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Alaska’s oil revenues are expected to decline over the next few years, creating a substantial budget deficit that will have to be filled by withdrawals from the state’s savings, according to a semiannual forecast released by the state Department of Revenue on Dec. 12. Or spending cuts or taxes could be used to cover the deficit, though neither option was presented in the department’s forecast. The new forecast is more pessimistic about the state’s oil-revenue prospects over the next few years than was the department’s previous forecast in March...
Butter clams, important to many Alaskans’ diets, are notorious for being sources of the toxin that causes sometimes-deadly paralytic shellfish poisoning. Now a new study is providing information that might help people harvest the clams more safely and monitor the toxin levels more effectively. The study, led by University of Alaska Southeast researchers, found that the meat in larger butter clams have higher concentrations of the algal toxin that causes PSP, than does the meat in smaller clams. “If you take 5 grams of tissue about one...
The shrinking size of Alaska salmon, a decades-long trend linked in part to warming conditions in the ocean, is hampering the ability of chinook in Alaska’s two biggest rivers to produce new generations needed to maintain healthy populations, a new study shows. The University of Alaska Fairbanks-led study shows how the body conditions of chinook salmon, combined with extreme heat and cold in the ocean and freshwater environments, have converged in the Yukon and Kuskokwim river systems to depress what is termed “productivity” — the success...
Alaska’s minimum wage workers will get a tiny bump in pay starting on Jan. 1 before a larger increase becomes effective six months later. The state’s minimum wage will increase by 18 cents to $11.91 an hour at the start of the new year, the result of a ballot measure passed 10 years ago, the Alaska Department of Labor said on Nov. 21. The bigger increase will be on July 1, when the minimum wage is set to rise to $13 an hour, the result of a ballot measure approved by voters in November. The minimum wage is set to increase again in 2026 to $14 a...
Seven out of 10 Alaska adults are overweight or obese, and large percentages of adults in the state have chronic conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol that are linked to the leading causes of death, according to a report by the state Department of Health. The 2024 Alaska Chronic Disease Facts summary, published by the department’s Division of Public Health, also showed that 33% of high school students were overweight or obese. Large percentages of adults and teenagers are sedentary, according to the report. Among adults, 2...
State officials and industry leaders trying to rescue the ailing Alaska seafood industry are facing daunting challenges, recently released numbers show. The industry lost $1.8 billion last year, the result of low prices, closed harvests and other problems, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Direct employment of harvesters last year fell by 8% to the lowest level since 2001, when counts of harvesting jobs began, the Alaska Department of Labor said. The monthly...
Alaska seafood processors hired fewer people in 2023 but paid them more and relied more on nonresidents to fill the jobs, a state analysis shows. The employment trends are what would be expected in an industry struggling to find workers, said Dan Robinson, the state economist who wrote the analysis for the Alaska Department of Labor’s monthly magazine. “I do think the reason for that is just they’ve had to work harder to get workers and to pay workers more to come there,” said Robinson, the department’s research chief and author of the artic...
Alaska’s most commonly reported infectious diseases, aside from respiratory illnesses such as influenza, are from sexually transmitted infections, according to the state’s most recent annual report. There were 5,118 cases of chlamydia in Alaska in 2023, the largest number among sexually transmitted diseases in the annual infectious disease report issued by the Alaska Department of Health. The infectious disease annual reports are issued each year by the epidemiology section of the department’s Division of Public Health. The secon...
Four decades ago, in days before the internet and automatic voter registration, Alaska Natives turned out to vote at high levels. That participation has eroded badly, a situation that should be reversed, said Michelle Sparck, director of an Alaska nonpartisan organization called Get Out The Native Vote. Alaska Natives are not fully realizing their power if they do not vote, she said. “They say that anytime you look at a white male in this country, you know they’re a voter. We should be in that kind of category,” Sparck said in a prese...
Alaskans will vote Nov. 5 on a ballot measure that would increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2027 and require that workers get paid for up to seven sick days a year. To backers who collected signatures to put the question before voters, Ballot Measure 1 is about fairness for workers and overall state economic vitality. But opponents in business groups warn that the measure, if passed, would bring dire consequences. To Sarah Oates, CHARR’s president, the consequences of Ballot Measure 1 would be bad. “This is going to kill small...
The federal government board that manages subsistence will be expanded with three representatives of Alaska Native tribes, under a new rule the Biden administration made final on Oct. 16. The new Federal Subsistence Board members are to be nominated by federally recognized tribes. They need not be tribal members or Native themselves, but they must have “personal knowledge of and direct experience with subsistence uses in rural Alaska, including Alaska Native subsistence uses,” according to the rule. The term “subsistence” refers to harvest...
A variety of market forces combined with weak fish returns in a rapidly changing environment caused Alaska’s seafood industry revenues to drop by $1.8 billion from 2022 to 2023, a new federal report said. The array of economic and environmental challenges has devastated one of Alaska’s main industries, said the report, issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And the losses extend beyond economics, casting doubt on prospects for the future, the report said. “For many Alaskans the decline of their seafood industry affec...
Alaska had a record number of drug-overdose deaths in 2023, with a total that was 44.5% higher than in 2022, the state Department of Health said in a report issued last week. The 2023 drug-overdose toll was 357, a number determined through the department’s data on deaths and diseases, the report said. The Alaska statistics buck a national trend of declining overdose deaths that was reported earlier this year by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of the few states with increases in overdose deaths from 2022 to 2023, Alaska h...
Alaska had the biggest decline in average life expectancy of all U.S. states in 2021, a year when health outcomes were heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent national report. Alaska’s life expectancy in 2021 was 74.5 years, down from the average of 76.6 years in 2020, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, U.S. life expectancy declined by 0.6 years in that time, mostly because of the COVID-19 pandemic and increases in drug overdose deaths and other unintentional i...
Until about 20 years ago, little was known about the abundance of colorful cold-water corals that line sections of the seafloor around Alaska. Now an environmental group has gone to court to try to compel better protections for those once-secret gardens. The lawsuit, filed by Oceana in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, accused federal fishery managers of neglecting to safeguard Gulf of Alaska corals - and the sponges that are often found with them - from damages wreaked by bottom trawling. Botto...
More emergency kits to save victims of opioid overdoses are on their way to Alaska schools, in accordance with a new law. It requires schools statewide to have kits on hand, with trained people on site to administer those kits if needed. Although the new law does not go into effect until late November, the state Department of Health has already begun shipping out kits with overdose-reversal medicine and associated gear. The law is the product of House Bill 202, which Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed in late August. As of early last month, about 200 of...
Vandalism of houses of worship and other religious sites is now a felony, under a bill that was signed into law on Sept. 3 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The measure, House Bill 238, was signed in a ceremony at the Lubavitch Jewish Center of Alaska, a campus in Anchorage that is home to an Orthodox Jewish congregation, a preschool and a museum devoted to Alaska’s Jewish history. It was also the site of recent antisemitic vandalism, part of a national trend of increasing attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions. Anchorage Rep. Andy Josephson, the b...
An Alaska law prohibiting anyone other than a licensed physician from performing abortions violates the state constitution’s equal protection and privacy guarantees, a state Superior Court judge ruled. There is “no medical reason” why abortions cannot be provided by advanced practice clinicians, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants, said the Sept. 4 ruling issued by Superior Court Judge Josie Garton. Limiting abortion services to state-licensed physicians violates the equal protection guarantee because other pregn...
As Alaskans from different organizations convened at the University of Alaska Anchorage to brainstorm ways to reverse the state’s continuing population outmigration, a leading state economist delivered some bad news. Dan Robinson, research chief at the Alaska Department of Labor, revealed that the latest data shows that Alaska has now had 12 consecutive years with more residents leaving than arriving. That is unprecedented, he said. “This is not normal for us. It hasn’t happened before,” Robinson said on Sept. 5 at the start of the two-day...
Alaska teens are more likely to be depressed and have suicidal thoughts than were teens a decade ago, and some mental health problems have increased notably among girls, according to results from the state’s most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Administered in 2023 to nearly 1,200 high school students around the state, the survey found numerous negative trends. Of the respondents, 19% reported attempting suicide at least once over the past year, compared to 8.7% in the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The number who reported they had c...
Alaska’s highest-ranking Democratic officeholder said July 23 she has not decided whether to back the party’s likely candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. Rep. Mary Peltola broke with other state Democrats, who quickly gave their support and their party convention delegates’ votes to Harris just hours after President Joe Biden announced that he was ending his campaign for re-election. Peltola, in an online news conference, said she is still weighing her decision about whether to vote for Harris and is “keeping an open mind.” “We still have...
When Kay Brown was director of the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas in the 1980s, her job was to make sure the state got the maximum benefit from its abundant fossil fuel. At the time, North Slope activity was on the rise and Alaska was on its way to supplying 25% of the nation’s domestically produced oil. Now the producing oil fields are mature, Alaska production is down to less than a quarter of its late-1980s peak and climate change impacts have become dramatic in the state and elsewhere in the far north. And Brown, who went on to become a s...
Fishery managers overseeing Alaska’s faltering salmon runs should be able to rely on a more comprehensive and holistic approach to science that considers all habitat, from the middle of the ocean to freshwater spawning streams far inland, according to a task force report on salmon research needs. The report was issued this month by the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force, a group established through a 2022 act of Congress to identify knowledge gaps and research needs. The task force comprises close to 20 members and includes scientists, f...
Two environmental groups have filed a new legal challenge to the Biden administration’s approval of a proposed multibillion-dollar project that would send Alaska North Slope natural gas to overseas markets. In a petition filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club argued that federal agencies failed to properly consider harms that the massive gas project would cause to Endangered Species Act-listed animals living in the affected marine areas: polar bears, Cook Inlet beluga whales and...
The Alaska Division of Public Health is hoping to expand wastewater-monitoring programs that have proved useful in detecting outbreaks of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases, a recent report said. Testing at Anchorage’s John M. Asplund Wastewater Treatment Facility, the municipality’s main wastewater plant, was able to provide notice of a spike in COVID-19 cases in January 2023, several days ahead of patients’ cases that were confirmed by health laboratories, said a bulletin recently issued by the division’s epidemiology section. The inf...