Sorted by date Results 276 - 300 of 1629
Alaska Airlines has agreed to buy Hawaiian Airlines in a $1.9 billion deal, putting it on track for a potential clash with the Biden administration that has shown wariness about consolidation in the airline industry. The combined company would keep both airlines’ brands, rooted in the nation’s 49th and 50th states. The two airlines announced the deal on Sunday, Dec. 3. The combined business would be based in Seattle, with Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci at its head, though Hawaiian Airlines would maintain its key operations hub in Hon...
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...
A petition is being circulated, asking the state ferry system to change the name of the LeConte, the latest in a series of efforts around the country to strip the names of people who enslaved others from public spaces. The change.org petition, posted Nov. 12 by Petersburg resident Terrence Daignault, asks the Alaska Marine Highway System to add the topic to an upcoming meeting agenda. “Joseph LeConte was a slave-owning Georgian who believed in racial superiority,” the petition states. “He never once stepped foot in the state of Alaska and d...
If it still seems strange to think of fish growing on farms, it shouldn’t. The global industry has had to grow. Demand for seafood is soaring and will continue to rise. But the oceans are giving up all they can: Production of wild fish around the world has been flat since about 1990. And as the fish-farming industry has grown, the problems of large-scale operations have grown with it. Many are like problems that face massive chicken, pig and cattle operations. The farms and the waste from them can degrade and pollute nearby ecosystems, d...
Subsistence representatives for Southeast have weighed in on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration planning process that is working to identify potential sites for commercial seaweed, kelp and shellfish farms in Alaska waters. In its comments to NOAA, the Southeast Alaska Subsistence Regional Advisory Council stated its concern that additional mariculture sites not conflict with subsistence harvest areas. NOAA is tasked with identifying 10 Aquaculture Opportunity Areas in the U.S. by 2025, in an effort to advance domestic...
Nearly 80 Alaska tribes are calling on the Biden administration to retain decades-old protections for 28 million acres of land scattered across large swaths of Alaska. The administration is conducting an environmental review to weigh the impacts of potentially opening some or all of the land to future uses that include mining. The protections were created in the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, putting the lands off-limits to uses such as mineral, oil and gas extraction. The lands include vast swaths overseen by the Bureau of Land...
A coalition of hemp growers and manufacturers has sued the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, claiming that new limits on intoxicating hemp products are unconstitutional. The lawsuit, by the Alaska Industrial Hemp Association and four businesses, was filed Nov. 2 in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. Attorney Christopher Hoke, representing the plaintiffs, said the rules mean that virtually every hemp-derived product made in the state and for sale in Alaska — drinks, gummies, cookies and more — will become illegal. “We’re just harming...
Alaska is warming at two or three times the U.S. rate, with impacts ranging from individuals’ health and safety to the military security of the nation, according to a new federal report. The Fifth National Climate Assessment, a multiagency scientific report issued Nov. 14 by the Biden administration in accordance with federal law, includes a chapter devoted specifically to Alaska. Among the most profound impacts of climate change in Alaska are threats to surface construction, such as roads, and buildings, which are now much more costly to maint...
The Sitka city clerk has rejected a second application to gather signatures for putting an initiative on the 2024 ballot to limit the number of cruise ship visitors to the Southeast community. City Attorney Brian Hanson recommended rejection of the application on the grounds that the proposed ordinance “would not be enforceable as a matter of law.” The attorney said, “Initiatives must be drafted clearly enough so that the voters know what they are voting on and so future disputes over the initiative’s meaning are avoided.” The initiativ...
From a prison cell in California, federal prosecutors allege, a 56-year-old inmate directed an Alaska drug trafficking ring that in recent years smuggled huge quantities of fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine to some of the state’s smallest villages through a network of postal shippers and drug couriers. In Alaska, meanwhile, a woman incarcerated at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center recruited a fellow inmate on the verge of release to join the drug ring, federal prosecutors wrote in an indictment unsealed in October. That woman, the U.S. A...
The U.S. Coast Guard said two of four crew members injured in a helicopter crash near Petersburg during a search and rescue mission late at night Nov. 13 have been released from the hospital. The other two members, who were seriously injured, remained hospitalized at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle as of Nov. 15, but their condition had improved, said Lt. Cmdr. Michael Salerno, a public affairs officer for U.S. Coast Guard Alaska. The two were listed in fair condition, according to an...
The Sitka assembly has approved a one-time payment of $300 to all residential utility customers, spending more than $1 million of the city’s higher-than-expected sales tax haul this past fiscal year. The ordinance passed on a 5-2 vote on Nov. 14. The $300 will be applied to residential accounts starting late this month, city staff said. “Even as I was running, I had people always coming up to me, saying ‘we need help with utilities,’” Assembly Member Chris Ystad said. “That was a constant theme. And another constant theme was ‘how does t...
Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom is running for Alaska’s lone seat in the U.S. House, challenging Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola in the 2024 election. In her campaign announcement on Nov. 14, Dahlstrom dubbed herself “a conservative Republican, law enforcement leader, military and veterans advocate.” Dahlstrom, 66, has served as lieutenant governor for less than a year. Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy tapped her as his running mate in 2022. Before that, she served as commissioner of the Department of Corrections. Dahlstrom also served in the state...
Alaska’s minimum wage will increase on Jan. 1 from $10.85 to $11.73 an hour, in accordance with a law put in place by a 2014 citizen initiative, the state Department of Labor announced. The law mandates regular increases in the minimum wage to match inflation rates as determined by the Consumer Price Index in Anchorage. Compared to the rest of the nation, the state’s minimum wage is “a little bit middling right now,” said Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO. It appears on track to stay that way for at least the near term. Even after t...
The state council that sets and enforces standards for employment, training and certification of law enforcement officers in Alaska has approved a proposal to lower the minimum age of state prison guards from 21 to 18 years old. The proposal requires regulatory approval, however, before it can take effect. Alaska’s Department of Corrections is feeling the same hiring pressures as law enforcement across the country and needs a wider applicant pool, Commissioner Jen Winkelman told the Police Standards Council in its September meeting. “These are...
After recent years of record or near-record runs and harvests, Bristol Bay sockeye salmon numbers are expected to return to more average levels next year, according to state biologists. The 2024 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run is expected to total 39 million fish, with a predicted range between about 25 million and 53 million fish, according to a preliminary forecast released Nov. 3 by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. That is 35% lower than the average over the past 10 years but 6% higher than the long-term average for Bristol Bay, the...
For the team aboard the Okeanos Explorer off the coast of Alaska, exploring the mounds and craters of the sea floor along the Aleutian Islands was a chance to surface new knowledge about life in some of the world's deepest and most remote waters. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel went out on a five-month mission this summer and fall with a reconfigured former Navy vessel run by civilians and members of the NOAA Corps. The ship, with a 48-member crew, was...
A federal judge in Anchorage has ruled that U.S. government officials did not overstep the law when they allowed an emergency hunt near Kake during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision, published Nov. 3 by Judge Sharon Gleason, is the latest chapter in a long-running dispute between the state and federal officials over who has the authority to regulate subsistence hunting and fishing on public lands in Alaska. Gleason is also overseeing a separate but unrelated lawsuit by the federal government against the state over...
A federal judge has upheld the Biden administration’s approval of ConocoPhillips’ $8 billion Willow oil project on Alaska’s North Slope, a decision that environmental groups swiftly vowed to fight. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason rejected requests by a grassroots Iñupiat group and environmentalists to vacate the project approval. She dismissed their claims against Willow, which is in the federally designated National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The administration’s approval of Willow in March drew the ire of environmentalists who accused...
More than a year after the state Department of Public Assistance first fell behind with processing food stamps benefits for thousands of Alaskans, the agency is again reporting lengthy delays for new and returning applicants. As of late last month, about 6,000 Alaskans who had applied for benefits this summer and fall were waiting on critical food aid from the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which in Alaska are processed and distributed by the Alaska Division of Public Assistance. The new backlog was created...
The title translates to "orphan" in English, but people celebrating the release of the Lingít-language children's book "Kuhaantí" emphasized the project is very much a multigenerational family effort by the Southeast Alaska Native community. "Kuhaantí" is intended to be the first of nine books and animated videos produced during the next two years sharing tribal stories in their Native language, the first publications of their kind in decades, according to officials involved with the pr...
Now in its 15th year, the applied fisheries program at the University of Alaska Southeast draws students from across the state and across the country. Not just ocean states like Florida, but the Great Lakes state of Wisconsin, and even landlocked Wyoming and Kentucky this semester. “Our enrollment has been increasing,” said assistant professor Lauren Wild, who has taught in the program since 2020. Students attend online or, she said, if they live in an area without adequate and reliable high-speed internet service, the school will send the...
Alaska fish-harvesting employment declined in 2022, a continuing yearslong slide caused by a variety of factors, according to an analysis by the state Department of Labor. Employment for people harvesting seafood dropped by about 25% from 2015 to 2022, according to the analysis, published in the November issue of Alaska Economic Trends, the department’s monthly research magazine. The industry lost ground compared to other sectors of the Alaska economy, the analysis found. Seafood harvesting accounted for 7.3% of Alaska jobs in July of 2021, b...
Chum salmon are now reproducing farther north in some North Slope rivers, researchers have confirmed. A University of Alaska Fairbanks team this fall found about 100 chum salmon that were spawning or had just spawned in the Anaktuvuk and Itkillik rivers. The rivers are tributaries of the Colville River, which flows into the Arctic Ocean. The discovery of salmon that far north was not a surprise since all five species of Alaska salmon have been spotted in the Arctic, said Peter Westley, an associate professor at UAF’s College of Fisheries and O...
The state has begun a sweeping analysis of its employees’ salaries to determine whether poor pay is contributing to ongoing hiring woes. The Alaska Department of Administration published a request for proposals, seeking a contractor to perform a comparison between state pay in Alaska, pay in the private sector and pay among other governments. The comparison will include 404 different job classes, including positions as varied as prison guards, archaeologists, ferry workers, tax auditors, and the people in charge of regulating the accuracy of g...