Alaska News

It was big weekend for dogsled and ski racing in Fairbanks.

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A resolution opposing genetically engineered salmon is likely to pass the Alaska Legislature this week.

The so-called “Frankenfish” resolution cleared the Senate Resources Committee on Friday, its last stop before a vote on the Senate floor. The resolution unanimously passed the House about a month ago.

Seward High School sophomore Griffin Plush was in Juneau last week with Alaska Youth for Environmental Action. He says a genetically modified fish could escape its holding pen and cause harm to the environment and Alaska fisheries.

“It would be devastating to fishing communities like Seward, who rely on the salmon population and a healthy salmon population for tourism and the fishing industry,” Plush said.

He had hoped to testify on the anti-Frankenfish measure, but had to leave town before Friday’s hearing.

Masachusetts-based AquaBounty has spent more than $70 million to develop the genetically modified fish, which is an Atlantic salmon with genes from a king salmon and an eel-like fish to make it grow faster.

The company is seeking US Food and Drug Administration approval for the product. A preliminary FDA report says the fish would have no significant impact on the environment.

But Representative Geran Tarr, the Anchorage Democrat who sponsored House Joint Resolution 5, says the FDA doesn’t have enough evidence to back up that finding. If the agency approves AquaBounty’s petition, Tarr says it would be the first time a genetically modified animal product is approved for human consumption.

“This resolution, should we be successful in passing it, will be sent along with a letter and submitted as public comments on behalf of the legislature,” Tarr said. “And I like to say it’s a great opportunity for Alaskans to speak out in one unified voice, because the Congressional delegation has already spoken out in opposition, the governor has spoken out. So, the legislature kind of fills in that last bit of representation.”

Senator Peter Micciche, a Kenai Republican, is a co-sponsor of the measure on the Senate side. At Friday’s Resources Committee hearing, Micciche said resolution enjoys broad public support.

“I have never, since this came to us several years back, have I ever heard a single statement of support for genetically engineered salmon,” Micciche said.

The FDA is taking public comment on AquaBounty’s petition through April 26th.

An Anchorage Walmart manager was undergoing surgery Saturday night after being shot by a customer apparently upset about being told his service dog need to be on a leash. Jason Mahi was allegedly shot by Daniel Pirtle, 45, a double amputee, who now faces assault and misconduct involving weapons.

Snowboarder Callan Chythlook-Sifsof of Girdwood claimed a bronze medal yesterday in the team snowboard cross in a World Cup event in Switzerland. Chythlook-Sifsof was teamed with Faye Gulini of Salt Lake City. In individual events, she has medaled in 2007 and 2011.

The United States is increasing the amount of interceptor missiles it stockpiles from thirty to forty four. The 14 additional missiles will be based at Fort Greely, near Fairbanks.

Pentagon officials say they’re confident the new missiles will be capable of shooting incoming long-range missiles out of the sky. They say the biggest threat is from North Korea, which recently conducted its third nuclear test.

Previous missile defense tests, like one in 2008, failed to shoot incoming dummy weapons out of the sky.

The upgrade to the program will cost taxpayers about one billion dollars – this despite mandated cuts to future spending at the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says the program should be up and running by 2017.

There’s no indication yet whether this means reactivating the mothballed missile field at Fort Greeley, or whether there will be new construction.

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Alaska State Employees Association members rally for fair contracts at the State Office Building in late February. ASEA and the Alaska Public Employees Association, which collectively represent about 12,500 state workers, reached tentative agreements for new three-year contracts this week. Photo by Casey Kelly, KTOO-Juneau.

The Parnell administration and two public employee unions have reached tentative agreement for a new three-year contract to begin in July.

The Alaska Public Employees Association settled earlier this week; the Alaska State Employees Association finished late Thursday afternoon.  Both say they will recommend members ratify the proposal, which increases salaries slightly, while health benefits remain essentially unchanged from the current contract.

Negotiators from both unions say they fell short of their ambitions.

“Had to recognize that the stars were simply not aligned in our favor,” says Pete Ford, APEA Southeast Regional Manager.

“The Legislature’s been pretty specific and clear about the manners in which they want to restrain advances in employee compensation and bring about some restrictions, and the administration has similar concerns,” he says.

State law requires that financial terms of the agreements be presented to lawmakers by Friday, March 15, the 60th day of the legislative session.

In a mid-February letter to Gov.  Sean Parnell, Senate President Charlie Huggins, House Speaker Mike Chenault and chairmen of both finance committees urged the administration to “hold the monetary terms of the contracts at zero.”

Negotiations were well underway.

Unions bargain with the administration, not the legislature. Still, Ford says, it was clear the letter had a chilling effect on state negotiators.

“Areas where we thought there might be movement tended to close down and the administration recognized what the legislature was saying and it certainly impacted or appeared to impact their flexibility at the table,” Ford says.

 APEA represents about 2,200 members of the Supervisory Unit and 210 Confidential Employees Association members; ASEA  represents about 8,000 workers in the General Government Unit.  The proposal calls for salary increases of 1 percent in each of the first and second years of the contract, and 2.5 percent   in the third year.

Deputy Administration Commissioner Curtis Thayer was at the negotiating table.  He says the letter from legislative leaders made the path clear for state negotiators.

“That’s one of the reasons I think we were successful in getting the one /one (percent raise) in the first two years of the contract,” he says. “Quite frankly, the unions came in quite a bit higher, but I think it set the tone for continuing negotiations knowing what the fiscal outlook is for production and the price of oil.  It had an effect.  It did.”

ASEA business manager Jim Duncan says the atmosphere surrounding bargaining this year was difficult. He calls it a modest contract.

“We’re going to recommend that members ratify it because it’s the best we could do under this atmosphere.  It’s got gains in it for the membership but not clearly to the level we would like to have had,” he says.

One gain comes for long term employees.  Those who have worked for 15 years or more will get an additional day of annual leave deposited to their account.

But Thayer says state employees hired after July 1, 2013 will earn fewer hours of annual leave for days worked.

He says a cap will also be put on annual leave.

“People that have over a thousand hours, they’re grandfathered in, but for new employees, there will be a cap of no more than a thousand hours,” he says.

According to Thayer,  the state’s total leave liability is more than $164 million and the leave reduction and cap are an important part of the proposed contracts.

“The whole idea around leave is to take it. Take time off, recharge your batteries. come back with a fresh perspective,” he says.

The proposed contract also will require state employees take  at least two weeks a year of personal leave, he says.

The unions will begin a series of meetings at works sites around the state to explain the tentative agreement, then ask members to vote in favor.

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Since the introduction of the ordinance, signs expressing support for unions have popped up in Anchorage

Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan has rejected an offer to freeze wages of city workers for one year in exchange for tabling a controversial ordinance that would limit unions. KSKA’s Daysha Eaton has the story.

In the past, Mayor Dan Sullivan has said the changes his ordinance would make are needed to keep costs down, and the ordinance must be rushed because of upcoming union negotiations. But now he says there are bigger goals. In a 2-page letter sent to union leaders via email Wednesday, Mayor Dan Sullivan said he couldn’t take the offer made by 5 of the 8 unions, because, for him, it’s about more than money.

“It’s about revising the way that we negotiate contracts in the future to make sure that they’re standardized, that they’re easier to both understand and to implement and that they’re fair to the employees and as importantly, to the citizens who pay for public services.”

Union supporters rally in protest of AO37 outside an Assembly meeting in February.

Sullivan says he wants his administration and future administrations to have more control over workers. He proposed the ordinance February 8th. It would limit longevity and performance pay, benefits, and eliminate binding arbitration along with strikes. It would also allow some municipal jobs to be contracted out. Last Friday, unions leaders representing about 22-hundred municipal employees offered to delay the expiration of contracts in exchange for tabling of the ordinance. Monday, despite warnings from the ACLU of Alaska, the Assembly ended public testimony on the issue after 285 people had testified against the ordinance over four evenings. Sullivan says he supports the assembly’s decision and he did not accept the union’s offer because:

“I didn’t see any real reason to go with that. We’re more than willing to negotiate the contracts that are coming up on the current time schedule and we want to do so under the rules that are being considered by the assembly. I’m not sure what it would have accomplished. We think the ordinance is ready to go, there will be some miner amendments going forward, we didn’t see any reason to delay for a year.”

Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan

Union supporters have compared the changes that Sullivan’s ordinance would make to to labor reform that took place in Wisconsin. Sullivan says his proposal is different because it does not eliminate collective bargaining. He says workers can still negotiate things like how much they get for education enhancements, clothing allowances and tool allowances. Jillanne Inglis is Vice President of the Anchorage Municipal Employees Association. She represents city government workers from clerks to engineers. She has worked for city for municipality for 17 years. She says she’s disappointed with the Mayor’s response and She says it shows that he does not want to work with unions.

“I’m feeling that the Mayor does not want to have a good piece of legislation, really. It takes time. And we offered to take the time and to sit down at the table with him. This has been our experience for the last four years. We try to make an offer and work with him and he rejects it or he’s not interested in it. For him, it’s philosophical. He does not like unions.”

Sullivan denies that he doesn’t like unions and says he just wants to narrow the parameters of negotiation. Sergeant Gerard Asselin with the Anchorage Police Department Employee Association says the ordinance narrows the parameters so much that it leaves little to be negotiated. And he says it’s being fast-tracked for a reason.

“The stars have aligned for the administration. He’s pretty confident, as he has said from the beginning, he has the votes.”

Asselin says It’s no coincidence that Attorney’s started crafting the ordinance in secret last summer, but waited to make it public until February. Asselin says he believes that the majority of people who live in Anchorage do not support the Mayor’s proposal.

“So, what recourse are we left with other than to try to engage the community and if that comes in the form of the polls on April 2nd, then I’d say, that’s what we need to do.”

A work session on the ordinance is scheduled for Friday, March 22nd at City hall.
The Assembly is scheduled to take action on the ordinance Tuesday, March 26th.

March 8th Letter from Unions to Mayor Sullivan (PDF)

March 13th Letter from Mayor Sullivan to Unions (PDF)

Version of AO37 as of March 15th (PDF)

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Buccaneer Energy Alaska has filed litigation countering a lawsuit brought by a subcontractor in December concerning work on the jack-up rig Endeavor. The Endeavor is currently in Homer.

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Carolyn Covington. Courtesy of the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame.

As part of Women’s history month, Alaska Public Media brings you the voices of influential Alaskan women who have helped shape and define the social, cultural and political discourse in Alaska. Fifteen women were recently inducted into the Alaska women’s hall of fame at a ceremony in Anchorage. Former Anchorage Assembly chair and hall of fame steering committee member Jane Angvik tells us more about one of the inductees – education advocate Carolyn Covington.

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After hearing that their oil tax bill could mean at least $6 billion in revenue lost over the next five years, the Senate Finance committee made some adjustments on Thursday.

Their new bill would give oil companies a tax break of $4 billion to $5 billion over that same period. It would bring the base tax up from 25 percent to 35 percent for the next three years. After 2016, that rate would be brought down to 33 percent. To offset that tax hike, it gives oil companies a $5 credit for every barrel they produce. And like previous versions of the legislation, it gets rid of a mechanism known as “progressivity” that raises taxes on oil when prices are high.

In addition to making tweaks to the oil tax bill, the Senate finance committee also took testimony from the major companies on the North Slope yesterday. Representatives from ConocoPhillips and Exxon avoided making commitments to new oil production, while BP’s Damian Bilbao said that the bill doesn’t go “far enough to attract the type of meaningful investment that’s required to make the future look different.”

Without clear support from the Big Three, members of the Senate Finance committee turned to their own consultants to get input on how their bill would affect oil development. Sen. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican from Wasilla, asked Econ One’s Barry Pulliam if their changes to the tax structure would have an effect on the production decline.

DUNLEAVY: Would you be surprised if in three years you found out there was little additional investment above what some would consider maintenance or routine investment? Would you be surprised if in three years that occurred?

PULLIAM: I would be, if the kind of change that you’re making here didn’t have an impact on attracting new investment.

Pulliam added that he thought that the oil companies were excited by the prospect of a tax overhaul, but wanted to avoid making commitments in hopes of a better deal.

The updated bill was moved out of committee, and the next step is the Senate floor.

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Debate on the operating budget started in the dark. The lights flickered out, and one legislator reacted by joking if the cause was budget cuts. It turned out that someone had accidentally hit the switch, but the tone had been set. The next year would be a lean one.

Rep. Alan Austerman, a Kodiak Republican who co-chairs the finance committee, said as much while introducing the document on the House floor.

AUSTERMAN: This budget begins a process of slowing the growth of state government.

The specter of declining oil production, and thus declining state revenue, hung over the room. At $9.8 billion, the House operating budget shaves a percentage point off Gov. Sean Parnell’s version and holds spending on state agencies at zero growth.

It took more than four hours for the House to pass the bill. Democrats introduced amendment after amendment, nine in total. Some were big-ticket items, like one to increase school funding by $240 million over the next three years as a way of combating staff cuts. Some focused just on trying to restore funding that had initially been included in the governor’s budget for things like pre-kindergarten education and behavioral health. Each one failed.

Without the numbers to get any of their changes through, the nine Democrats in attendance used the session as a way of showing how they would like state money to be spent.

“The budget’s a moral document, and it speaks to this legislature’s priorities,” said Rep. Scott Kawasaki of Fairbanks. “It speaks to our values. It speaks to this legislature’s common vision for Alaska.”

They argued that their amendments would save the state money in the long run. On the subject of early education, they cited studies that more funding for programs like Parents as Teachers would mean less money spent on remediation for students down the road. One legislator pushed for increasing funding for therapeutic courts by talking about how they reduce criminal recidivism all while drawing a comparison to the film version of Les Miserables.

Rep. Les Gara, of Anchorage, also pointed out that in total, the money that the minority caucus wanted to add to the document was still under the governor’s target.

“This disagreement is about one percent,” said Gara. “With the Democratic amendments that you heard today, we would have had a budget — if they passed — less than the one percent budget growth the governor proposed. A smaller budget than what the governor proposed.”

But the bottom line for the majority caucus was that looking ahead, the state just won’t have the money. Rep. Mark Neuman, a Republican from Big Lake, described the cuts as painful but necessary.

“There’s nobody who wants to cut funding to kids that are disabled, mentally handicapped, to seniors,” said Neuman. “Nobody wants to do that. But it’s going to get even worse.”

The operating budget ultimately passed on a 29-8 vote, with all but one Democrat voting against it. It will now move on to the Senate.

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Anchorage School District Superintendent Jim Browder announces his intent to retire from ASD in June. Photo by Daysha Eaton, KSKA – Anchorage.

Anchorage School District Superintendent Jim Browder will retire in June after less than one year on the job, and his replacement has already been chosen.

The announcement came after a closed door meeting between School Board members and Superintendent Jim Browder at the Anchorage School District Education Center. From a podium in the Center’s atrium, School Board President Jeannie Mackie said that she wanted to clear up any uncertainty and speculation about the district after recent events.

“Dr. Browder will, is intending to retire from the district. His retirement will be affective three months from now, which puts us at about June 14th, is when he will no longer be employed with the Anchorage School District,” Mackie said.

Earlier this month, Browder was one of three finalists for a job in Des Moines, Iowa, but he did not get the job. Browder recently told the board that he might need to leave the district to be closer to family members who are experiencing medical issues. He is just eight months into his 3-year contract. Browder was hired in July to replace longtime Superintendent Carol Comeau, after a seven-month-long search that cost the district more than $50,000. Mackie says Browder’s contract is being adjusted to allow him to retire in order to be closer to his daughter and grandson in Georgia.

ASD has asked Assistant Superintendent Ed Graff to replace Jim Browder, who will retire in June. Photo from ASD.

“[I’m proud of the numerous accomplishments that we’ve been able to make in this period of time. You know this is a great school system and in a year, we’ve made huge growth,” Browder said.

Besides working to develop the district’s strategic plan, Browder is credited with helping the board make $25 million in budget cuts and with beginning to realign ASD curriculum to the common core standards. Mackie also announced that Assistant Superintendent Ed Graff will replace Browder. Graff has worked closely with Browder over the past months.

“We’ve worked hard to develop a strong strategic plan in destination 2020, and we’re going to continue to focus on that, increasing the achievement for all students as well as improving the performance for every child every year. The Anchorage School District has outstanding potential and I’m ready to lead the school district in realizing that potential and taking us to the next level,” Graff said.

Graff has been with the district for more than 20 years. He has worked as substitute teacher, an elementary school classroom teacher, and as a principal. Browder and Graff will work alongside each other during the three-month transition. Browder makes $180,000 a year. Mackie says Browder will not receive a severance package. The details of his contract adjustments will be disclosed Monday.

• Anchorage School District Press Release

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The Department of Interior has concluded its expedited review of Shell’s failed 2012 Arctic drilling campaign.

Before resuming activity in the Arctic Ocean, the company must undergo a third party review of its entire operation.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar put it bluntly.

“Shell screwed up in 2012,” he said.

And now the company must follow new orders from the government before it can operate again in the Arctic Ocean.

Shell must produce an “integrated plan” for future work. The company will have to detail each facet of Arctic drilling – from marine transport, to emergency response, to demobilization.

The company also must allow an outside firm to review its Arctic practices.

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management director Tommy Beaudreau says the review will need to illustrate whether Shell is capable of overseeing the contractors it uses. He says the company continually failed to do so this year.

Shell contracted Superior Energy, a company with a long history in the Gulf of Mexico, to design its underwater containment system.

“Ultimately, Shell, working with Superior, was not able to bring that system online. They were not able to obtain Coast Guard certification for the vessel. The deployment test of the system itself failed,” Beaudreau said.

That’s why the Interior Department only allowed Shell to drill pilot wells last summer.

Beaudreau went on, saying Shell relied on contractors for emissions controls that could not meet government muster. That led to violations of EPA air permits.

And most recently, the company relied on contractors to tow the Kulluk, a rig that grounded New Year’s Eve.

“Taken altogether, this points to the need for strong operator oversight of the contractors they’re working with,” Beaudreau said. “Now these issues, based on our recommendations, are issues that are going to have to be specifically addressed, and we need to be told how they’re being addressed.”

Before the company can resume any drilling – regardless of the depth, Beaudreau says, it must prove the containment dome can operate correctly.

Secretary Salazar says the government reacted appropriately to Shell’s stumbles – that the various agencies in the Department of Interior successfully managed the setbacks.

“We were very much keeping coordinated,” Salazar said. “I was being informed daily on the activities relating to the US Coast Guard and on issues relating to oversight of the Arctic Challenger.”

Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith says the company does not know which firm will conduct the review. Nor did he have an idea how long the review will take.

The company still says Arctic drilling is possible next summer.

“2014 is a possibility, but our future plans offshore Alaska will depend on a number of factors, including the readiness of our rigs and our internal confidence that lessons learned from our 2012 drilling program have been fully incorporated,” Smith said.

Shell sent its rigs to Asia for repair, and last month announced its suspending its drilling program this coming summer.

Conservation groups are disappointed. Michael LeVine is senior council with Oceana. He says Shell should be held accountable, but that’s only the first step.

“It is also necessary for the department of Interior to look inward and fundamentally reassess how and why it allowed an unprepared company to allow in unforgiving, harsh waters in Alaska,” LeVine said.

The Coast Guard is conducting its own review of the company. There is no time frame when that will be released.

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Competition in this year’s Iditarod was nothing less than fierce, and the racing didn’t quite until the finish line.  The race for first and second place was close in this year’s Iditarod, but there were three other races among top twenty finishers that were even closer.

In the wee hours of the morning, Rookie of the Year Joar Lleifseth Ulsom narrowly beat out Jake Berkowitz for seventh place.  The Norwegian’s lead dog Sivo crossed under the burled arch just as Jake Berkowitz’s leaders caught up with Lleifseth Ulsom’s sled.

When it was all over, Berkowitz said he’d had a lot of fun.

“We were running together he passed me maybe a mile out.  Basically our one goal, we saw those lights coming from behind and clocked him at 10 minutes behind us.  We just had to do whatever to get over cape Nome and get away from those guys, so we had a real good time out there,” Berkowitz said.

Jake Berkowitz finished with 15 dogs.  It’s the largest team to cross the line so far.  But it just wasn’t enough to catch the Norwegian.

“He took off and I need to learn some Norwegian commands or something because he took off like a bandit,” Berkowitz said.

Lleifseth Ulsom was all smiles when he finished.  He hadn’t expected to place in the top-10, let alone claim Rookie of The Year.

“It’s much better than I thought I could do, I’ve been very happy with the dogs, they’ve been amazing,” Lleifseth Ulsom said.

He gives most of the credit to his dogs. The 26-year-old’s team has a large following back Norway.

“I don’t know.  I bet my mom is proud, huh?,” Lleifseth Ulsom said.

By the time the sun came up, another close race was playing out on Front Street.  Veterans Paul Gebhardt and Cim Smyth battled for 15th place as their teams neared the finish line.  When Smyth saw Gebhardt five miles out, he knew the time had come.

“There was a little bitty dot and I thought that might be a dog team.  I watched it for a while and it was moving like a dog team not a rock,” Smyth said.

A mile and a half before the finish line, Smyth caught Gebhardt.

“We were really cooking at that point, just smoking a long, but neither one of my leaders had ever been here before.  There were some people cheering up on the road, and one of my leaders though that’s gotta be the finish line,” Smyth said.

Smyth had to stop his team and switch out his rookie leaders for a 10-year old veteran. But while he was reorganizing his dogs, Gebhardt reclaimed the lead.  Once he stripped off his heavy coat, to run with his dogs, Smyth, a 12-time Iditarod finisher, was able to pass one last time.

“I don’t know that there’s been a single race where I haven’t picked up a place or two between White Mountain and here,” Smyth said.

Smyth and his brother Ramey are known for their fast run times into Nome.

“We’re late everywhere else. It’s a last minute thing.  Just a last minute kind of guy,” Smyth said. “It’s cause the dogs are ready to go, you know they’ve been nurtured and cared for the whole way and they’re finally primed to run.”

That’s Ramey Smyth, Cim’s brother. He posted the fastest time in the top 20 on the last run from Saftey.  A nearly identical race scenario played out for him, but this time, the competition was four-time champion Lance Mackey, who pulled in under the burled arch, panting, sweating and generally flabbergasted.

Like his brother Ramey Smyth’s shy team balked on the city street, so Mackey ran down to help his competition across the line.  When it was official, the two shook hands.

Mackey says he was “dilly-dallying” on the trail until he saw Smyth’s team barreling down upon his.

“I seen a little dot coming down the hill, it looked like a snow machine it was coming that fast.  So whatever reserve they had I asked them for it. He caught me right here in no man’s land.  He had me hands down, came on to the avenue, shot across the road and that was my one opportunity to get it back.  I’ve never been passed in the last little bit and that was kind of a weird feeling,” Mackey said.

In hindsight, Smyth says he should have done things a little differently.

“I should have waited to pass him on the street to catch him and not pushed quite so hard to catch him before the street and just take it down the wire and wait to see if it happened,“ Smyth said.

Smyth had a tough race.  He was forced to drop a dog from his team early on and he drove for nearly 500 miles on a sled with a broken runner.

Ramey Smyth has now finished 20 Iditarods.  He says someday he’ll return to the race, but he needs to recover mentally and financially from this year’s run to Nome.

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It may seem odd that an Alaskan author would write an entire book on the concept of heat, but all things hot is the focus of Bill Streever’s newest offering. Streever is the author of the best seller Cold and in his new book, he explores everything from tasting crude oil to walking on fire, an experience  he described as enjoyable.

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Red lines indicate the fastest possible routes for light icebreakers, blue lines show the fastest possible routes for open water vessels. Images courtesy of Laurence Smith.

Arctic shipping could be possible for unescorted, open-water vessels by mid-century.

“This research quantifies for the first time the speculations that have been buzzing around for a number of years now,” says Laurence Smith, a geographer with the University of California, Los Angeles.

Smith and a fellow geographer modeled Arctic shipping routes using climate change models, and navigation rules. The results show that by 2040, light icebreakers will be able to go pretty much anywhere in the Arctic Ocean during the late-summer melt season, including straight over the North Pole.

“And open-water vessels are able to, definitely able to, cross through the Northern Sea Route over Russia, and increasingly through the Northwest Passage as well,” Smith says.

Right now, there’s almost no commercial shipping through the Northwest Passage, and vessels transiting the Northern Sea Route need an icebreaker escort. But both routes cut thousands of miles off the standard journeys through the Suez or Panama canals, and the ability to travel unescorted could make them increasingly attractive to shippers. Smith says that should concern policymakers in the region.

“The Arctic is a very remote place, a very dangerous place, always will be. The ice will always come back in winter, it’s dark, the charts are poor, and ordinary open-water ships make up the vast majority of ships on Earth.”

And the day when open-water vessels can make the journey may be coming even sooner than Smith’s models predict. The climate change models he used assume incremental change between now and 2040, but Smith says real-world satellite observations tell a different story.

“The rate of sea ice decline in the Arctic is actually shrinking even faster than even our most aggressive models, so the outcomes of this study should be considered conservative.”

With shippers eager to know when the routes will become commercially viable, Smith says his next project is to expand the study from just September to all twelve months of the year.

You can read the full paper here.

Daphne Brown. Courtesy of the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame.

As part of Women’s history month, Alaska Public Media will be bringing you the voices of Alaska women who have made a difference in their communities and the state. Fifteen women were recently inducted into the Alaska women’s hall of fame at a ceremony in Anchorage. Former Lt. Governor Fran Ulmer was inducted herself in 2009. She was on hand to introduce one of this year’s inductees — the late Architect Daphne Brown. Brown’s husband, Jonathan, and daughter, Catherine, accepted Daphne’s award.

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The latest rewrite of a bill cutting taxes on oil companies is expected to bring down state revenue by more than $1 billion next year. That’s more than any version that’s been introduced so far.

The Senate Finance committee offered their adjustments to Gov. Sean Parnell’s oil tax bill on Tuesday, and the Department of Revenue weighed in on how it would affect the state’s treasury Wednesday morning.

Under current production forecasts, the new plan would cut taxes on oil companies by up to $1.3 billion dollars next year. The analysis goes out six years, and during that time, the total tax break would fall somewhere between $7 and $10 billion. For comparison, the governor’s bill is projected to cut taxes by $5 billion over that same period.

Sen. Lyman Hoffman, a Bethel Democrat who serves on the Finance committee, calls those numbers “truly staggering.”

“Too move this much cash across the table is going to have, in my view, detrimental effects to the state’s operating budget,” says Hoffman.

Representatives from the Department of Revenue say their analysis is preliminary and does not consider how the bill would change levels of oil production. Roger Marks, a tax consultant on contract with the legislature, projects that the finance committee bill would have a neutral effect on revenue if production increased by 70,000 barrels of oil per day over the forecast. If production were to exceed that amount, the bill would have a positive effect on revenue.

Right now, the state levies a variety of taxes on oil, including a profits tax that goes up with the price per barrel of oil. All versions of the oil tax bill that have been considered scrap that element of progressivity. The governor’s original proposal would just have oil taxed at a flat rate of 25 percent, while the finance rewrite ups the base tax by 30 percent with a $5 per barrel credit offset.

Joe Balash is a deputy commissioner with the Department of Natural Resources, and he says that the administration will be working with the finance committee to tighten the revenue projections.

“We’re anxious about that, but the Senate appears to be trying to find its own happy balance,” says Balash.

Balash adds that he’s happy to see that the Senate hasn’t reintroduced any sort of progressive mechanism to the bill.

The Senate finance committee will continue to review the bill this week.

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Congress enacted the Magnuson Stevens Act more than 30 years ago and last amended it in 2006. The bill put an end to foreign fishermen legally harvesting seafood in American waters and stabilized many fisheries by enforcing catch limits.

No member of the House Natural Resources Committee present this morning indicated they’d let the program expire. And everyone who testified said it should be continued, though with some changes.

Commercial fishermen and industry representatives complained about the requirement to have human observers on vessels … recording the size of the catch and by-catch.

“If they were allowed to use less high tech methods, and cheaper methods, they would be allowed to survive,” said Bob Dooley.

Dooley’s company, United Catcher Boats, fishes the west coast and throughout Alaska. He told the committee a captain is responsible for covering the cost of an observer, and it’s prohibitively expensive.

“It’s north of $900 a day, approaching $1,000, for the government to provide an observer,” he said.

That number could neither be verified nor applied to the various fisheries in the state. It took many by surprise, including NOAA’s Sam Rauch.

After the hearing, he said NOAA is concerned about the cost of observers, and is interested in pursuing cameras in their place.

“A technological issue: What can the cameras tell you now? They’re very good at showing discard events. Did somebody throw something overboard? They’re not yet to the point where they could identify individual fish,” he said. 

On top of that, NOAA would have to adapt regulatory requirements to include the cameras.

Representative Don Young, an original author of the Magnuson Stevens Act, said the observer program wasn’t included in the original authorization.

“It was put in there for NOAA to make decisions on the quota,” he said. “And I’m saying let’s go beyond the muleskinner and get into the computer age.”

Young said he’s considering writing a provision into the reauthorization that would allow commercial fisherman to use newer technologies to monitor the catch.

“An observer is probably the worst thing that can happen to the sustainable yield rationalization,” he joked. “An observer is human. He can be corrupted. He can be put into the trawl net, to solve some problems. He could be a drunk.”

The act will expire September 30th, leaving Congress plenty of time to debate the measure.

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Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell announced yesterday a $200,000 multi-year study of Arctic marine shipping. He told a meeting of the Arctic Parliamentarians in Washington, D.C. the project will be conducted by the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. The state Department of Commerce will pay for the research.

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