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With a deep reduction in oil revenues expected, Alaska is on track for an almost $1 billion budget hole in the coming year that will have to be filled with money from savings, according to a spending plan presented Dec. 14 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The governor described his budget for the year beginning next July 1 as “status quo” in most categories. “There’s no cuts in this budget,” he said during a news conference in Juneau. There are a few targeted areas with increases, however, including more staff to help process a backlog of food stamp ben...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy said education is among his top priorities in the coming fiscal year but did not include an increase to the state’s per-student funding formula, known as the base student allocation, in his proposed budget. The budget includes about $1.11 billion to fund the formula that distributes money to school districts statewide, down almost 3% from this year due to declining enrollment. Dunleavy has proposed spending almost twice as much on next year’s Permanent Fund dividend. Lawmakers this past spring approved a one-time appropriatio...
Alaskans could pay significantly more next year for mailing packages to, from and within the state with two price increases planned by the U.S. Postal Service. In an effort to reduce its projected $160 billion loss over the next 10 years, the Postal Service announced it is planning a 5.7% average nationwide price hike in 2024 for some shipping options. Customers using USPS Ground Advantage for shipping within Alaska would see a 9.2% average increase. The price increases are set to take effect Jan. 21, but some Alaska mailing rates from Outside...
SEATTLE (AP) — The U.S. government said Dec. 14 it plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next decade to help recover depleted salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest, and that it will help figure out how to offset the loss of hydropower, transportation and other benefits provided by four controversial dams on the Snake River, should Congress ever agree to breach them. President Joe Biden’s administration stopped short of calling for the removal of the dams to save the fish, but Northwest tribes and conservationists who have long sou...
TACOMA, Wash. — The 13 largest U.S. tire manufacturers are facing a lawsuit from a pair of California commercial fishing organizations that could force the companies to stop using a chemical added to almost every tire because it kills migrating salmon. Also found in footwear, synthetic turf and playground equipment, the rubber preservative 6PPD has been used in tires for 60 years. As tires wear, tiny particles of rubber are left behind on roads and parking lots, breaking down into a byproduct, 6PPD-quinone, that is deadly to salmon, s...
The collapse of Western Alaska salmon runs has been among the most consequential climate change impacts in the rapidly warming Arctic over the past two years, according to an annual report assembled by a federal agency. The 2023 Arctic Report Card, released Dec. 12 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, includes a special chapter on Alaska salmon among its updates to sea ice, air temperature and permafrost conditions in a region of the world that is warming up to four times as fast as the global average. Western Alaska salmon...
A major source of funding for Alaska’s domestic violence response has decreased significantly the past five years, leaving a multimillion-dollar hole in the budget for services. That reduction, paired with the end of federal pandemic relief money and high rates of inflation, has domestic violence advocates scrambling to adequately fund the groups that keep one of the state’s most vulnerable populations safe. Alaska’s Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, the group that manages state and federal funding for domestic violence progr...
When Kara Carlson experienced sexual assault as a teenager, she said it was traumatic but not shocking: “I was the last of my friends to experience sexual violence,” she said. “We live in this world where you have to prepare women for surviving trauma.” She now runs the women’s emergency shelter in Fairbanks, the Interior Alaska Center for Non-Violent Living, where she has worked for nearly two decades. She has seen domestic and sexual violence affect generations of Alaskans. “I’ve been here long enough that I’ve seen moms come in, I’ve seen th...
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has sent a letter to Gov. Mike Dunleavy, urging him to include $23 million in his coming budget for the replacement of a state ferry. Dunleavy spokesperson Jessica Bowers declined to say whether the governor’s draft budget — due by Friday, Dec. 15 — would include the matching funds needed to secure a $92 million federal funding award that Murkowski announced last month. The Alaska Marine Highway system has already been promised $416 million in federal funds through the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act....
The Biden administration could jump into a high-profile lawsuit in which Metlakatla is fighting with Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration about tribal citizens’ fishing rights. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a filing Dec. 5 that it’s considering submitting a friend-of-the-court brief in the dispute between the state and the Metlakatla Indian Community, a tribal government. The three-year-old Metlakatla lawsuit, filed by the tribal government against the state, centers on the extent of fishing rights granted to the community’s members...
Alaska Trollers Association Board President Matt Donohoe said he’s disappointed by the state Board of Fisheries’ decision that he believes will cause continued harm to commercial trollers in Southeast. “I think residents of Alaska, sport and commercial fishermen, suffered a terrible blow by the Board of Fisheries who favored out-of-state residents over residents,” Donohoe said of the board’s Dec. 1 decision not to more tightly enforce the catch allocation for sport anglers. The growing charter boat industry was the focus of the proposed...
As Wrangell continues to deal with the landslide that killed six people, Alaskans face a long-term challenge: How to prevent tragedies in the future as mountainous regions of the state become more unstable. “These landslides affecting Alaskans are going to keep happening, and we need to get out in front of them,” said Gabriel Wolken, manager of the climate and cryosphere hazards program at the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. The Nov. 20 landslide in Wrangell was the third deadly and rain-triggered landslide in Sou...
The Alaska Board of Fisheries voted 4-2 against requiring in-season management to more effectively hold the sport fishery chinook catch within its harvest limit. The board voted on Friday, Dec. 1, at its meeting in Homer, which was primarily devoted to Southcentral fisheries issues. The controversial proposal would have tightened in-season management of the Southeast chinook catch to better guard against resident and nonresident sport fishermen exceeding their share of the overall sport and commercial harvest. The proposal’s intent was to b...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced it expects Southeast Alaska commercial fishermen next year will harvest around 19 million pink salmon — close to an average number based on 63 years of commercial harvest data collected since Alaska became a state. The department’s forecast, released in November, predicts a pink salmon catch of between 12 million and 32 million fish. Pink salmon harvest varies greatly from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years, and the commercial catch in the 10 most recent even years has averaged 21 mil...
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...