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All but seven of the 56 books the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District removed from school libraries must be reshelved, pending a trial next year, ruled U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason on Aug. 6. The banned books, including well-known titles like Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” and Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” were removed from schools last year without individual consideration of their content after parents and community members complained of “LGBTQ themes” or sexually explicit con...
Alaska’s population is set to decline by 14,000 residents by 2050, according to a new forecast from the Alaska Department of Labor, with Wrangell showing the highest rate of annual population loss over the period, dropping on average by 1.5% annually. The community’s population is forecast to drop to under 1,400 people by 2050, continuing its steady decline from 2,369 residents in the 2010 U.S. Census and 2,039 in last summer’s state estimate. The ongoing loss of working-age residents is a leading cause of the statewide population decli...
The Alaska Marine Highway System allowed only one week for public comment on its proposed ferry schedule for the upcoming fall and winter, but the draft is pretty much a non-issue for Wrangell: The level of service would be the same as it’s been the past couple of years. The schedule for October through April shows one ferry a week northbound and one a week southbound, the same as this summer, last winter and the summer before that. The stops would be southbound on Mondays and northbound on Fridays. The state released the draft schedule on J...
The Biden administration says that listing numerous Alaska king salmon populations under the Endangered Species Act could be warranted, and it now plans to launch a broader scientific study to follow its preliminary review. Citing the species’ diminished size at adulthood and spawning numbers below sustainable targets set by state managers, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced its initial conclusion in a 14-page federal notice on May 23. It said a January 2024 listing request from a Washington state-based conservation group had m...
Legislators from the Railbelt, which covers the state’s population centers from the Kenai Peninsula to Fairbanks, expect Southeast lawmakers to understand, to care and to spend state dollars on their constituents’ energy needs. They want money to help rebuild electrical transmission lines to move more renewable power and help from the state treasury to promote more natural gas production out of Cook Inlet. The Railbelt wants help for its local needs. Same for rural legislators who seek attention and funding from the state for a long list of loc...
Matanuska-Susitna Borough residents will have access to free or low-cost weapons training under a new borough grant program targeted at compensating for limited local law enforcement. Officials estimate that the $75,000 grant could pay for private firearms safety training for up to 300 residents over the next year. The grant was approved in a 5-2 vote by the borough assembly this month as part of the larger approval process for the borough’s $455 million budget for 2025. The program is designed to give residents the skills to respond to t...
The Ketchikan Gateway Borough is working to recover a $625,125 electronic payment that was sent to a fake vendor account on May 3, according to Borough Manager Ruben Duran. The case is under investigation by the FBI, and a claim has been filed with the borough’s insurer, Duran said. The borough has made arrangements to pay the real vendor with a check via certified mail. Duran provided an update to the borough assembly on May 6, followed by an interview with the Ketchikan Daily News on May 8. The borough had intended to pay the contractor on th...
A plan to grant special law enforcement powers to Chickaloon tribal police officers has been put on indefinite hold because state public safety officials feared it could lead to altercations between tribal officers and nontribal members, officials said May 6. The pilot plan, which was to be in place by mid-June, would have allowed Chickaloon police officers to enforce certain state laws and arrest members of the general public in a roughly 68-square-mile area near Sutton, northeast of Anchorage. It was designed to augment state trooper...
One proposal to solve the impending energy shortage for Alaska’s population centers is to go back in time. To the 1970s, when coal was king in the U.S. The governor, legislators, municipal officials and business leaders are worried that the Railbelt — the population corridor stretching south from Fairbanks, through the Matanuska Valley and Anchorage to the Kenai Peninsula — will run short of natural gas before the end of the decade. The region has lived off the nearby underground warehouse of natural gas from the Kenai Peninsula and Cook Inlet...
The Alaska Marine Highway System is waiting for the prognosis after a full-body scan of the state ferry Matanuska, looking for rusted steel — the equivalent of a cancer scan of the 61-year-old ship. The Matanuska has been out of service for 18 months after it went into the shop for its annual winter overhaul, only to find a lot more “wasted” (rusted) steel in its hull, decking and other areas of the ship than expected. That prompted the scan, which has been completed. Marine architects are working up a cost estimate, said Craig Tornga, marin...
Alaska Marine Highway System management has decided to cut back on advertising that for years promoted the state ferries as a scenic, leisurely way for summer travelers to tour Southeast. Though painful to admit, it’s the right decision. Nothing upsets customers more than to bite on advertising, book a ticket, plan a trip and then find themselves at the dock all dressed up with no place to go. “Because of our reliability with the fleet, we have consciously pulled back our advertising in the Lower 48 because we just disappoint people right now...
“Let me take you to one of my favorite places in Alaska that you’ve probably never heard of,” Danielle Marie Lister says in a recent Instagram video. Lister wears black bibs, a purple down jacket and thick white boots as she skips along the Haines Highway below a snow-covered mountain along with soft guitar music. The one-minute video includes shots of bald eagles on the Chilkat River, the slow waves of Portage Cove, and steam rising from a hot tub outside a yurt pressed against the Takshanuk Mountains. “I always love the contrast of the sma...
The state ferry Tustumena is preparing for its 60th birthday party this summer. Over the years, the vessel has become a familiar and important part of life in communities between Homer and Dutch Harbor. But after years in rough waters, the cost of keeping the Tustumena running is ballooning. "This ship is a floating museum piece," said John Mayer, who has captained the ship for years. The Tustumena exemplifies the storms that the Alaska Marine Highway System has weathered. In March, Seward...
The Alaska Marine Highway System’s ongoing crew shortage has eased up for entry-level steward positions but remains a significant problem in the wheelhouse and for engineers, likely keeping the Kennicott out of service again this summer. As of March 8, the state ferry system was short almost 50 crew of what it would need to put its full operational fleet to sea this summer, which means keeping the Kennicott tied to the dock, Craig Tornga, the system’s marine director, reported to a state Senate budget subcommittee on March 19. That is abo...
Alaska Department of Public Safety Commissioner James Cockrell told lawmakers on Feb. 6 that he doesn’t know how the state can justify the relative lack of resources it has provided to rural Alaska. “Since statehood, the state has followed a false pass on how we provide law enforcement services around this state,” he said. “We certainly have disproportionate resources in rural Alaska. And it’s shameful.” As bills to address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people in Alaska move through the legislative process, the state is re...
Crew shortages continue to plague the Alaska Marine Highway, the ferry system’s director told a gathering of Southeast officials last week. “Our biggest shortage is in the engineering department,” where the 54 ship engineers on the payroll as of Jan. 26 were far short of the 81 needed for full staffing, Craig Tornga told a gathering of community, business and government leaders at the Southeast Conference on Feb. 7 in Juneau. “We’re short in the wheelhouse,” he added, down eight from a full contingent of 79 in the master, chief mate, secon...
Numerous challenges are stopping the resumption of Alaska Marine Highway service to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, the ferry system’s director said at a conference of Southeast officials last week. During a Southeast Conference transportation symposium in Juneau on Feb. 8, Ketchikan Vice Mayor Glen Thompson asked for an update about service to the Canadian port, which was a regular stop for Alaska ferries for decades until 2019, with only a brief return to service in 2022. Craig Tornga, the ferry system’s marine director, listed the cha...
A new Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly resolution urges residents to own weapons and ammunition to compensate for limited local law enforcement in Alaska’s fastest-growing region. The action, which doesn’t have the power of law, reflects ongoing discussion in the region about the lack of borough policing powers as the state troopers struggle with continued staffing issues that have left the local trooper detachment with roughly 20% of its positions unfilled. Unlike Anchorage, which has lost residents overall for the past nine years, Mat...
The borough assembly has declared as “hazardous” and assigned a property value of zero to the two lots owned by victims of the deadly Nov. 20 landslide at 11-Mile Zimovia Highway, making the owners eligible to possibly receive state land as replacement for their unusable property. The owners or their estate could build on their new lots, hold them undeveloped or sell them and keep the proceeds, explained Hannah Uher-Koch, who runs the land grant program at the Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Mining, Land and Water. “There are no...
What if prized rare earth elements could be extracted from seaweed, avoiding the need to dig into the ground for the materials used in technology and renewable-energy equipment? That question will be addressed by a new project to examine whether those elements can be found in seaweed growing in the waters of Southeast Alaska. The University of Alaska Fairbanks-led project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a broader push to find and produce for domestic rare earth elements. It is one of three department-funded “algal m...
Partisan politics itself is not evil. Disruptive, yes. Phony, certainly. Shortsighted, no doubt about it. On its own, partisanship is a childish game played by adults who care more about headlines, fundraising and winning elections than anything else. But in recent years, partisanship has devolved into something much worse than a political shouting match. Stoked by social media, half-truths and everything but the truth, partisanship has grown into a divisive force that threatens the country by threatening our elections. Far too many Americans...
With the rusty Matanuska out of service pending repairs, the Kennicott scheduled for tie-up due to lack of crew and the Tazlina in the shipyard to add crew quarters, the state ferry system’s draft summer 2024 schedule is limited by the number of vessels in service and looks about the same as this past summer. The Columbia would make a weekly northbound stop in Wrangell on Sundays and a weekly southbound visit on Wednesdays on its run between Bellingham, Washington, and Southeast Alaska. The marine highway system released its draft schedule D...
The state ferry system has hired more crew members than have left the agency over the past four months, Marine Director Craig Tornga told a public advisory board on Friday, Dec. 1, a rarity for the system which has been plagued by a net outflow of workers. If the hiring gain continues, the Alaska Marine Highway System may be able to run both of its largest ships, the Columbia and Kennicott, next summer, which could allow for restoration of cross-Gulf routes and maybe even bringing back service to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. The ferry...
The 50-year-old state ferry Columbia has been pulled from service, with the Alaska Marine Highway System reporting repairs is expected to take a week. The problem is in the steering system, Sam Dapcevich, spokesman for the Alaska Department of Transportation, told the Ketchikan Daily News on Friday, Oct. 27. “It’s going to require a fairly extensive repair that’s going to take place down in Bellingham, (Washington),” Dapcevich said. The Columbia left Southeast Alaska on its regular southbound sailing Monday, Oct. 30, heading from Ketchik...
For the next week, Alaskans have a chance to register their opinions on the future of the state ferry system through an online survey that will be used to help create a long-range plan. The survey responses will be used over the next year to craft the “2045 Long-Range Plan” for the Alaska Marine Highway System, intended to establish its goals for service levels and operations beyond the more reactive, short-term decisions that have guided the system in recent years. AMHS General Manager Craig Tornga opened an Oct. 24 public meeting by des...
