Alaska News

After the grounding of Shell’s Kulluk drill rig in January, reports circulated that the company had been moving it from Unalaska to Seattle in order to avoid Alaska’s oil and gas property tax. But this week, as the Kodiak Daily Mirror first reported, the state decided that tax doesn’t actually apply to the offshore rig. That’s despite the Kulluk being grounding in Alaskan waters on Jan. 1, when the state’s oil and gas property tax rolls were drafted.

Assessor Jim Greeley says the rig is exempt because statute defines taxable property as, “Property that’s use is in the exploration, production or transportation of unrefined oil or gas. But it also states that that activity needs to be in the state.”

The Kulluk drilled exclusively in federal waters off of Alaska this year, but it spent a considerable amount of time tied up in Unalaska as well. That led to questions of whether it would be subject to taxation or not. In November, Greeley told KUCB it was an unprecedented situation, and that the state hadn’t figured out a tax regime for Shell’s rigs.

And in December, Shell spokesperson Curtis Smith told the Dutch Harbor Fisherman that a potential tax liability of, “multiple millions… influenced the timing” of the Kulluk’s departure from Unalaska.

But Greeley, the assessor, says it would have been impossible to know whether the rig would be subject to taxation until the New Year, since it wasn’t clear whether it would actually be in the state. He added that companies don’t have to submit the information that’s used to calculate their liability until Jan. 15.

“So you can’t put the cart before the horse and make a determination before, a) there’s a lien date that makes the property taxable by law, and then b) there’s information,” Greeley said.

Greeley says the Department of Revenue also needed to consult with the Attorney General’s office about whether rigs drilling exclusively in federal waters were subject to taxation.

“And they found a 1977 Attorney General’s opinion that supported that determination as well,” Greeley said.

Alaska typically taxes property used in oil and gas exploration at a rate of 2 percent of the assessed value. That would be at least $6 million for the Kulluk, although probably more. Shell’s other rig, the Noble Discoverer, won’t be taxed either.

Greeley says the determination doesn’t preclude municipalities from levying taxes on the rigs.

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A group of descendants of the first men to summit Denali plan to climb the mountain on the 100th anniversary of their forbearers historic ascent.  This week they announced the project with a press conference at St. Mathews Episcopal Church in Fairbanks, the same location where the 1913 expedition was launched.

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Photo courtesy of Alyeska Resort.

Alyeska Ski Resort in Girdwood says the tram will be running Saturday afternoon for the first time in six weeks. One of the tram cars was severely damaged New Years Eve, when a wind gust blew it into the tram tower. The tram car was impaled in the incident, and the five people aboard, including the tram operator had to be evacuated on ropes by ski patrol. One guest suffered a minor head injury.

The tram usually operates with two cars, but only one will be carrying passengers until the full repair to the damaged car can be completed. It will also run at a slower speed than usual.

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Photo from KSTK – Wrangell.

There are thousands of miles of fiberoptic cables snaking along the ocean floor.  They bring telephone service, television, and the Internet to much of world. When an earthquake struck off the coast of Southeast Alaska in January, the cables that provide Internet to Wrangell were damaged. And a cable repair ship, called the Wave Venture, was called in to help. KSTK’s Shady Grove Oliver went onboard the unique ship to get a closer look at cable repair.

• Click here for the full photo album from KSTK

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This week, we’re heading out the Aleutian chain to the community of Akutan, on a small island just east of Unalaska. April Pelkey is the manager at the Akutan Corporation.

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AEA President Andy Holleman. Photo from the Anchorage Education Association.

The Anchorage School District and the Anchorage Education Association began bargaining on a new contract this week. The district and the teacher’s union are discussing salaries, benefits and more. The initial proposals are far apart.

The Anchorage School District and the Anchorage Education Association published their initial proposals online Thursday. The documents show the district wants to freeze pay. Andy Holleman is president of the AEA. He says not keeping salaries linked to inflation could be bad for recruiting teachers.

“We are going to let the bargaining teams work on this and see each other’s proposals better. They’ve just seen them for a few days. We do feel like our proposal basically keeps Anchorage competitive with other school districts on the west coast, with the places where we’re trying to recruit teachers out of. And even in a year where we may lay off some teachers, we’re still going to be recruiting people from out of state to come up here and fill position in special education or math in science,” Holleman said.

What the district is proposing is about the same salary agreement that was in place. A teacher starting off in the district would make around $47,000. The starting salary for a new teacher under the union’s proposal would be around $500 more. The difference in salary for a fifth year teacher with a masters degree — is about a thousand dollars or around 2 percent.

Holleman says the district’s proposal not only stays with the same salary structure, but expands the teacher work-day by at least 15 minutes and adds four more work days to the calendar year.

Also being negotiated are benefits. ASD is proposing that teachers join the ASD medical plan rather than use their current N.E.A Alaska Health Trust plan. Holleman says the ASD plan offers less coverage. They’re also negotiating leave and planning time, among other things. The current 3-year contract expires June 30. Contracts can be from 1-3 years.

AEA represents about 3,500 workers, most are teachers.

• Initial Proposal Between AEA and ASD (PDF)
• Proposed Agreement Between AEA and ASD (PDF)

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Image from Wikipedia/Xtylee

In isolated spots in the Bering Sea, there are fields of so-called ‘mermaids’ purses.’ Any beachcomber would recognize them — small rectangular pods with pointy corners. They’re the protective casing that surrounds the fertilized eggs of skates, and in some underwater nurseries there are hundreds of thousands of them.

Skates have healthy population levels in the Bering Sea, but their unusual breeding habits could make them susceptible to human disruption. That’s why at this week’s North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Portland, the body decided to designate six of the nurseries in the Eastern Bering Sea as ‘Habitat Areas of Particular Concern.’

Councilor Bill Tweit says the designation acknowledges their significance.

“In establishing these as HAPCs, we in essence flag that these areas are potentially vulnerable to a broad range of disturbances, and requesting [sic] that decision-makers involved in other planning processes pay attention to these areas and pay attention to the unique attributes of those and consider the potential disturbances.”

In particular, Tweit singled out cable-laying and seismic testing. But he and the rest of the council rejected a proposal to ban fishing activities in the vicinity of the nurseries. The general consensus was that there’s too much scientific uncertainty to support a ban.

But the Council did agree to make researching the nurseries a priority. They’re still a relative unknown, even though interest in them has grown recently. In particular, scientists have questions about how many nurseries there are in the Eastern Bering Sea. The council’s scientific advisory group thinks there are probably less than 20, but that figure is disputed.

The National Marine Fisheries Service will be responsible for monitoring the six selected nurseries, although the exact scope of that work is yet to be defined.

Skate are an important food source for many species in the Bering Sea, including sea lions, halibut and cod.

Douglas Post Office. (Photo by Rosemarie Alexander/KTOO)

The United States Postal Service will scale back hours at two Juneau post offices next month.

Notices went up at the Douglas and Auke Bay post offices earlier this week. Starting March 4th, the Douglas station will only be open 1 to 5:30 p.m. on weekdays, and 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturdays. Auke Bay will be open from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekdays, and noon to 3 p.m. Saturday. That’s a reduction of three and half hours every weekday at Douglas, and an hour and a half at Auke Bay.

Edna Cockerham is a post office operations manager with USPS in Anchorage. She says the change is a cost saving measure for the financially strapped agency, and the new hours are based on sales information at each station.

“The number of transactions, the amount of volume that comes in, as well as what we take in over the counter by hour,” Cockerham said. “We looked at that data and based our decisions on that data.”

The Douglas post office remains on a list of facilities the USPS is studying for possible closure. But Cockerham says a decision about which post offices to close has been put on hold indefinitely.

“So rather than closing them, we looked at reducing the work hours in there and the window hours to match the usage,” she said.

But Douglas resident Dave Dierdorff worries the new hours will hurt local businesses and residents.

Dierdorff says he goes to the post office at least once a day. He’s retired and can go whenever he wants, but he says most working people don’t have that option.

“People who work in the [Mendenhall] Valley, or people who work on a fishing boat, or maybe at Greens Creek or Kensington [Mine] are going to be foreclosed from getting their mail in a convenient way or a timely fashion,” Dierdorff said.

The Postal Service also announced this week an end to all Saturday mail delivery, except for packages.

The agency suffered $15.9 billion in losses last fiscal year. Part of the problem is that it’s the only federal agency required to forward fund employee retirement. USPS officials have asked Congress to repeal the requirement, which has been on the books since 2006. But so far lawmakers have not budged.

Dierdorff has written to Alaska’s Congressional delegation about the issue, and is urging his friends and neighbors to do the same.

“That’s what’s bankrupting them,” he said. “Not hours of operation at Douglas.”

Hours at the downtown Federal Building post office and the Mendenhall Valley post office will remain the same.

The Douglas station is one of five post offices in Alaska on the list for possible closure. The others are in the Anchorage and Fairbanks areas. The list includes more than 3,600 post offices nationwide.

Mackenzie Howard’s family provided this photo of her taken hours before her death Tuesday. She had attended a community memorial service for Kake elder Clarence Jackson and helped gather flowers in this skiff.

As the investigation into her death continues, candlelight vigils are planned across Alaska tonight (Friday) in memory of Mackenzie Howard. The 13-year-old Kake girl is believed to be a victim of murder in the small, Southeast village on Kupreanof Island.

The vigils begin at 6 p.m. in most places. In Kake, mourners will gather at the Old Grade School. In Juneau, they’ll gather at Sealaska Plaza. The Sitka event is planned at the Salvation Army, on Sawmill Creek Road near the roundabout.

Family members, meanwhile, remember Mackenzie as an energetic young girl, with a bright smile and a love for basketball.

Her mother, Marla Howard, plays the game, and her father, Kip Howard, is a veteran of Southeast Alaska’s annual Gold Medal tournament. He says his daughter wanted to follow in those footsteps.

“She says, ‘Mom, you’re a baller, and my Dad’s a baller. So that must mean I’m going to be a super baller,” Kip Howard said. “That was a joy to hear from her.”

At 13 years old, Mackenzie was looking forward to the day she’d be able to play on the JV or varsity squads for Kake High School. And her dad says she took an interest in college basketball, too. Mackenzie’s inspiration was Brittney Griner, a 6-foot-8 senior who plays for Baylor.

“She enjoyed when she got to watch her play,” he said. “And then she would run downstairs and make a pose, and say ‘Brittney Griner!’ She was dreaming of going to Baylor University to be the next Brittney Griner.”

For her dad, the fun was in watching her play. On a road trip to Klawock, Mackenzie played on a team of all boys, against another team of all boys. He told her that it would make her better, and he says she bought into it. Not that it was always easy to watch her take that advice.

“I was sitting on the bench, and she was playing defense, I think, and the kid ran her over, and then stepped on her and trampled on her,” he recalled. “My first reaction was, I jumped off the bench, and I took two steps toward the court, and then I stopped. I looked back at my wife, and I told her, ‘These bleachers need seatbelts.’”

But everything turned out all right.

“My baby got right up off the floor and continued playing as hard as she was,” Howard said.

Those good memories – of a young girl who liked her big pink glasses as much as dribbling a basketball – are what Kip Howard says he and his family will hold onto. But they also have a lot of questions.

The night she didn’t come home, Kip Howard says he got a handheld floodlight and went searching.

“That was the most terrible feeling I’ve had,” he said. “And then I got the call.”

The Howard family is well-known in Kake, a city of about 600 people about 40 miles northwest of Petersburg. Kip Howard is the fire chief and captain of the city’s search-and-rescue boat. He says because Kake is a close-knit community, the tragedy of Mackenzie’s death reverberates throughout the city.

“My mom is still alive down south, and I have several sisters,” he said. “But since I’ve been here in Kake, the folks here have been my mother, my grandmothers, my sisters, my brothers, my uncles, my nephews. This is my family.”

Mackenzie had several siblings – three brothers and five sisters. Many family members traveled back to Kake upon hearing the news. Condolences have also poured in from throughout the community, the Alaskan panhandle, and friends across the country.

“Too many to respond to,” Howard said. “All I could think of was ‘Thank you. Thank you.’”

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The first successful climb of Mount McKinley took place in 1913.  Walter  Harper, Hudson Stuck and Harry Karstens made history.  Now, 100 years later, their family members plan to mark the centennial with a climb of their own.

HOSTS:

• Charles Wohlforth

GUESTS: 

• Dana Wright, grandnephew of Walt Harper
• Ken Karstens, great-grandson of Harry Karstens
• Elia Saikaly, FindingLife, film-maker and leader of the Centennial Climb
• Callers Statewide

PARTICIPATE:

• Post your comment before, during or after the live broadcast (comments may be read on air).
• Send e-mail to talk [at] alaskapublic [dot] org (comments may be read on air)
• Call 550-8422 in Anchorage or 1-800-478-8255 if you’re outside Anchorage during the live broadcast

LIVE Broadcast: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

SUBSCRIBE: Get Talk of Alaska updates automatically by e-mail, RSS or podcast.

TALK OF ALASKA ARCHIVE

A special Senate committee on oil production has advanced Gov. Sean Parnell’s bill to lower taxes on oil companies without any amendments. But that does not mean the committee is in total agreement with the bill.

“The Committee’s intent to pass the bill to the Senate Resources Committee in the original form for further processing is in no way an expression of support by Committee members for SB 21 in current form. In fact, most members have expressed concern for key concepts that would require revision prior to supporting the bill as it moves through the legislative process,” Peter Micciche, co-chair of the TAPS Throughput Committee and a Republican from Soldotna, said.

The committee included a number of recommendations for improving the governor’s plan in their letter of intent. In its current form, the bill would get rid of a mechanism that increases taxes on oil companies when profits are high. While the committee supports changing the current oil tax structure, they do want the legislature to see if there’s a way of keeping some element of progressivity in the system. They would also like to see incentives for Alaska hire included in the bill.

Four amendments to the bill were considered in Thursday’s hearing, all introduced by Berta Gardner of Anchorage – the lone Democrat on the committee. One aimed to put in place an alternative minimum tax that would put a 15 percent floor on oil companies’ tax rate. Each of the amendments failed four to one, on party line.

Since the beginning of the legislative session, Democrats have promised a rival plan to Gov. Parnell’s oil tax proposal but it has not yet been introduced.

Alaska State Troopers are investigating the death of a 13-year-old girl in the small Southeast community of Kake as a homicide and awaiting the results of an autopsy.

Family members have identified the deceased as 13-year-old MacKenzie H. Howard of Kake.

Alaska State Troopers say the teenage girl was found by a member of the community just after 11:30 Tuesday night inside an arctic entryway to the Memorial Presbyterian Church.

Trooper spokesperson Beth Ipsen said investigators are continuing to work in Kake Thursday. “The death does appear to be a homicide so we’re treating it like it is,” Ipsen said. “So we’re taking the necessary investigative steps, collecting evidence, talking to people and we’re treating it like it is a homicide. It’s a matter of getting the confirmation from the state medical examiners office. They’ll be conducting an autopsy and be determining the cause of death.”

Howard’s body is being sent to Anchorage for that autopsy. Ipsen could not say when the autopsy would happen. No arrests have been made in the case but Ipsen said investigators were working hard to follow up leads in the small community.

“Pretty much any community is going to be shaken up by the death of a 13-year-old girl,” she said. ‘And then when its determined it appears to be a homicide, it causes even more ripples and we do have a lot of information coming in but there’s a lot of information that, there’s a lot of, I hate to call em rumors, there’s a lot of information that gets twisted around and we have to track down these leads, so if there’s something that is just kind of far out, we have to look at the information coming in and determine whether or not to be truthful or factual or see where it goes. So for us you know it’s like kind of weeding the rumors from the facts on top of it.”

A number of visitors were in Kake this week for a memorial service for Tlingit elder Clarence Jackson. Anyone with information in the case is encouraged to call state troopers at 907-225-5118.

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The Air Force is wrapping up a series of public meetings in Alaska tonight in North Pole.  The scoping sessions are to identify issues to consider in an environmental impact statement for the proposed downsizing of Eielson Air Force Base.  The cost savings of moving an F-16 squadron from Fairbanks to Anchorage have faced a range of opposition and questions at meetings in both communities. KUAC’s Dan Bross reports on a scoping session yesterday in Fairbanks.

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Oral arguments were heard Thursday morning in federal district court in Anchorage on a challenge to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wetlands permit. The case centers on whether or not both the federal Surface Transportation Board and the Corps have complied with Clean Water Act requirements for wetlands protection measures in approving the proposed Port MacKenzie railroad spur.

Plaintiffs Cook Inletkeeper and other environmental groups have challenged the wetlands permit which allows the railroad project to fill 95 acres of wetlands between Port MacKenzie and Houston. Trustees For Alaska attorney Brian Litmans argued that the railroad’s plan to use fill to elevate the spur line’s tracks in essence creates a 35-mile-long dike which can cause irreparable harm to both migrating salmon and to adjacent wetlands beyond the railroad corridor.

The Alaska Railroad and the Matanuska Susitna Borough are interveners in the case on the side of the defense. Defense attorney Kenneth Rooney told the court that the Corps’ hydrology assessments concluded that construction would not interrupt water flow outside of a certain area, because water flows vertically in wetlands, not horizontally. Attorneys on both sides have declined comment on pending litigation, but Borough spokeswoman Patty Sullivan said one point stood out.

“The plaintiffs are arguing that the railroad is a dike. But our attorney is saying, ‘Well, I’ve never seen a dam that has eight bridges, many culverts allowing the movement of water.’” Which, I thought I heard the judge say, or, rather our attorney clarify, ‘You mean vertically, down into the earth.’ So any sort of railroad 32 miles long wouldn’t inhibit the flow,” Sullivan said.

Bob Shavelson, speaking for Cook Inletkeeper, says plaintiffs want to ensure that the railroad expansion won’t result in unforeseen harm

“Because there is no law against thoughtless government spending on massive projects that will destroy our wild salmon habitat,” Shavelson said.

The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction that will temporarily halt work on the railroad spur. In November of last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an earlier decision to halt work on the initial phases of the project. In September of last year, the Corps announced that it had issued a wetlands permit for the railroad project under section 404 of the Clean Water Act. The permit requires the Borough to purchase wetlands areas to compensate for any impacts to wetlands posed by rail spur construction.

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This coming May, the Arctic Council will meet in Sweden to finalize an international agreement on oil spill preparedness. In the meantime, questions are multiplying about the adequacy of existing oil spill response technology to deal with arctic conditions. And one of the primary tools, dispersants, are coming under attack from the marine conservation organization, Oceana, in a scientific report that was released this week in Anchorage at the Alaska Forum on the Environment.

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A piece of legislation that would roll back discharge regulations on cruise ships could appear on the Senate floor as early as next week. It’s already passed in the House, and today the Senate finance committee invited the public to comment on it.

The testimony lasted for more than two hours, even though the committee had planned to meet for only 90 minutes. And for the most part, the people who spoke expressed concern that the cruise ship wastewater bill could damage the marine environment. Here’s Bernhard Richert, a resident of Anchorage.

”I guess I’m a little perplexed right now that we would risk changing the perception of purity and environmental beauty,” Richert said.

The bill he’s talking about would scrap a requirement that cruise ships meet stricter water standards by 2016. Under a rule put in place by a 2006 citizens’ initiative, vessels would eventually have to make sure they’re not releasing an excess of ammonia or copper at the point of discharge. This bill would let them release waste into mixing zones instead, like ferries or municipal treatment plants. Advocates of the bill say that it’s unfair for cruise ships to be held to a different standard, and they say that cruise ships are already using advanced wastewater treatment technology.

John Binkley is the president of the Alaska Cruise Association, and spoke in support of the bill.

”The ballot initiative moved the bar to a different level that was unattainable,” Binkley said.

He cited a report issued by a state panel of engineers, scientists, and fishing and cruise industry representatives that there wasn’t evidence to prove that further technological upgrades would provide “significant environmental benefit.”

But critics of the bill took issue with that statement. Chip Thoma was invited to testify on behalf of Alaskans for Responsible Cruising, and he says that most of the cruise fleet is already complying with the stricter discharge requirements.

”It’s not impossible, because we’re meeting them,” Thoma said.

Questions were also raised about the impact that copper levels have on salmon health and migration. Sen. Anna Fairclough, a Republican from Eagle River, asked that the Department of Fish and Game weigh in on the bill before it moves to the Senate floor.

”We’ve heard several people testify with concerns about subsistence fishing and habitat, and I know that Fish and Game is endeavoring to start some research specific on king salmon runs and how our fish are moving in and out of the streams,” Fairclough  said.

In a follow-up interview, Fairclough says that getting Fish and Game’s input shouldn’t have an effect on the speed at which the bill moves through committee.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation has previously stated that they would like to see action on the bill by February 15, so they can begin work on their discharge permits.

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Hugh Neff and Alan Moore are leading the Quest. But three teams rounding out a group of front runners are confident they can make up the time on the trail.

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A demoralized and disappointed Lance Mackey pulled his dog team into Dawson this morning and voluntarily scratched from the Yukon Quest.

“Apparently I’m gonna have as many bad years in a row, as I had good years in a row,” Mackey said.

Mackey has finished the Quest six times, with four wins.  He’s been working with a new group of dogs over the last two seasons.  He says he can’t explain why the team quit eating and drinking early on in the race.  He immediately dropped four dogs in Carmacks, the race’s second checkpoint and his team continued to dwindle from there.

“I pride myself on the way they look, so if they don’t look to me like I want ‘em to look, I’m gonna leave ‘em and dammit, leaving four at a time is hard thing to do but it was the best thing. I wish I had the answers,” he said.

Mackey says it’s only the fourth time in his career that he has scratched from a race.  He has no plans for retiring, but Mackey says it could be a while before he signs up for another Quest.

“I can only get beat down so many times before I gotta take a little breather here,” Mackey said.

Mackey plans to enjoy a little respite in Dawson City, before he heads back to Fairbanks to regroup and get his team ready for the Iditarod next month.

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After a few quiet months, Cleveland Volcano is waking up.

Cleveland’s last recorded eruption was in November. Then, at the end of January, the Alaska Volcano Observatory’s satellites picked up warming temperatures on Cleveland’s surface. And they found a new lava dome growing in the summit crater. It’s 330 feet in diameter — just shy of a football field.

Chris Waythomas is a geologist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the United States Geological Survey. He says Cleveland periodically grows lava domes, only to have them explode a few months later.

“You know, if there’s enough gas and water vapor that builds up, the dome itself could be exploded out,” Waythomas says. “Part of that explosion would be flying ash. But other parts of it would send large chunks of rock — block-sized chunks of rock — out of the crater, onto the flanks of the upper part of the volcano.”

Because of that risk, the observatory has raised the aviation alert level around Cleveland to orange. Theoretically, the volcano could produce an ash plume extending as high as 20,000 feet into the atmosphere, which would disrupt commercial air traffic. But Waythomas says that isn’t likely.

“It would not be surprising if there were some low-level ash emissions,” Waythomas says. “And by low level, I mean generally below 20,000 feet, so not really a hazard to overflying aircraft.”

Cleveland’s last lava dome exploded in spring 2012.

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The Shin Onoe cargo ship has left Unalaska ahead of schedule, and without incident. Coast Guard Lt. Jim Fothergill says the vessel passed its sea trials and a Coast Guard inspection, and left Summer Bay around 3 p.m. Wednesday.

Fothergill says this morning’s rough weather didn’t affect the Shin Onoe at its anchorage. The 1000-foot vessel spent two days in Summer Bay getting its turbocharger fixed after losing propulsion on the Great Circle shipping route.

The Shin Onoe was originally bound for Prince Rupert, British Columbia, to pick up a load of cargo, but Fothergill says he isn’t sure where the vessel is headed now.