Sorted by date Results 1070 - 1094 of 8169
Alaska was one of 15 states to reject federal funding that would have provided direct grocery assistance this summer to thousands of families with children in the state who are facing increased food insecurity and rising food costs. The new federal program would have meant an extra $120 per child in direct funds this summer to families who qualify for free or reduced lunches — about half of all kids in Alaska. Officials with Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration cited a major food stamps backlog at the Alaska Division of Public Assistance as the...
Successive marine heat waves appear to have doomed much of the chum salmon swimming in the ocean waters off Alaska in the past year and probably account for the scarcities that have strained communities along Western Alaska rivers in recent years, a newly published study found. In the much-warmer water temperatures that lingered in 2014-2019, juvenile chum salmon metabolism was super-charged, meaning they needed more food, said the study by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Alaska Department of Fish...
A polar bear found dead on Alaska’s North Slope is the first of the species known to have been killed by the highly pathogenic avian influenza that is circulating among animal populations around the world. The polar bear was found dead in October near Utqiagvik, the nation’s northernmost community, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation reported. The discovery of the virus in the animal’s body tissue, a process that required sampling and study by the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management and other agencies, confi...
Almost 110,000 Alaskans applied for the fall 2024 Permanent Fund dividend in the first eight days after the application period opened on Jan. 1. Applications close in 11 weeks, on March 31. Last year’s dividend was $1,312. This year’s amount will be determined as part of annual state budget deliberations, which will begin next week when legislators reconvene in Juneau. The annual dividend is paid from the state general fund, which gets most of its money from investment earnings generated by the $78 billion Alaska Permanent Fund and from oil...
Middle Ridge Road, heavily damaged and blocked in several places by a 3,400-foot-long landslide Nov. 20, will be out of service until the U.S. Forest Service can come up with a repair plan and funding for the project. "It is closed for the foreseeable future. ... We're talking a major project," said Austin O'Brien, interim district ranger for the Forest Service in Wrangell. Several stretches of the road are covered in mud, trees and debris, cutting off access to the Forest Service's Middle Ridge...
The port commission has recommended to the borough assembly approval of an ordinance that would require owners who moor their vessels at a reserved spot in Wrangell harbors to either provide proof of marine insurance or pay a monthly surcharge on their moorage fee. Officials have been considering since 2022 adding the new requirement to municipal code to help shield the borough from the cost of raising and disposing of boats that sink in the harbors. “The cost of recovering sunken vessels has significantly increased, and the community can no l...
The Alaska Department of Transportation is seeking bids for rockfall-prevention work just past 6-Mile Zimovia Highway in an area known as The Bluffs and prone to rocks breaking off from the hillside and landing in the right of way. The work is scheduled for this summer. Bids were due Jan. 9. The work will include drilling and installing into the rock face more than 300 linear feet of bolts, each at least 25 feet long and grouted in place. The job also will include clearing work at the top of the slope. An engineer’s estimate puts the e...
The borough and the Alaska Department of Transportation have found an answer to preserve the Wrangell Golf Club’s low-cost use of 33 acres of state land on Ishiyama Drive for the nine-hole Muskeg Meadows course. When the state last year determined it needed to start charging a market-rate land rent to the nonprofit, the borough figured out it could lease the land from the state at no cost – and then sublease it to nonprofit for $1 a month. The borough assembly signed off on the deal Dec. 12. The golf club has operated Muskeg Meadows for more th...
The intent is to promote Wrangell’s unique attractions, its wildlife, culture and history, aiming to attract more independent travelers to town. “Our goal is to establish a steady stream of visitors,” Kate Thomas, the borough’s economic development director, said of the town’s new Travel Wrangell marketing plan. “It’s bringing in that independent traveler,” she explained in an interview last month. The objective is to have visitors “spend more money and more time” in town. The marketing plan has been under development since last May, a month a...
Installation of security cameras at eight port and harbor sites has started. “Chatham just showed up today,” Harbormaster Steve Miller said on Jan. 2, referring to Juneau-based Chatham Electric, which has a $495,000 borough contract for the work. “We did all the site inspections for the camera locations. … We’ll be working on it, and we should be done by the end of March,” Miller said. Originally intended to be installed in late summer through fall of 2023, Miller said he was unsure of the reason for the postponement, although he believes it...
This fall’s energy relief payment, which would go out along with the annual Permanent Fund dividend, is looking smaller than expected several months ago. The “bonus” on the 2024 dividend would come from state revenues in excess of what is needed to cover the spending plan approved by lawmakers and the governor last spring. The Legislature included a provision in the state budget that said half of any surplus would go into savings and half into an energy relief payment to Alaskans. The latest projection for the fall payment is about $175, Alexe...
After this year's Fourth of July celebration, resident and military veteran Liz Roundtree was troubled by the state of U.S. flags that had been turned in for disposal at the American Legion where she's a member. "After the Fourth of July, finding flags - even just turned in to us that need to be disposed – they're not folded in any way. They're just like, crumpled up and thrown into a bag of some sort," she said. Roundtree was also concerned about the state of how some flags were kept in s...
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the leader of Kake’s tribal government asked federal managers to open an emergency hunt, citing the community’s fears about having enough food. The request was approved by a federal management agency, the Federal Subsistence Board, and the 2020 harvest of moose and deer went ahead, supplying 135 households with meat. The opening of the hunt prompted a lawsuit from Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration — which is now, for a second time, appealing a defeat it suffered in federal court a...
The Boeing jetliner that lost a door panel inflight over Oregon on Jan. 5 was not being used for flights to Hawaii after a warning light that could have indicated a pressurization problem lit up on three separate occasions over the past month, a federal official said Sunday, Jan. 7. Alaska Airlines decided to restrict the aircraft from long flights over water so the plane “could return very quickly to an airport” if the warning light reappeared, said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board. Homendy cautioned that the...
Alaska is expected to gain 5,400 jobs in 2024, an increase of 1.7% over the past year and enough to nudge total state employment above 2019 levels for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, according to the newly published annual forecast from the Alaska Department of Labor. The job outlook was published in the January issue of the department’s monthly research magazine, Alaska Economic Trends. The “major catalyst” for job growth, the forecast said, will be big projects: federally funded infrastructure projects and minin...
Transgender girls in Alaska are now banned from competing on girls school sports teams. The new rule took effect in November. The board of the Alaska School Activities Association — which regulates school sports in the state — voted 5-3 in October to adopt the rule affecting transgender girls. The rule was required by the state Board of Education, which voted in August to require that the association create a sports division limited to students who are assigned female at birth. That excludes transgender girls. More than half of U.S. states hav...
Just like many other Alaska communities, the service provider in Ketchikan is dropping cable TV and moving to streaming. The Ketchikan Public Utilities Telecommunications Division has announced it will stop offering cable television services in September 2024. The city-owned utility said the changing landscape of how people view their video entertainment was a big factor in the decision, with streaming services largely taking over while cable TV subscriptions have declined. The decision not only was made in response to the drop in cable TV...
Alaska’s campaign ethics commission found that opponents of ranked-choice voting violated the state’s campaign ethics laws for months by funneling most of their funding through a tax-exempt church and inaccurately reporting their funding to the state. In a decision released Jan. 3, the Alaska Public Offices Commission issued more than $94,000 in fines against groups working to repeal Alaska’s voting system. Former Alaska Attorney General Kevin Clarkson, who represents the opponents of ranked-choice voting fined by the commission, said they...
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...
Water is warming up at the Klawock River Hatchery on Prince of Wales Island, a Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association facility that fertilizes and incubates 5 million coho eggs each year using Klawock River water. Hatchery manager Troy Liske said water flowing by the hatchery in 2023 was warmer by an average of 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit than in years past. Warmer water temperatures are speeding up the salmon development process and changing the dynamics of hatchery work, which could pose future challenges, Liske said. SSRAA has...
It’s been eight years since the state last increased its per-student funding formula for public schools — a 0.5% nudge that year — and years of stagnant funding have caught up with districts statewide, including Wrangell. “We have to count on funding this year,” Schools Superintendent Bill Burr said. An increase in the state formula “is essential to us.” The state’s K-12 foundation funding covers almost 60% of the Wrangell district’s $5.3 million operating budget for the 2023-2024 school year, with borough funds filling about 30% and mostly fe...
Alaska's senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, told community leaders she will push for federal funding to bolster monitoring efforts of hillsides out the road. "What we need to have is greater monitoring and greater data that will help inform. That is something that I'm committed to working on," she said at a meeting with borough officials on Dec. 20 in Wrangell. "How do you give people that certainty that your home sitting on the beach where you thought you were always safe, and now you're looking...
After sitting vacant for almost three years — spending about half that time on the market — the borough is finally seeing interest from private parties in buying the former hospital property on Bennett Street. Three parties have expressed interest, said Interim Borough Manager Mason Villarma, adding he anticipated at least one offer by the start of the new year. Hopefully, the borough could sell off the 1.94-acre parcel by February, he said. “The value is getting rid of the property,” Villarma said in an interview before Christmas. The borough...
Over the past decade, landslides have cost Southeast Alaska communities in both death and destruction - 11 deaths and tens of millions of dollars in property and infrastructure damage. Now communities around Southeast are reckoning with a future in which more destructive landslides are likely, as climate change fuels the extreme rainfall events and storms that scientists say may lead to increasingly powerful events in the future. The most recent major landslide, on Nov. 20 at 11-Mile Zimovia...
Wrangell is No. 16 on the statewide priority list and unlikely to receive any school repair money this year from the state’s Major Maintenance Grant Fund. The list, prepared each year by the Alaska Department of Education after reviewing engineering and condition reports on school buildings, determines which districts receive state funding for their priority repair and rebuilding projects. The Wrangell School District had requested $6.5 million in state money that it would use with $3.5 million approved by voters in 2022 to make $10 million o...