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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – The capital city of Alaska is looking to expand its borders. The Juneau Empire reported Sunday that the city and borough of Juneau have hopes of owning more of Admiralty Island, located south of the capital city, and a portion of land next to the Petersburg Borough. “In the near future, annexation of this region is mostly symbolic since there are no local residents or private properties,” Lands and Resources Manager Greg Chaney wrote in a memo to city officials. “In the long run, mineral development or tourism could g...
The Petersburg Emblem Club received a visit from The Supreme Emblem Club of the United States of America Supreme President Marty Lynch and the Supreme Marshal Paulette Thompson last week. It is an honor for Emblem Clubs to receive a visit from the Supreme President, and it only happens every four years. Lynch is visiting clubs in Alaska and will attend the State Convention, which will be held in Fairbanks. There are 11 clubs in Alaska with a membership of over 800. The Emblem Club got its start...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – An oil well leaking natural gas on Alaska’s North Slope was successfully plugged by pumping saltwater into the well, according to private and government responders. The state Department on Environmental Conservation on Monday said the well operated by BP Exploration Alaska Inc., a subsidiary of BP, was “killed” at 3:35 a.m. The well is five miles from the airport at Deadhorse. Employees on Friday morning discovered uncontrolled natural gas flowing from the top of a well house, a metal structure that looks like a large...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – Alaska’s capital city and borough are considering closing a museum, gym and educational facility to balance its 2018 budget. Juneau needs to find nearly $2 million to balance its budget, the Juneau Empire reported Friday. Finance Director Bob Bartholomew has proposed taking $1.4 million from the city’s fund balance and reducing spending by $500,000. Juneau-Douglas City Museum, Mount Jumbo Gym, the Eagle Valley Center and more are in jeopardy of being closed to properly balance the budget. The city’s priorit...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – Going without health insurance is a risk. Going without it in Alaska can be a gamble of a much higher order, for this is a place unlike anywhere else in the U.S., a land of pitiless cold, vast expanses and dangerous, back-breaking work such as pulling fishing nets from the water or hauling animal carcasses out of the woods. And yet many people on the Last Frontier do not carry insurance. For them, the Affordable Care Act just isn’t working. For reasons that have a lot to do with its sheer size, sparse population and har...
WRANGELL – The Borough Assembly convened in a special meeting midday Monday to change course on actions it took last week to curb water production issues this summer. Last Tuesday the Assembly approved moving forward with funding the redesign and installation of a new roughing filter system and purchasing fresh silicate for one of its four slow-sand filtration units at the water treatment plant. The intent was to address persistent clogging in the units from built up sediment, which was l...
WRANGELL – Licenses for the cultivation and retail of marijuana were approved for a Wrangell applicant earlier this month. The Marijuana Control Board gave the go-ahead to the two applications during its April 4 and 5 meeting, put forward by Kelsey Martinsen of Happy Cannabis. The licenses are conditional, pending building plan approval from the Fire Marshal and local municipality. As proposed, the shop would be a grow and retail business just between First Bank and the Diamond C Restaurant. The shop would feature a store front, with 15 grow ba...
Marine boat anglers returning to ports where and when on-site ADF&G creel surveys are conducted will be prohibited from filleting, mutilating, and de-heading sport caught lingcod, nonpelagic rockfish, and king and coho salmon at-sea. Marine boat anglers returning to any port on the road system of the communities listed below, during the times designated, may not fillet, mutilate, or de-head these fish until the fish have been brought to shore and offloaded, unless the fish have been consumed or preserved on board: Petersburg: 12:01 a.m....
WRANGELL – Regional economic forum Southeast Conference is seeking out data on private sector investment for its annual report on the economy. The survey is supposed to only take three minutes, asking for general information on significant private project investments one’s business or company had made between July 1, 2016 and June 30 in Southeast Alaska. All individual survey answers are completely confidential, and will be reported in aggregate only. “We do this annually so we can get a better feel for what the private investment is in the...
Petersburg was paid a visit by longstanding United States Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) on Monday, part of a wider tour of Southeast that includes Ketchikan and Juneau. Extra chairs had to be brought into the Borough Assembly chambers to accommodate the audience, and people stood at the room's back and sides. Seated front and center, Young explained the session would be an informal way for people to give input and ask questions. "I'm here primarily to hear what's on your mind and what you'd like to...
Work is underway to stabilize the foundation and expand areas for parking and gear storage at the Libby Straight warehouse owned by Jeff and Susan Erickson. "We're shoring up the building and making more space for equipment storage," explained Jeff Erickson on Wednesday. The building was a part of the Libby Cannery located in Taku Harbor, according to Erickson. After a cannery fire, the building was constructed and never used and the building sat empty for many years. In the early 1950s the stru...
The Petersburg Medical Center will provide the public a time to create a living will using the Five Wishes document. The booklet allows anyone 18 years or older a way to control how they are treated if they get seriously ill and cannot speak for themselves. The meeting will be from 7-8 p.m. at the Dorothy Ingle Conference Room on Wednesday, April 19. The Five Wishes document will be explained and questions about it will be answered. Five Wishes is a living will that talks about people’s personal, emotional and spiritual needs as well as t...
PETERSBURG (AP) – A group of volunteers from five southeast Alaska communities is working to document bats as part of a program aimed at combating a deadly virus caused by the animals. Volunteers from Petersburg, Juneau, Haines, Sitka and Wrangell are participating in this year’s program, which is coordinated through the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Over the last three years, the program has helped gather data to prevent White Noise Syndrome. The fungal disease has killed off more than 7 million bats in the Lower 48 since it was discover...
Mariya Kochubey from University of Washington School of Medicine will be completing her third year Family Medicine Clerkship at Petersburg Medical Center. She will be at PMC through May 5. Petersburg Medical Center is an official University of Washington Medical Student Clerkship site for rural Family Medicine. The experience that medical students get here may encourage them to pursue rural family medicine; perhaps even returning to our community someday to practice, according to Dr. Jennifer...
Police made contact with a man shouting vulgarities and making offensive hand gestures in front of the Rae C. Stedman Elementary School on Monday morning. He was also reported to be wearing a gas mask or respirator. In an email sent to parents and others, Principal Teri Toland said, “Today there was an individual in front of the building shouting offensive messages and using inappropriate hand gestures. We have spoken with police and (are) pursuing every legal avenue to insure students are safe. The police do not feel that the individual is a...
PETERSBURG, Alaska (AP) – Alaska lawmakers have approved legislation that increases the size of the Petersburg Borough’s land grant from the state to include more than 14,600 acres (5908.54 hectares). The southeast Alaska borough is only entitled to about 1,400 acres (566.57 hectares) under state law and is looking to develop or sell off some of the additional property approved by the Senate on Monday, KFSK-FM reported. The bill would transfer 95 percent of the available state land in the borough that hasn’t already been designated for anoth...
The graphic showing a summary of the Board of Equalization decisions at their April 3 meeting incorrectly showed Assembly action taken on property appeals for Melinda Hofstad and Elizabeth Pawuk. The story appeared on page 6 of last week’s paper. Hofstad’s appeal was withdrawn and no action was taken. On Pawuk’s appeal, the Assembly stayed with the Assessor’s recommended valuation of $269,400....
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game released its forecast for commercial salmon harvests this year, projecting a strong run of pinks for Southeast in 2017. If panning out as projected, the news should come as a relief to the region's fishermen after a disappointing 2016 harvest. The report details last year's commercial salmon season, which had come in about 30 percent lower than forecast. Alaska fishermen caught 112,500,000 salmon in 2016, of which 52.9 million had been sockeye and 39...
Petersburg's National Ocean Science Bowl Team traveled to Seward in February to compete with 16 schools statewide. The PHS team placed 8th overall, 5th on their research paper, 4th for the oral presentation and 4th on the overall project (a combination of the research paper and the presentation.) Teams conducted research, wrote a paper and made presentations on the topic of the warming Pacific Ocean and its impact on a resource in the community. Students selected the LeConte Glacier for their ce...
SITKA - The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced April 10 that under Chinook salmon management provisions of the Pacific Salmon Treaty the 2017 abundance index for Southeast Alaska has been calculated to be 1.27, which results in an all-gear harvest limit of 209,700 treaty Chinook (non-Alaska hatchery-produced Chinook). The preseason troll treaty harvest allocation for 2017 is 154,880 Chinook or 108,320 fish lower than the preseason limit available in 2016. While there is no ceiling on the number of Chinook salmon harvested in the...
Early Tuesday morning the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association's floating net pens were being moved into position near the mouth of City Creek, when a structural failure took place. Employees had to move the pen into shallow water along the Sandy Beach tide flats to make repairs. Crystal Lake Assistant Hatchery Manager Kevin Chase explained that a metal beam came loose and had to be reattached, forcing them to realign and re-bolt the listing structure before continuing. By 8:30...
JUNEAU (AP) – An Anchorage-based scientist says paralytic shellfish poisoning is to blame for the deaths of more than 300 puffins that washed up in the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea last fall. Ecologist Bruce Wright’s opinion is different from most scientists who believe the puffins died of starvation. Wright, with the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, believes the puffins and the thousands of common murres that died in the Gulf of Alaska in 2015 were affected by the shellfish poisoning. “My colleagues are reluctant to say the thing...
ANCHORAGE (AP) – Repair work is underway for a pipeline that has spewed hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of processed natural gas into Alaska’s Cook Inlet, home to endangered beluga whales and other marine mammals. The 8-inch (20-centimeter) diameter pipeline supplies gas for power to four Hilcorp Alaska, LLC production platforms. A spokeswoman said Monday that divers over the weekend discovered a 2-inch (5-centimeter) hole at bottom of the pipeline where it rests on a boulder in the sea floor. “Divers have identified the leak locat...
JUNEAU (AP) – The city of Juneau has decided to put up another $100,000 to defend itself in a lawsuit brought by the cruise industry alleging it misused funds paid by cruise ship passengers. The $100,000 approved by the Juneau Assembly on Monday was drawn from the city’s sales tax fund levied on merchants within the city. It is in addition to more than $283,000 the city has already spent in legal fees in the case. Some of the funds have been covered by marine passenger fees. The lawsuit filed by Cruise Lines International Association in Apr...
WRANGELL – The Stikine River Birding Festival celebrates the spring arrival of migratory birds, including hundreds of thousands of shorebirds to the Stikine River Delta. The 20th year of this Wrangell festival takes place April 27-30, 2017. This year’s schedule is now available online at www.stikinebirding.org. Highlights include family activities, photo and art competitions, birding excursions, bird banding demonstrations, and guest speakers. Presenters this year include Dan Ruthrauff from the USGS Alaska Science Center, who will share his...
