my class what it is,” Peterson said. “The artwork that my students have done, the posters — each of those lines is an equation that my students made to make the guitar.”

Peterson has been teaching in this room for nine years. She’s hopeful the move to Chugiak is temporary and she’ll be back to her old room next fall.

Peterson says her room took less damage than many others.

Renee Jilka has been teaching at Gruening for 17 years. She found a small part of a microscope that broke during the earthquake — she says cleaners must’ve taken away the rest of it. She’s not even able to get her glass beakers out of their cabinets because they’re leaning against the door, and would fall if the door was opened.

Gruening Principal Bobby Jefts says that 17 classrooms have been made available at Chugiak High School for relocating the school’s teachers and students. He says some teachers will be sharing rooms.

“We didn’t know if we were gonna be able to fit into Chugiak High School,” Jefts said. “So we worked yesterday morning, sat down with a map and sat down with our master schedule, and they have the space to take us. It worked out incredibly well.”

Clutter from immediately after Friday’s earthquake in Gruening Middle School teacher Brad Kirr’s classroom. (Photo courtesy of Brad Kirr)

Jefts says there’s even a going to be space set aside for the administrative staff.

“I gotta tell you, I’m good with a folding table. We’ll make it work,” Jefts said. “Just give me a laptop and a folding table, and we’ll make it work.”

While most Anchorage School District students will start class on Monday, December 10th, Gruening classes will resume the next day. Math teacher Kadra Peterson says Chugiak has been very welcoming.

“Overall, we’re all grateful for Chugiak,” Peterson said. “They cheered when they announced that we were coming, and they’re happy to have us.”

When classes start back up, science teacher Renee Jilka says the students and teachers are going to have to adapt to their new surroundings. Her new room isn’t a science classroom. but she’s ready to make due.

“Tuesday is just gonna kinda be debriefing with the kids. Getting them comfortable,” Jilka said. “It’s gonna be quite a transition for all of us to be in a big high school.”

Eighth grade science teacher Steve Bay says he was the teaching a unit on earthquakes when the earthquake happened. The first thing he’ll be talking about on Tuesday is the earthquake that forced him and his students into a new classroom.

Alaska News Nightly: Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018

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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

Big aftershocks from Alaska earthquake continue

Associated Press

Strong aftershocks from last week’s powerful earthquake in southcentral Alaska continue to shake up residents.

Gruening Middle School teachers pack up their classrooms for quake-induced move to Chugiak High

Wesley Early, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Teachers at Gruening Middle School in Eagle River began the process today of relocating to their new classrooms at Chugiak High School.

Reactions from Utqiaġvik on a whaling quota rule change: ‘We don’t have to beg anymore’

Ravenna Koenig, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Fairbanks

“I had hoped to see that happen during my lifeterm,” said Eugene Brower, former president of the Barrow Whaling Captains Association of the rule change. “I’m happy that we don’t have to beg anymore.”

Several Native organization want Dunleavy to dedicate funds to helping prosecute crimes against Native women

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

Several Alaska Native organizations asked Governor Mike Dunleavy today to fund investigations and prosecutions of cases of missing and murdered Alaska Native women and girls.

After misdiagnosis and amputation, Anchorage woman wins $21M

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

Staff at Alaska Native Medical Center in 2011 thought the woman had shingles, when she actually had a worsening skin infection and was in the early stages of sepsis. They sent her home, but several days later, Mardi Strong returned near death, suffering septic shock. Ultimately, doctors were forced to amputate her limbs.

Former hockey coach sentenced for abusing children

Associated Press

A former Kenai Peninsula hockey coach has been sentenced to 62 years in prison for sexually abusing children and possessing child pornography.

Ruling limits how Juneau can spend cruise passenger fees

Jacob Resneck, CoastAlaska – Juneau

A federal judge rules Juneau city officials spent marine passenger fees too freely. The ruling upholds the constitutionality of collecting fees but constrains their future use.

Human rights complaint filed over transboundary mining in British Columbia

Jacob Resneck, CoastAlaska – Juneau

Southeast Alaska tribes say pollution from Canadian mines is violating their human rights. They’re calling on a D.C.-based human rights commission to investigate.

Anchorage museum archives earthquake with viral memes, Twitter poetry

Kirsten Swann, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

After last week’s magnitude 7 earthquake rolled through Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the Anchorage Museum began working to catalog and archive the event for future generations.

Workshop in Anchorage seeks to empower Alaska musicians

Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

The 2nd annual Alaska Music Summit takes place this weekend in Anchorage. It features workshops, networking and industry presentations aiming to bring together and empower musicians.

Reactions from Utqiaġvik on a whaling quota rule change: ‘We don’t have to beg anymore’

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The bone arch in Utqiaġvik, made from bones of the bowhead whale. This year, Alaska whalers succeeded in getting the rules changed for how their whaling quota is renewed. (Photo courtesy of Arctic Council Secretariat / Kseniia Iartceva)

Back in September, a group of whaling captains made the long trip from Alaska to Florianópolis, Brazil.

They went to do something they’ve done dozens of times since the late 1970s: ask an international commission to let them keep whaling.

But this time they had a new request, and it was a big one. They wanted to change the rules of the commission so they wouldn’t have to keep asking for that permission every few years. And they succeeded.

For context: Back in 1977, whaling communities in northern Alaska got some devastating news. The International Whaling Commission was concerned that the bowhead whale population was too low to support a subsistence hunt, and they put a moratorium on hunting bowheads.

“At the beginning of the battle in ‘77, through those early years, it was a real struggle to get the world to understand what our world was like up here,” said Marie Adams Carroll, who was the executive director of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission in its early years. The group formed in response to the IWC moratorium to advocate for the right of Iñupiat and Yup’ik hunters to whale.

The IWC moratorium was only in place for a few months. After that, the whalers managed to get a small quota. But it was only half of what they said they needed.

Through a lot of hard work in the years that followed, the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission became a co-manager of the hunt. Whalers brought in scientists who used traditional knowledge to improve the technique for counting whales. The population estimates increased, and the quota grew.

But every few years, whalers had to show up to a meeting of IWC member countries and get 75 percent of them to say, yes, you can keep whaling.

If they didn’t succeed, their quota would expire.

“Seems like we had to go back and beg,” said Eugene Brower, former president of the Barrow Whaling Captains Association. Brower said he attended more IWC meetings than he cares to remember, and that feeling of having to beg — that’s not a good feeling. But additionally, there was always concern about the outcome of the vote.

“It wasn’t easy trying to get that quota,” said Brower. “Sometimes (the) United States failed to get that three-quarter vote needed to keep our way of life going.”

That happened in 2002. Eventually another vote was held at a special meeting, and the whalers got their quota.

But for several months before that, whaling communities in Alaska were in limbo, thinking they might not be able to hunt the bowhead whale without breaking the law.

So this year, the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and the U.S. government put forward a new proposal that would change how the IWC renews the quota. Something called a “limited automatic renewal.”

The idea is that as long as certain conditions are met, including that the science says the bowhead whale population is doing well, every six years the quota will automatically renew. The limited automatic renewal won’t just apply to the bowhead quota, but to all aboriginal subsistence whale hunts conducted by IWC member countries.

The proposal also included an increase in the number of unused “strikes” that whalers could carry over from previous years. (“Strikes” are counted whenever a whale is hit, even if it’s subsequently lost.) With the new proposed carryover, the annual quota going forward would be 93 strikes per year for Alaska hunters. AEWC says that Alaska whalers usually take an average of 40 whales a year.

And the proposal passed.

“To me, that was a miracle,” said Crawford Patkotak, vice chair of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and one of the whaling captains who traveled to Brazil as part of the U.S. delegation. He described the rule change as both a surprise and a victory for Alaska whalers.

“It changes the way you think, the way you hunt, and it is a real pressure relief as far as not having to go back and questioning whether (the quota’s) going to be approved or not,” he said.

Patkotak said when they got back to Utqiaġvik, the atmosphere was pure excitement.

For people like Marie Adams Carroll and Eugene Brower, it felt like after years of struggle, a weight had been lifted from their shoulders.

“I had hoped to see that happen during my lifeterm,” Brower said. “Because my father, my uncles said, ‘Go out and educate. Fight for our people.’ It’s finally here … I’m happy that we don’t have to beg anymore.”

The automatic quota renewal could be revoked. But just as it took a large percentage of the IWC to make this new rule, it would take that same percentage to change it again. People familiar with the workings of the IWC say that’s unlikely.

Alaska Native groups ask Dunleavy to investigate missing and murdered Indigenous women

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(Graphic by Annita Lucchesi (Southern Cheyenne descendant), PhD-c, courtesy of Urban Indian Health Institute)

Several Alaska Native organizations asked Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Thursday to fund investigations and prosecutions of cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Kendra Kloster, executive director of Native Peoples Action, drafted a letter to Dunleavy asking for his support.

“There’s an alarming number of Indigenous women and girls that have disappeared or been murdered each year, and we just feel that there’s really an absence of a voice for them,” she said.

The letter asked Dunleavy to include money in his proposal for the next state budget, which his administration is scheduled to release on Dec. 15.

“We need to be able to get the data, and then we need people to not only investigate, but to follow up,” Kloster said.

In response to questions about the letter, Dunleavy spokesman Jeff Turner said the Department of Public Safety will make a recommendation in its proposed budget for the Dunleavy administration to review.

Dunleavy said in a statement to the Associated Press that as a father of three girls, his heart goes out to families who have lost loved ones to violence. He said through a spokesman that public safety in Alaska is broken, and he is committed to fixing it.

In his final draft budget, former Gov. Bill Walker included funding for two investigators for these cases. It would also provide money to inventory past cases and analyze law enforcement’s approach to the issue.

A recent study by Urban Indian Health Institute found that Anchorage was the city with the third-highest number of Native women who were murdered, after Seattle and Tucson.

Native Peoples Action is a nonprofit started in 2017 that aims to protect traditional values in the Alaska Native people. Its work includes promoting voting rights for Alaska Natives.

The others who signed onto the letter include leaders of Native Movement, Native American Rights Fund, Alaska Native Sisterhood Camp 70, Alaska Native Brotherhood Camp 70, Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Fairbanks Native Association, Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center, Beaver Village Council, First Alaskans Institute, Kawerak Inc. and the Pathways to Prevention Statewide Steering Committee.

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