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The borough assembly is moving toward lowering the asking price for the former Wrangell hospital by almost half and hiring a real estate agent to sell the property. The assembly at its Nov. 22 meeting accepted an ordinance to reduce the asking price and set a public hearing on the ordinance for Dec. 20, at which time members could vote on the proposal. The Bennet Street lot has been vacant since the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium’s new medical center opened in February 2021. The borough has been looking actively – and unsuccessfull...
After a boating accident near Point Baker last week, former Wrangell resident Kelsey Leak spent 24 hours on West Rock before being rescued by a fishing boat. Her boyfriend, 27-year-old Arne Dahl has not been found and is presumed dead. The morning of Nov. 27 was bright and clear. Leak and Dahl set out from their Point Baker homestead at 11 a.m. to collect firewood aboard Dahl's old wooden fishing vessel, the Randi Jo. The pair had been living off-grid at Point Baker, where Dahl was raised, since...
An incredible run of wins took the Wrangell High School girls volleyball team all the way to the state championship playoffs at Palmer High School last Thursday and Friday. Even with their signature ability to come back from losses and overcome the competition to win matches, it wasn’t enough for the Lady Wolves, whose bid for the state title ended after three hard-fought games. Wrangell versus Dillingham Play started Thursday morning with Wrangell facing the Dillingham High School Wolverines. Early on, it was evident the kind of competition W...
Tribal members of the Wrangell Cooperative Association are eligible to receive funding from another round of COVID-19 federal pandemic relief under the American Rescue Plan Act. The WCA is accepting applications through Dec. 16 to distribute $2,000 per member household to help with things like fuel, groceries and utilities. “Wrangell Cooperative Association realized this can be a tough time of year for people and wanted to offer some assistance to our tribal citizens,” said Esther Reese, WCA tribal administrator. “All WCA members must fill...
Dec. 7, 1922 A local business change took place Tuesday when F.E. Gingrass retired from the Wrangell Machine Shop, having sold his interest to W.R. Nevill. Mr. Gingrass had been with the business for the past 11 years. In April, 1920, Bert Harvie, of Petersburg, became a partner in the business and since that time the business has been conducted under the name Gingrass & Harvie. The style of the new firm will be Harvie & Nevill. Mr. Nevill came north last February to visit his father and brother, and liked the country so well that he decided...
Cassady Cowan had a grand plan for her senior project to bring some vibrancy to Wrangell. Although her original plan didn't float, her backup plan bears repeating. When Cowan, 17, was trying to figure out her high school project, her focus was on the killer whale mural on the retaining wall facing the water behind the Stikine Inn. "I was going to make it brighter and make it look newer," she said about the mural. Ultimately, "it would cost too much (because of) the cracked paint. The...
Next year, Wrangell will become the first community with access to Tidal Network, the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska’s new broadband internet service. And thanks to a recent influx of federal funding, other communities across Southeast won’t be far behind. On Nov. 17, the Central Council announced that it had received a $50 million grant for broadband infrastructure. The funds were awarded through the Tribal Connectivity Program, which increases access to affordable internet on tribal lands as part of the 2021 fed...
The borough has scheduled a public forum for 5:30 p.m. Dec. 14 at the Nolan Center to discuss a $2.5 million question: What would the community like to see done with the 6-Mile sawmill property which the borough purchased this summer? Sell the 39 acres, lease it in whole or in part, put public money into the development or let private dollars carry the cost of whatever may happen at the site are among the options. Tourism, industry, fisheries, storage — maybe some future use no one has ever really considered. Whatever may happen, next w...
The world will continue to need liquid fuels refined from crude oil for decades. But it likely will need less in the decades ahead as it transitions to renewable energy sources in hopes of stemming the damages caused by a warming planet. Which means oil companies generally are looking for the least risky projects, the environmentally smartest ones, the ones with the quickest payback to recover their investment. No producer wants to sink billions into a new development, only to find that delays, cost overruns and political or permitting...
A Southeast advocacy group dedicated to protecting the transboundary rivers that flow from Canada through Alaska to the sea want the British Columbia government to work with Alaska Indigenous people on mine permits the same as tribal members on the other side of the border. The group’s immediate concern is permitting of mines in British Columbia in the watersheds of the Stikine, Unuk and Taku rivers. The group fears any mine pollution will flow downriver, harming fisheries and other habitat. Under a 3-year-old law in British Columbia, the p...
Sen. Lisa Murkowski has requested $490 million for more than 130 Alaska projects in congressional appropriations bills under consideration in Congress. None of the money would be headed to Wrangell, though the community could benefit indirectly from statewide programs. Congress is working this month to approve spending on projects and government operations for 2023. When Murkowski visited Wrangell on Sept. 11, Borough Manager Jeff Good gave her a tour of the borough’s ongoing capital projects. They visited the water reservoir dams, Public S...
This year could look very different for the Wrangell High School boys basketball team. Already, the team is comprised of anywhere from 17 to 20 players, allowing coaches to modify their training routine. But first, many of their players have to finish wrestling, making it the first challenge the team faces this year. "We have ... kind of a big group that are still wrestling," said head coach Cody Angerman. "The crossover is tough on both (programs). It's tough on the wrestling program because...
Grapplers from all over Southeast traveled to Petersburg over the weekend to compete in the Viking Rumble tournament. Eleven different schools met on the mat, but incomplete round robins made it hard for the Wolves to earn first-place finishes. Wrestlers from Craig, Hoonah, Hydaburg, Ketchikan, Metlakatla, Mt. Edgecumbe, Sitka, Skagway, Thunder Mountain in Juneau and Wrangell high schools competed in Petersburg across various weight divisions. Katelyn Gillen was the only Wrangell wrestler to pla...
Residents will gather for a “Christ-moose” potluck at the Nolan Center at 5:30 p.m. Dec. 18 to celebrate the holiday season through food and fellowship. All are welcome to the free event, which will feature moose meat prepared by Jake Harris of the Stikine Inn. Attendees are encouraged to contribute their favorite side dish to the spread. The potluck is the first of its kind in three years, explained event organizer Lovey Brock. A similar event was held in 2019 — before pandemic fears hit — and boasted around 150 attendees, plus a wide array o...
The National Transportation Safety Board is calling for new federal regulations to safeguard Ketchikan flightseeing tours following years of deadly crashes, several of them involving cruise ship passengers and bad weather. Seven flightseeing crashes in and around Ketchikan since 2007 have killed 31 people and seriously injured 13 others despite a longstanding voluntary safety program signed by flight companies, according to a 20-page report the NTSB released Nov. 29. The agency wants the Federal Aviation Administration to replace the voluntary...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Dec. 1 proposed restrictions that would block plans for a copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region that is home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon run. A statement from the regional EPA office said discharges of dredged or fill material into the waters of the U.S. within the proposed Pebble Mine footprint in southwest Alaska would “result in unacceptable adverse effects on salmon fishery areas.” The rarely employed agency action would effectively veto the project b...
BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK, S.D. - Perched atop a fence at Badlands National Park, Troy Heinert peered from beneath his wide-brimmed hat into a corral where 100 wild bison awaited transfer to the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Descendants of bison that once roamed North America's Great Plains by the tens of millions, the animals would soon thunder up a chute, take a truck ride across South Dakota and join one of many burgeoning herds Heinert has helped reestablish on Native American lands. Heinert...
Alaska’s two U.S. senators joined 10 other Republicans on Nov. 29 in voting to advance legal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. The Respect for Marriage Act, which passed the Senate in a 61-36 vote, now goes to the House, which passed a different version of the bill earlier this year. The votes of both senators were expected; each senator had voted in favor of a procedural motion to advance the bill toward final passage two weeks ago. In a prepared statement, Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, said she was proud to vot...
A new lawsuit threatens to upend a landmark, four-decade-old revenue-sharing pact that has guided the distribution of more than $2.5 billion among Alaska’s Native corporations. The litigation stems from the 121-page, 1982 settlement agreement that has long defused financial disputes between the 12 regional Native corporations. That deal successfully outlined how the companies should share income from developing resources like forests, but didn’t specifically contemplate what should happen with money earned by preserving them. The new lawsuit, f...
Monday, Nov. 28 Found property. Welfare check. Civil issue. Welfare check. Tuesday, Nov. 29 Welfare check. Agency assist: Pretrial. Agency assist: Pretrial. Agency assist: Hoonah Police Department. Criminal mischief. Suspicious person. Wednesday, Nov. 30 Agency assist: Transportation Security Administration. Harassment. Citizen assist. Thursday, Dec. 1 Agency assist: Nolan Center. Warrant arrest: Failure to appear. Suspicious activity. Friday, Dec. 2 Agency assist: Petersburg Police Department. Vehicle unlock. Civil issue. Saturday, Dec. 3...
The biggest fish processing plant in the Haines borough will stay closed next summer for the third straight season, OBI Seafoods’ Excursion Inlet plant manager Tom Marshall said last week, citing a low pink salmon forecast and the company’s ability to handle the regional load at its Petersburg plant. The continued suspension of processing at Excursion means the borough will see another year of low raw fish tax revenue. Haines averaged about $200,000 in taxes on fish landed locally in the five years prior to the Excursion plant’s closure, compa...
JUNEAU (AP) — Republican Sarah Palin re-emerged in Alaska politics over a decade after resigning as governor with hopes of winning the state’s U.S. House seat. She had a lot going for her: unbeatable name recognition, the backing of former President Donald Trump in a state he carried twice, an unrivaled ability to attract national media attention. But she struggled to catch fire with voters, some of whom were put off by her 2009 resignation, and ran what critics saw as a lackluster campaign against a Republican endorsed by state party lea...
Rescuing a moose that fell into a Soldotna basement was not something that Kenai Peninsula firefighter Gunnar Romatz expected on his shift Nov. 20. Nonetheless, that’s just where Romatz found himself — helping extract a young moose from the lower level of a home, where the animal became trapped after falling through a window. “Like any curious human being, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I really want to be there for this because there’s no way anybody’s gonna believe this,’ ” he said a few hours after the rescue. “I can’t even believe it.” Romatz...
On Nov. 28, the cryptocurrency bank BlockFi filed for bankruptcy, the announcement coming less than three weeks after the financial implosion of FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The collapse of free-wheeling and unregulated cryptocurrencies is having an impact on investors who were at the bleeding edge of finance, but the impact on the $76.7 billion Alaska Permanent Fund has been muted, according to public records and statements from officials at the corporation that governs the fund. “For a while, we were getting a l...
