Sorted by date Results 1072 - 1096 of 7954
Clint Kolarich, who served as Wrangell's district ranger since June 2019, has moved to Ketchikan to work as one of the Tongass National Forest's two deputy forest supervisors. He officially stepped into the new job on Sept. 13. District employee Austin O'Brien will step in as his interim replacement for the next 120 days. In the Wrangell district, Kolarich was responsible for the management of the area's natural resources. "It's all the folks in the district that do the work," he said. "The dist...
Wrangell may soon be home to its own unique variety of beer. James Leslie of Alaska Waters has plans to open the town’s first brewery in a century, and though he still has plenty of permitting hurdles left to clear, the borough assembly had no objection to his state brewery license at its Sept. 26 meeting. He hopes to start brewing in winter of next year at the very earliest. Opening a brewery “has always been bouncing around in my head,” said Leslie. “I’ve messed around with brewing a little bit. It would be cool if there was a brewery h...
The community’s burn pit at the solid waste transfer station on the north end of the island is closed until further notice after a rockslide Friday morning, Oct. 6, destroyed the steel racks, I-beams and concrete blocks at the facility. “Due to concerns with stability of the cliffside, and the need to rebuild the burn pit, wood waste, brush and large burnables will not be accepted until further notice,” said a borough notice issued on Friday. “The area around the burn pit has been barricaded off and is off-limits to the public.” Though th...
Alaska Seaplanes has decided to shut down its Wrangell and Petersburg operations, citing poor economics. Its last flights to the communities are scheduled for Oct. 31. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t financially sustainable with the ridership,” Carl Ramseth, general manager, said Thursday, Oct. 5. “It hurts to pull out of those two communities.” Alaska Seaplanes started scheduled service into Petersburg in spring 2021, with daily flights from Juneau, and added a Sitka-Petersburg-Wrangell-Sitka flight in May 2022. The air service, which was founded i...
New voices are sought in addition to returning singers as the community chorale begins rehearsals for the 2023 Christmas concert on Monday, Oct. 16, in the high school music room. “I never know until we have our first rehearsal,” chorale director Bonnie Demerjian said of how many people to expect at the first rehearsal. “We have a group of people that have been with the (chorale) well over 20 years, and then every year we get new people, so it’s always a surprise.” While the chorale is always looking for new participants, Demerjian said she...
The American Legion’s Christmas party for children, now in its 13th year, came from a suggestion by Marilyn Mork’s daughter, Jenny, after they had attended a Christmas party for kids in town. “They had a party which was like, hot dogs and hot cocoa or something like that,” Mork said. “Santa was there, and they all got to see Santa, and got a candy cane, and an orange or apple or something. And that was it.” Afterward, Mork remembered her daughter’s suggestion. “Jenny said, ‘Wouldn’t be awesome if we could … give them a gift?’” While the par...
Commercial trolling for king salmon in Southeast is back on the desk of the National Marine Fisheries Service, following on judicial rulings this past summer that saw the fishery shut down — and then reinstated — as a case brought by environmentalists wound its way through the courts. NMFS issued notice on Oct. 4 that it is beginning work on an environmental impact statement and review of alternatives to its incidental take permit which allows Southeast trollers to harvest kings, many of which are destined for the Pacific Northwest feeding gro...
First-time candidate John DeRuyter won a three-year term on the school board in the only contested race in the Oct. 3 municipal election, which drew the fewest number of voters to the polls in years. The turnout was down 64% from last year’s election, when the mayor’s office and two bond issues were on the ballot. The borough assembly certified the election results on Oct. 5, with 192 votes cast on election day and 26 absentee and early votes added to the count. The total of 218 ballots is down from 602 votes cast in the 2022 election; 486 vot...
Alaskans have high rates of chronic health conditions that can lead to death, and they are failing to follow lifestyles that would keep those chronic conditions at bay, according to a newly released state report. Two-thirds of Alaska adults are overweight or obese, nearly a third have high blood pressure and 27% have high cholesterol, according to the state Department of Health’s annual Alaska Chronic Disease Facts report. COVID-19 became the third-leading cause of death for Alaskans in 2021, after cancer and heart disease, and the various c...
The Alaska Division of Public Assistance has temporarily stopped dropping people from Medicaid for paperwork-related reasons after thousands of low-income Alaskans — including families with children — lost health coverage that they may still be eligible to receive. Nearly 14,000 households have lost their Medicaid coverage in the past two months. Almost 265,000 households were enrolled in the program as recently as April, before the state embarked on the federally required review of participants’ eligibility. The state Division of Public Assis...
Almost five years after the original petition was filed, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has ruled that the complaints against mining activity in British Columbia warrant fact-finding and further analysis, which could result in a determination that pollution puts the health and rights of Alaska Natives downriver of the mining at risk. The ruling found the petition “admissible” and within the commission’s jurisdiction to determine whether the mining and Canadian government and British Columbia approvals violated the Alaska tribe...
Borough Manager Jeff Good submitted his resignation on Sept. 27 after nearly two years of service. He has accepted a civil engineering job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs which will allow him to live in Wrangell and also spend more time with family in Oklahoma and Texas. The assembly will formally accept Good’s resignation and discuss a succession plan at its Tuesday, Oct. 10, meeting. The borough may hire a new interim manager internally or conduct a more widespread search to find a permanent replacement before Good’s last day on Jan. 1,...
The Stikine Sportsmen Association is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the conviction of whoever illegally killed a cow moose and left the carcass to rot in the woods south of town. A hiker discovered the kill and reported it Sept. 24, said Chadd Yoder, the state wildlife trooper in Wrangell. After inspecting the carcass, he estimated it had been dead five to 10 days. The moose was “human killed,” and all of the meat left at the site, Yoder said Friday, Sept. 29, declining to share too many details about the ongoing inv...
The effort to extend the Mount Dewey trail has hit an unexpected bump in the road. The only company that bid on the project, Ketchikan Ready-Mix, asked over half a million dollars more than the borough had budgeted to improve the trail’s accessibility and minimize wetland impacts. The trail extension is currently funded at $947,000, a figure that includes construction, inspection and administration costs. The budget is mostly federal funds. Ketchikan Ready-Mix offered to take on the project for $1,532,580. The borough has been working to improv...
For the first time since the pandemic, Wrangell High School students traveled to Shakes Glacier to survey the area and measure the rate that the glacier is receding. Students have been recording the glacier's movements since 2011. This year's cohort included freshman Andrei Bardin-Siekawitch, junior Aubrey Wynne and junior Della Churchill. The trio submitted applications to join the Sept. 7 trip, where they learned about surveying technology, data collection and environmental changes. They also...
A couple of Wrangell-area U.S. Forest Service cabins will have new 16-foot aluminum boats next year, courtesy of a national nonprofit organization. The new boats will go to two of the most popular cabins in the area: Middle Ridge, accessible by former logging roads near the center of Wrangell Island, and Virginia Lake, on the mainland across the Back Channel from town. The SeaArk boats were donated by the National Forest Foundation, a congressionally chartered organization that provides funds for conservation and recreation opportunities in...
The school district is looking at how to cover the bills for sports team travel to state competition last year, this year and in future years, and will hear from the community at a work session Oct. 16. The state travel budget is about $39,000 in the hole from last year’s spending, with no money in the account to cover any travel this school year, Kristy Andrew, district business manager said. The district does not intend to block any student athletes from traveling to state competition this year but does need to find a way to cover the expense...
Every Monday morning, Jenn Tucker harvests 3,600 living plants from one of the shipping containers that serves as a hydroponic farm and fills piles of crates for delivery across Ketchikan. Tucker is the farm manager for Outpost Agriculture, a nonprofit that set up its first hydroponic farm in Ketchikan last year and is eyeing development of similar, controlled environment agriculture operations across Alaska. The Outpost farm building on North Tongass Highway in Ketchikan is an assemblage of eig...
Mike Hoyt, who started work as the school district's activities director on Sept. 22, is no stranger to Wrangell. His mother, Diane Comer, graduated high school here. His father, Mike Hoyt, was born in Wrangell. And his grandmother, Ethel Lund, who died last year, grew up in town and helped found the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. Though Hoyt grew up elsewhere, "I've been here pretty frequently throughout my life." He moved to Wrangell a couple of months ago. In addition to taking...
As the holiday season approaches and online shopping continues to rise, Wrangell's delivery service faces challenges getting its job done in a timely fashion as it contends with missing address information. Chris and Dixie Booker, who own C&D Deliveries, play detective, using Facebook and other resources to lead them to the right location. "We have a bit of investigative work to do ourselves," Chris Booker said. "Our company is in charge of figuring out those kinds of situations. It gets to be...
The Wrangell Cooperative Association is taking steps to reduce the harm caused by fentanyl, opiates and other illegal drugs by providing free resources to community members experiencing addiction. As of Sept. 26, fentanyl test strips are available at the WCA office, Irene Ingle Public Library and the upstairs bathroom at the Kadin Building, where the state’s part-time Public Health Office is located. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 100 times more powerful than morphine, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Since it i...
The SEARHC Wrangell Medical Center wants to help the community prepare for the respiratory illness season and will offer flu and COVID-19 vaccination clinics this fall and also provide RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine shots as soon as they become available. Flu shots, including a supply of high-dose vaccines for people 65 and older, will be provided at the annual community flu clinic Saturday, Nov. 4, reported Randi Yancey, medical office coordinator at the SEARHC facility. The clinic will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. “Patients can c...
Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, which was in place for victories last year by the state’s first Democratic U.S. House member in half a century and the reelection of one of the last remaining moderate Republican U.S. senators, has become a test case for a nation struggling with political polarization. To fans, Alaska’s system shows how voters can reduce extremism and increase civility in government. To detractors, it is an overly complex system that fails to reflect true voter preferences and harms loyal party candidates, especially conser...
The Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.’s investment earnings were again less than withdrawals in the 12 months ending in June, according to preliminary data scheduled to be released at the corporation’s annual meeting this week in Anchorage. The corporation, which manages the $74.9 billion Alaska Permanent Fund, earned a 5.18% return, less than its goal of 7.97%. Since 2018, an annual transfer from the Permanent Fund to the state treasury has been Alaska’s largest source of general-purpose revenue, paying for dividends and public services acros...
The plane that crashed last month in Southwest Alaska, killing Eugene “Buzzy” Peltola Jr., was loaded down with about 520 pounds of moose meat and antlers, according to the first report on the crash released Thursday, Sept. 28, by the National Transportation Safety Board. Peltola, the husband of Alaska U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, was flying a second and final load of meat out of a remote camp when the crash occurred, investigators said in a five-page preliminary report. A hunter told investigators that the second load was 50 to 70 pounds hea...
