Sorted by date Results 2299 - 2323 of 7954
The summer Dungeness crab commercial season ended Saturday, with reports of low catch rates. “On a regionwide level, there are no bright spots, and generally regionwide catch rates have been down,” said Joseph Stratman, the lead Southeast crab biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. It was a shorter-than-typical summer Dungeness season for the 201 permitted crabbers in Southeast. The department trimmed about two weeks from the season after data collected from the first week of the season, which started June 15, pointed to an estim...
Up to 82,000 rural Alaskans will see lower electric bills because of legislation signed into law last month. Senate Bill 243, passed by the Legislature this spring, raises the maximum subsidy under the state’s Power Cost Equalization program, which reduces the cost of electricity in rural Alaska. Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed the measure into law on July 14. The bill, authored by Bethel Sen. Lyman Hoffman, increases the maximum available subsidy from 500 kilowatt-hours per month to 750 kilowatt-hours per month. The average Alaska home consumes 5...
The Alaska Department of Law issued an opinion July 25 saying public money can be spent for homeschool students to attend one or two classes in a private school, but cannot be used for most of a student’s private school tuition. The 19-page opinion said it’s sometimes legal to use public funds for private school classes through the state program that pays for students to attend a correspondence school or homeschool. “But the more it looks like you’re just trying to send your kid to private school and get subsidized by the state, I think t...
Alaska cable company GCI has no immediate plans to drop the right-wing TV channel One America News, a spokesperson said July 27. Verizon, the last remaining major carrier to carry the channel, stopped airing the channel last Saturday. That action follows a similar move in April by DirectTV. Their decisions leave the channel, once a reliable advocate for the administration of President Donald Trump, without a nationwide audience and without the revenue paid by those carriers. Scott Robson, a senior research analyst at S&P Global Market Intellige...
A bill signed into Alaska law last Thursday will make it possible for the state to prosecute sexual assault on the basis of a victim saying “no,” instead of requiring physical force or threats for such assaults to be considered crimes. The bill — which will also reduce the maximum amount of time allowed for rape kit processing and reclassify revenge porn cases as domestic violence crimes to offer better protection for victims — was one of three pieces of public safety legislation that Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed into law. The comprehensive sex-cr...
A proposal to build a boat haul-out facility in Sitka with the money the city received from selling its community hospital property will be on the Oct. 4 city election ballot. On a 6-0 vote July 26, the assembly gave final approval to an ordinance on the ballot question. If passed by the voters, up to $8.18 million from the 2021 sale of the hospital building and property to SEARHC would go toward construction of a haul-out and boatyard at the Gary Paxton Industrial Park. Sitka has not had a boat haul-out — an important piece of i...
The state ferry Tustumena was tied up in Homer for several days last week, lacking enough crew to operate. Due to crew shortages, the Tustumena’s sailings were canceled as of July 26, and were scheduled to resume seven days later on Tuesday, according to an announcement from the Alaska Marine Highway System. “A critical crew shortage required the vessel to stay in port for safety reasons,” the state reported July 28. “We ran out of stewards,” Alaska Department of Transportation Commissioner Ryan Anderson said during a presentation to the Junea...
After two years of construction, the new $3.1 million Metlakatla Veterans Cemetery officially opened on July 25. A pair of seven-foot-tall totem poles carved by David Boxely were dedicated to the cemetery at the event. Both totem poles represent traditional Tsimshian warriors. The Fourth Generation Dancers, a Metlakatla dancing group, performed a warrior’s song during the totem pole unveiling ceremony. “It’s so important to recognize our Native American, Native Alaskans who have served our nation and the families that have sacrificed,” U.S. Un...
The borough assembly is considering whether to seek voter approval to sell $10.5 million in bonds for the first phase of rehab work at the rot-damaged 35-year-old Public Safety Building, and $4.5 million in bonds to help pay for roof, siding and boiler work at school buildings that range in age from 35 to 53 years old. Repayment of the bonds would come from municipal revenues, particularly property taxes. The assembly was scheduled to meet in a work session Tuesday evening to discuss the proposal, followed by the regular meeting where members w...
More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, parents across Alaska are still struggling with long wait lists, high costs and limited capacity at child care centers. Federal grant funds administered by the state and a child care nonprofit are helping providers cope with financial struggles and staff retention. However, the money is available only to licensed child care facilities — which Wrangell does not have. But help may be coming later this year. The state plans to distribute federal money as community grants to help new providers s...
The top employees of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. are some of the highest-paid public workers in Alaska, but with wages rising across the country and employers competing for skilled labor, even the $80 billion Permanent Fund is struggling to keep employees from leaving. Nine of the corporation’s 66 employees have quit this year, including the manager of the corporation’s highest-earning investments and the entire three-person team in charge of finalizing trades. Seven other positions are new, and filling them is expected to be difficult. The...
It would be hard to miss a nearly 7-foot moose in downtown Wrangell. Such is the case with a new addition in front of the Alaska Waters and 56 North storefront. A driftwood statue of a moose gifted to the business by its creator is helping to attract customers, generating selfie opportunities and producing lots of offers. Named "Spruce the Moose," the statue was created by Sigrid Vanek between Memorial Day and the end of June when she returned to Soldotna. "I've created probably about five...
From Wednesday through Sunday, the schedule for BearFest is loaded with something for all ages, whether games and art workshops or food and educational symposiums. Since the event is focused on bears, there will be bear safety classes, a look at the new Anan Wildlife Observatory for bear viewing, a history of bears in national parks, and bear conservation among other bear-related topics. BearFest organizer Sylvia Ettefagh said in an interview earlier this month that the mission of the five-day...
Two businesses based in Wrangell and one looking to be based here are among a dozen Southeast finalists for a pair of $25,000 cash prizes. Path to Prosperity, a competition for small businesses and start-ups in Southeast, announced 12 finalists, two of which have a chance to win $25,000 to help grow their business and “assist Southeast Alaska entrepreneurs in contributing to a sustainable and regenerative tourism industry in the region that is community-led and locally owned,” according to a statement issued by Spruce Root, the Jun...
In November of last year, Tlingit & Haida Community and Behavioral Services opened a healing center in Juneau to provide care to tribal citizens and other Alaska Natives. At the time, care was provided through Zoom Health or over the phone. The center was able to open its doors this year for in-person appointments but still relies on telehealth to reach a greater number of patients who might not have access to such services otherwise. Healing center staff provides a mix of wholistic healing and western treatment for crisis and access help,...
After mostly dry weather in June and early July, the more typical rain of late has helped refill the community’s water reservoirs. The lower reservoir was looking pretty low around the Fourth of July and the borough was looking to start siphoning water from the upper reservoir to ensure enough supply to meet community needs, Public Works Director Tom Wetor said last week. “That’s when we got all the rain,” he said, adding that water levels are much improved. “It looks like we’re going to get through this year without any major factors.” Rain is...
A planned project to stabilize Wrangell’s upper water reservoir dam is contingent on finding out just how stable the dam is. Core drilling is necessary to determine the materials and density of the dam which is built of a log-crib core covered with earth. But before the drilling can be done, a stabilization assessment plan had to be submitted to the state for approval. The core drilling “is part of the upper dam stabilization analysis project we are pursuing with (engineering firm) Shannon & Wilson,” said Amber Al-Haddad, borough capital facil...
The COVID-19 case count in Wrangell dropped last week to less than half the number of the previous week, but the infection numbers for cruise ship travelers to Alaska was double the rate of the previous four weeks. A highly infectious variant of the coronavirus is pushing up case counts in Alaska and nationwide, though illnesses are not as severe and hospitalization rates much lower than in previous waves, state and federal health officials report. The state’s coronavirus data dashboard reported 21 new cases in Wrangell for the seven days e...
Bobby Bolen is trying to fill around 50 teaching positions at the North Slope Borough School District. “This is our focus 24 hours a day right now — to get classrooms staffed for students,” Bolen said. Bolen is the brand-new human resources director at the district, which has about 2,000 students in 12 schools, some of which start as soon as Aug. 8. He’s exploring options like long-term substitutes and the prospect of international teachers to round out the district’s usual teaching staff of about 170. “Our worst-case scenario would be distance...
Shellfish hatcheries could be in Alaska’s future, under legislation recently signed into law. The measure allows the Department of Fish and Game to manage shellfish enhancement and restoration projects. Restoration projects are designed to bring a struggling stock back to a self-sustaining level, while enhancement projects would boost the stock to allow for commercial harvest. The new laws give the department another tool to address declining shellfish stock, such as red and blue king crab, sea cucumber, abalone and razor clams, said K...
Joseph Tagaban is excited to suit up for the Petersburg High School basketball team this winter as a sophomore. A year ago, that was anything but a certainty. In December 2020, Tagaban was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a potentially aggressive form of cancer. The 15-year-old spent the better part of a year in Seattle receiving treatments, and his cancer is in remission. Now, after a recent meeting with an NBA superstar, Tagaban is ready to take on opponents on the court. Tagaban met wit...
Three Haines commercial fishermen caught a 425-pound halibut measuring 91 inches in length. “It was just an epic fish,” said fisherman Cole Thomas, who hooked the fish with his father and captain Bill Thomas and friend Jeff Wackerman. “This one is a lot more special than most.” The three caught the halibut earlier this month in Icy Strait, near Point Adolphus, with a commercial longline using cod and humpy salmon heads as bait. “I could see the line was going straight down. That means something big’s coming. I was telling my friend (Jeff): It...
The state has sued the U.S. Department of the Interior in an attempt to hold the federal government responsible for the identification of thousands of polluted sites on land given to Alaska Native corporations. A complete inventory is a first step in the state’s ongoing efforts to hold the federal government responsible for cleaning the sites. The state argues that pollution left by the U.S. military and other federal agencies has prevented the development of land transferred from the federal government under the Alaska Native Claims S...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy will sign a bill giving state recognition to Alaska’s 229 federally recognized Native tribes, the Alaska Federation of Natives said last week. In a ceremony scheduled for this Thursday, the governor will also sign bills creating child welfare and education agreements between the state and tribal governments, AFN said. State recognition is not expected to affect tribes’ legal relations with the state, but supporters have said it is an important symbolic statement by the state, which has historically fought efforts by tri...
For Alaska salmon fishing, the summer of 2022 is the best of times and the worst of times. In the Bristol Bay region, the sockeye salmon run and harvest amounts set new records, as was predicted in the preseason forecast. As of July 18, the run had totaled over 73.7 million salmon, with a harvest of over 56.3 million. The previous record was set just last year, with a 67.7 million run of sockeyes and a third-biggest-ever harvest of nearly 42 million of the fish. But along the Yukon River, a prized salmon run is heading toward a worst-ever seaso...
