Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 756
Local trollers and regional fisheries advocates expressed relief today following Friday’s 9th Circuit Court decision to overturn a U.S. District Court ruling that threatened to shut down Southeast Chinook troll fisheries. “Great news,” Alaska Trollers Association president Matt Donohoe said in a brief text while out fishing. “I’m really grateful that the 9th Circuit understood that WFC’s serial litigation was absurd and ruled in Alaska’s favor.” Jeff Farvour, a Sitka based commercial fisherman and board member of the Sitka-based Ala...
Up to $83 million in federal funds have been approved for small business loans to be offered through a consortium of Alaska tribes. Announced last Tuesday, the funds are part of the U.S. Treasury’s broader effort to support tribal economies, with up to $415 million being funneled into developing the economies of 220 tribes, according to a Treasury news release. Of that group, 125 tribes make up the consortium from Alaska. “These funds will serve some of the most rural populations in the United States, creating jobs and expanding capital acc... Full story
At the height of the food stamp backlog last November, pro bono attorneys and other volunteers at Alaska Legal Services got more than 600 requests in one month from Alaskans seeking a fair hearing to get their overdue food benefits. So the 97 requests that came in this July didn’t feel like anything the group couldn’t handle, said Leigh Dickey, the nonprofit’s advocacy director. But the number is still alarming, she said, and it’s double last month’s requests. Dickey said the state’s Division of Public Assistance is still dogged by the same pr... Full story
Forty-three people spent the night in Juneau's emergency shelter at Floyd Dryden Middle School on Monday night as a record-high flood from the Mendenhall Glacier inundated homes. Deputy City Manager Robert Barr said the total number of people who evacuated their homes is likely several times that; shelters are usually a last resort for people who cannot stay with family, friends or in a hotel. "You can imagine how hard it would be to wake up with water in your house, not expecting there to be... Full story
Petersburg this year will go without state ferry service for almost three weeks in late November and early December under the fall and winter schedule released Aug. 2. The service gap will occur between the time the Alaska Marine Highway System pulls the Kennicott out of service for major work and until it can transfer crew from the Kennicott to the Columbia, and outfit the Columbia, said Sam Dapcevich, Alaska Department of Transportation spokesman. The Columbia has been out service for repairs since last November. Other than the three-week...
Seattle has more power in the U.S. House of Representatives than the state of Alaska. And yet, ahead of this year’s House elections, there’s as much at stake with Alaska’s race than all four of the contests in King County combined. The vast majority of the 435 seats in the House are firmly Democratic or firmly Republican. Alaska is among a dwindling number of exceptions that could go in any direction. More than that, it’s one of just five places in the country that voted for Donald Trump as president in 2020 yet elected a Democrat to the Hou... Full story
A $38.6 million federal grant will help lower the cost of energy-saving heat pumps for an estimated 6,100 Alaska households stretching from Ketchikan to Kodiak. The money will provide rebates of between $4,000 and $8,500 per household for the purchase and installation of a heat pump. The funding is in addition to federal tax credits of up to $2,000 per household. The federal grant for coastal Alaska, announced July 22, will go to the Southeast Conference, a community and economic development...
They may be out of sight to the general public but they are never out of mind for the U.S. Forest Service. The agency maintains 35 mountaintop repeater towers within the Tongass National Forest to provide radio coverage for their field crews and first responders. A contractor is installing new repeater stations at five sites this summer in the Wrangell and Petersburg ranger districts, part of an ongoing effort to switch out older units with newer models. Of particular importance to Wrangell, a...
Supporters of Alaska’s ranked choice election system are asking the Alaska Supreme Court to rule on one final attempt to keep a repeal measure from this November’s election ballot. Earlier this month, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin ruled that there was insufficient evidence to disqualify the measure from a statewide vote. While Rankin disqualified some signatures from a petition seeking to force a repeal vote, a recount by the Alaska Division of Elections confirmed that enough signatures remain for that vote to take place. On T... Full story
More than $600,000 was returned to the Ketchikan Gateway Borough last week after the borough’s bank, Wells Fargo, successfully retrieved an accidental Electronic Fund Transfer that the borough made to a fraudulent account earlier this year. Charlanne Thomas, the borough’s Finance Director said that in May, the borough was notified by Wells Fargo that it potentially sent money to a fraudulent checking account at Citibank after attempting to pay for the Dudley Field turf project. The contractor’s email account had been hacked by the scamm...
Arts in the Cove festival, formerly known as Arts and Seafood, is scheduled for Aug. 9 and 10 in the old ferry terminal at Coffman Cove. The festival - about 40 boat miles southwest of Wrangell on Prince of Wales Island - promotes local artisans and features everything from handmade fine art to crafts, soaps, candles, oils, jams, jellies, syrups, fur, seafood, smoked meats and fry bread. The festival also will feature live music and entertainment, along with prize raffles throughout the two...
The Coast Guard and partner agencies that have been looking for a missing plane bound for Yakutat called off the search late Monday evening. The plane, owned by longtime Haines pilot Sam Wright and carrying Yakutat couple Hans Munich and Tanya Hutchins, stopped emitting its radar signal near Mount Crillon at the southern end of the Fairweather Mountain Range. The three left Juneau on Saturday and were reported overdue that evening. Both Wright and Munich are pilots with decades of experience flying in Southeast Alaska. Coast Guard public...
A longtime Palmer pilot told federal inspectors that he is a “free citizen” who doesn’t need a government-issued pilot license or aircraft registration, according to prosecutors who have now filed aviation-related criminal charges against him. On July 18, William Marsan was arrested in Palmer and jailed on federal charges of operating a plane without a license, operating an unregistered aircraft and operating a plane displaying a false registration mark. Each of the three charges could bring up to three years in prison and hundreds of thous...
A 35-year-old Juneau man was shot and killed after a confrontation with police and Alaska State Troopers on a busy downtown street Monday afternoon. Officers with the Juneau Police Department were following up on a report of an assault involving Steven Kissack when he “produced a knife and refused to follow orders,” the troopers wrote in a statement online Monday night. An Alaska wildlife trooper and additional Juneau police officers showed up on Front Street around 1 p.m., shooting bean bag rounds at Kissack as they negotiated with him to dro...
The Chinese warships weren't showing up on civilian radar. But the American commercial fishing fleet could still tell that something strange was happening in the Aleutian Islands on July 6 and 7. Crew on the fishing vessels picked out a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, the Kimball, steaming through the area at 21 knots, or nearly 25 miles an hour. It turned out the Kimball was in hot pursuit of four Chinese ships, including a destroyer and a guided-missile cruiser. When the Coast Guard cutter...
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed the funds state legislators set aside to settle a dispute between Alaska’s education officials and their federal counterparts over whether the state spent pandemic relief equitably. State legislators included $11.89 million in the operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year to allow the state to comply with the federal government’s grant requirements and recover its good standing under federal guidelines. Dunleavy vetoed that money because it is unclear whether or not it will be needed, according to the reason...
Inflation, operating costs and workforce shortages are the most common challenges facing small businesses in Alaska, according to a new survey. The Alaska Small Business Development Center survey tracks small business growth in the state and projects future trends. This is the seventh annual report. Inflation was most frequently cited as the top issue facing Alaska’s small businesses. However, survey respondents identified inflation as an issue for businesses more broadly, rather than an immediate one for their specific business. Only 12% named... Full story
Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed $10 million in funding for the state agency charged with marketing Alaska seafood, with the message that he would “re-evaluate future funding needs after development of a marketing plan.” That doesn’t make sense to the state Senate president. “Waiting doesn’t help at all,” said Sen. Gary Stevens, from the commercial fishing hub of Kodiak. “It’s a very shortsighted view of the industry. Now is the time to help it out, not to just delay things,” Stevens said last week. The governor vetoed the funding on June 30 as par... Full story
An emerging seafood company is preparing to purchase its first loads of pink and chum salmon from a handful of seine boats in Metlakatla this summer while also building a high-tech floating freezer barge at a Washington shipyard that the company plans to operate in Southeast Alaska next year. Circle Seafoods, which was founded by Pat Glaab, Charlie Campbell and Eren Shultz, is renting out a portion of the Metlakatla Indian Community’s Annette Island Packing Co. plant this year while starting up a statewide operation that’s geared at buying and...
Alaska’s Supreme Court justices on Friday reversed a Superior Court ruling that struck down key components of the state’s correspondence school program. Nearly 23,000 homeschool students may continue to use their allotments of state education money to pay for private school tuition until the Anchorage Superior Court reconsiders the case. The Supreme Court made its decision a day after oral arguments in an appeal of the ruling in State of Alaska, Department of Education and Early Development v. Alexander, in which plaintiffs argued that it is...
On a life-flight from Fairbanks to Anchorage, Sierra Ott’s newborn son Liam would not stop bleeding from a routine needle prick. Doctors in the Anchorage neonatal intensive care unit diagnosed him with a blood clotting disorder. Without medication, he is at risk of extreme joint pain and even bleeding out from what would not normally be serious injuries. Ott said that without health insurance from her husband’s military service, the pills would cost the family about $8,000 a month. At the urging of her case worker, Ott applied for Medicaid for... Full story
The U.S. House of Representatives gave unanimous approval this month to a bill sponsored by Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, adding the commandant of the Coast Guard as a member of the Defense Department’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. “As the mother to two Coasties, I know how much our Coast Guard sacrifices for our national security, especially in Alaska and the Pacific. This important branch deserves an equal seat at the table,”Peltola said in a press release from her office. “Together, Representative Peltola and I are working with our Republi...
University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service agent will travel by boat to nine communities in Southeast Alaska to teach classes on healthy living, food safety and food preservation. Sarah Lewis, the service’s Juneau-based health, home and family development agent, will head out on her family’s boat, the Pacific Sapphire, in July. She will visit Petersburg on July 31 – Aug. 1. Lewis will teach classes on food safety and preservation, healthy homes, and healthy eating. She will also give away free publications and test press...
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is prodding the state of Alaska over its failure to update water pollution rules. Last Thursday, the EPA issued a formal determination that the state should update pollution limits that are based in part on the amount of fish consumed by state residents. Under federal law, those limits are supposed to be reviewed every three years, but Alaska hasn’t updated its limits since 2003. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation has been working since 2013 on an updated list of water quality s... Full story
The Alaska state ferry Columbia - which has been out of service since late November for its annual overhaul and repairs but was supposed to go back to work this summer - will be laid up until the end of the year. Extensive corrosion in the 51-year-old ship's fire suppression system is the reason for the extra time in the shipyard, Department of Transportation spokesman Sam Dapcevich said Friday, May 17. During the Columbia's extended absence, the Alaska Marine Highway System has diverted the...
