Category: Alaska News

Members of the Alaska Senate voted to approve a long-awaited pension bill on Tuesday, amid debate on the cost of the new public retirement benefits system and responsibilities of the state and local community employers.

The Senate passed a revised version of a pension plan approved by the House last year. The vote was 12 to 8. Twenty years after lawmakers eliminated a public pension system, the vote marks the closest lawmakers have come to restoring a defined retirement benefit for thousands of Alaska’s public sector employees.

“It strikes me as a historic day,” said Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, after the vote. She has been working on the issue for several years. “When you figure 33 different offerings to correct this over the years — yeah, we’ve been trying for a long time.”

If enacted, the bill would reinstate a defined benefit retirement system for Alaska state employees, as well as teachers, public safety workers and municipal employees statewide. 

The move comes as the state struggles to fill positions across state departments, including public safety, corrections and in education roles. 

Supporters said the retirement benefit is crucial for hiring and retaining a skilled public sector workforce in Alaska for the long-term, while detractors say the uncertainty around the cost to the state and local municipalities isn’t worth the risk.

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mike Cronk, R-Tok, said he opposes increasing state spending.

“We look at our federal government, we’re going to be $40 trillion upside down. That’s totally unacceptable,” he added. “And for adding this kind of burden for the future, generated cost is something that I just can’t be a part of. I know we have a problem. I think there are other solutions out there that can help this problem.”

The move was applauded by the state’s largest public employees union, the Alaska State Employees Association, which represents roughly 8,500 public employees.

“The impact is almost difficult to overstate,” said Heidi Drygas, its executive director, by phone on Tuesday. “Our membership overwhelmingly supports a defined benefit pension. And I think this will mean security for them, so that they can feel comfortable staying in their state jobs. It will attract more employees to work for the state.” 

The bill passed the House last May, and the revised version now goes back to the House for a concurrence vote, before heading to Gov. Dunleavy’s desk for consideration. 

The governor has been critical of previous pension proposals. Dunleavy receives a state pension for his previous employment as an educator and superintendent. 

If the bill becomes law, current state employees would be allowed to switch from a defined contribution or a 401(k) style retirement plan to the new system. Retirement for teachers and public employees would be possible at age 60 or any age after 30 years of service. For public safety officers, including police and firefighters, it would be age 50 with 25 years of service, or age 55 with 20 years of service. 

“Every other state offers a pension for at least some of the public servants. We do not,” Giessel said on the Senate floor. “And we are seeing the results. We ask our public employees to do difficult work, often in the hardest conditions. The question is whether we will give them a reason to build a career here.”

After several hours of debate, the Senate approved several amendments, including a change to allow cities and boroughs to choose whether to opt out of the new defined benefit retirement plan, instead of opt in.

“It’s better policy for local governments to follow the state’s lead,” said Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage, who sponsored the provision. “If they don’t like our choice, they’re certainly allowed to make their own choice and opt out, but if they don’t take any action, they’re in.”  

That means local cities and boroughs can choose whether to opt out of the plan, if enacted, between January and June of 2027, and then the new system would begin July 1 next year. 

Under the revised bill, employees would contribute 8% of their pay to the pension plan. Employers would pay up to 22.5% for public sector employees, and up to 12.5% for teachers. Senators debated the cap and arrived at 22.5%, noting municipality officials public testimony and concern about cost. 

Employers would also pay into a health reimbursement fund of up to 4% of workers’ salaries to supplement Medicare for those over age 65. Disability and death benefits would be included.

Senators debate pension plan, Alaska’s workforce challenges

If passed, the bill would revive Alaska’s state pension that was eliminated in 2006, after the state ran into a multi-billion dollar shortfall and unfunded liabilities in the retirement system.

Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, a co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, opposed the bill, citing the risk that the state will repeat the mistakes of the early 2000s.

“This proposal in front of us today diminished the benefit to the retired employee when it goes underfunded. Yeah, it won’t go unfunded until people retire. Normally, it takes about 30 years, but we’ve got 20 years already with the current defined contribution. So about 10 years out,” he said. 

A recent estimate by the state’s actuary, Gallagher, projected state costs to total $467 million for the first 13 years, until FY 2039. 

Stedman said the state is also still on the hook to pay billions to account for the old pension system. But Giessel said the new pension system has built in safeguards to prevent it from going underfunded, according to the actuary’s analysis.

“Even with a never before seen ‘black swan’ event of three consecutive years with zero investment returns, even then this pension holds up,” she said. 

Giessel and other lawmakers cited the state’s current ballooning costs paying state employee overtime to cover vacancies and essential public services, called “premium pay.”

“It is costing us over $200 million a year in premium pay,” she said. “Just to keep basic services running — that number has grown nearly 80% in the past five years. We have, in effect, turned Alaska into a training ground, a place where people come, gain experience and then leave.”

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, described a crisis of families leaving the state, in part due to a lack of stable retirement. Alaska has seen more than a decade of consistent outmigration, according to state data. 

“There has been a quiet, heavy crisis unfolding all across Alaska, in our schools, in our state office buildings, in our courts, in our communities all across Alaska, it’s the sound of a door slamming shut. Another family packs up to leave,” Wielechowski said on the Senate floor.

“We talk a lot about fiscal responsibility in this chamber, but I ask you, what is responsible about watching our most precious resource, our people walk out the door?”

Supporters of the pension plan also pointed to the state’s struggle with high turnover rates, including up to 30% of teachers in urban and rural districts alike each year. 

Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, and chair of the Senate Education Committee, said the high unseen costs of turnover of educators is magnified throughout the state.

“Because of high teacher turnover, we’re already paying $20 to $30 million a year,” she said. “We can either continue to pay that in turnover costs, or we can fund a quality retirement program that retains our quality educators, attracts new quality educators, and ensures that our kids get the best education they deserve.”

Senators in support of the pension plan noted a recent state audit of Alaska state government that reported hundreds of millions lost in federal reimbursements or incorrectly accounted for due to a variety of factors, including “staff turnover,” “competing priorities” or “inadequate supervisory review.”

Wielechowski pointed to one example of the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs underreported disaster spending for federal reimbursement by $297 million. The error was corrected once identified by auditors, according to the report. 

“Dozens of projects incorrectly reported. And that’s just that’s just a fraction of the inaccuracies and the mistakes,” Wielechowski said. 

Opponents of the pension bill pointed to other factors contributing to high turnover like work environment, leadership and a need to raise salaries.

That included Cronk who said he receives a pension after teaching for 25 years. “I would say focus should be on our pay,” he said.

Drygas, with the state’s public employees union, said while the pension plan is one important part of Alaska’s workforce issues, she sees it as crucial for stemming the tide of outmigration from the state.  

“I cannot tell you how many people, just personal, friends and acquaintances that I know, that are leaving state service in particular because they can’t retire here. They can’t live on the retirement that our state offers,” she said. “So I think a lot of us are hopeful that, you know, five or 10 years in the future, if this legislation should pass and become law, we’ll see a turnaround in our state workforce again.”

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All-terrain vehicles are ubiquitous in Alaska, especially in rural areas, where they make up a key mode of transportation.

That heavy use, often on uneven terrain, leads to high numbers of injuries and deaths from ATV accidents, according to state health officials. In recent years, Alaska’s ATV-related fatality rate has been four times the national average.

The Alaska Division of Public Health’s epidemiology section released a bulletin Tuesday detailing that toll.

From 2019 to 2024, Alaska’s rate of ATV-related fatalities was quadruple the U.S. rate — 1.6 per 100,000 people in Alaska, versus 0.4 deaths per 100,000 people nationally.

During that period, the state recorded 4,421 ATV-related visits to hospital emergency departments. Seventeen percent of those cases involved traumatic brain injury, 40% involved breaks to bones other than the skull and 17% involved lacerations. Some patients had multiple types of injuries, the bulletin said.

Children were frequent victims of ATV accidents; 30% of the recorded emergency department vehicles for ATV-related injuries were among patients under 18 years of age, according to the bulletin.

Children and adolescents accounted for 15% of the state’s 71 ATV-related deaths recorded in the study years, the bulletin said.

Northern and Southwestern Alaska had the highest rates of ATV-related injuries requiring emergency department treatment, followed by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. Such injuries were most likely to occur in the summer and late spring months, according to the statistics presented in the bulletin.

The statistics analyzed in the bulletin concern four- or three-wheeled ATVs, utility terrain vehicles and multi-passenger vehicles known as “side-by-sides.” They do not include snowmachines or motorcycles. And they do not include injuries that went untreated at any emergency department, the bulletin notes.

With so many young people at risk, operators of the vehicles should take care to abide by several precautions, the bulletin said. Riders should use helmets, follow speed limits and avoid intoxicants, and vehicles should not carry more passengers than their stated capacities, the bulletin said.

State agencies, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Southcentral Foundation and other organizations like Alaska Safe Rider have tried to improve ATV safety.

According to the Division of Motor Vehicles, ATVs used on public roadways must be registered, and people driving them must be licensed. But those rules and others, including one requiring passengers to wear helmets, are often ignored. The Alaska State Troopers have at times reminded residents of laws concerning ATV use.

The troopers’ public education campaign is ongoing.

“State law prohibits operating a vehicle while under the influence of an intoxicating substance whether you are on or offroad. We also strongly encourage riders to follow all safety guidelines — this includes ensuring that equipment such as headlights, taillights, and brakes are in proper working order. Wearing a helmet and other protective gear, including goggles, gloves, long pants, and over‑the‑ankle boots, is also highly recommended,” trooper spokesperson John Dougherty said by email.

Some municipalities have ordinances governing ATV use that are stricter than state law, he noted.

Safety has also been promoted by gubernatorial proclamation. Over the past few years, July has been designated as ATV/Off-Highway Vehicle Safety Awareness Month.

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Invasive northern pike have wreaked havoc in Southcentral Alaska rivers and lakes. Introduced illegally in the 1950s, they have been devouring juvenile salmon and other native species.

Now a University of Alaska Fairbanks study warns that matters could get even worse.

As temperatures rise in waterways, invasive pike eat more, said the study, published in the journal Biological Invasions. And as temperatures continue to rise, that trend will continue, the study said. Based on expected temperature trends, invasive northern pike will eat 6% to 12% more by the end of the century, the study said.

“We expect there will be significant warming in the future, and the amount of fish that pike consume is going to increase with it,” Benjamin Rich, who led the study while earning a master’s degree at UAF’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, said in a statement released by the university.

The UAF study found that over the past decade, northern pike of all age classes ate more as waters warmed. The increase was most dramatic in year-old pike, which upped their intake by about 63% over the period.

The study site was the Deshka River, a Matanuska-Susitna Borough waterway that is an important feeder to Cook Inlet and commercial fisheries there. The 44-mile river, a tributary of the Susitna River, is also a cherished destination for Southcentral Alaska sport anglers.

It is famous for its abundance of salmon — or it has been. Salmon in the Deshka is a lot less abundant now than in the past.

The decline is a decades-long problem that affects king salmon in particular. State and federal biologists have cited numerous reasons for  the decline.

The presence of invasive pike is one of them; pike have eaten a lot of juvenile king salmon, also known as Chinook, and coho salmon, also known as silver salmon.

Heat stress is also among the myriad causes of declines. The Deshka is particularly vulnerable to heat. It is in a flat area and not glacier-fed, and it is known to be one of the warmest river systems in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

It is the subject of ongoing temperature monitoring and studies by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the conservation group Cook Inletkeeper and others.

In 2019, a record-hot year in Alaska, waters in the Deshka were particularly warm — exceeding 81 degrees Fahrenheit that July, according to readings by Cook Inletkeeper.

Warmer temperatures, along with speeding pike metabolism and spurring more food consumption, appear to be sharpening the northern pikes’ predation skills, said Erik Schoen, a UAF fisheries biologist and a study co-author.

Fish, which are cold-blooded animals, have varying physiological responses to heat, Schoen said. Compared to salmon, which get sluggish in warm temperatures, northern pike thrive and become speedier swimmers, he said.

“If it keeps getting warmer, they get much better at catching salmon,” he said. “They’re amazing ambush predators.”

Deshka pike are actually eating less salmon than they did in past years, analysis of stomach content shows. But that is not because they are turning away from salmon; rather, it is evidence of salmon declines in the river.

The abundance of adult king salmon in the Deshka dropped by 42% over the past decade. At about the same time, the biomass of juvenile salmon eaten by northern pike decreased by 30% to 74%, depending on age class.

Do not expect the pike to go away if they deplete all the salmon, warned Schoen, who grew up in Anchorage and spent a lot of time fishing in the Deshka.

Rather, they will turn to other fish, as they appear to have done in the Deshka, such as whitefish and rainbow trout. If they can’t eat fish, they eat flies, he said. Northern pike are even known to eat birds, such as eagle chicks and ducklings, small mammals like voles and shrews — and, on occasion, each other.

“Once they wipe out the salmon, the pike don’t die off because they run out of food,” Schoen said.

Northern pike are native to the Interior and northern parts of Alaska, but they are not part of the natural ecosystem south of the Alaska Range. The first introduction was about seven decades ago, prior to statehood, and traced to the Bulchitna Lake, which is part of the Susitna River drainage. Through the following years, flooding and reproduction spread the fish to new places. And they have proved persistent, showing up not just around the Matanuska-Susitna Borough but also in Anchorage and, to biologists’ dismay, on the Kenai Peninsula.

As entrenched as the pike infestation is in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the salmon picture there is not beyond hope, Schoen said.

Pike prefer areas with slow-moving waters and lots of plants. That means areas with swift-flowing waters and gravelly banks are much less likely to be invaded by pike, and there are several such pike-resistant spots in the borough.

Even though it can’t get rid of all the pike, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has had some success suppressing the invaders in certain important Matanuska-Susitna spots, Schoen said.

One is Alexander Creek, a 40-mile waterway that was one of the most important Northern Cook Inlet freshwater sites for king and silver salmon.

A multiyear program launched by the department resulted in removal of more than 25,000 Northern pike from Alexander Creek by 2021, according to a department report. Salmon numbers have improved. But pike remain a persistent problem, and suppression should continue, the report concluded.

Through its activities as part of the Alaska Invasive Species Partnership, a multiagency organization, the department is pursuing a long-term plan to control northern pike.

The post Higher temperatures spur Alaska’s invasive pike to eat more, a bad sign for salmon appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

SEARHC cut the ceremonial ribbon on its new $300 million Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center in Sitka on April 23.

The event for the five-story, 234,528-square-foot facility featured a traditional blessing, a welcome and addresses by leaders of SEARHC and the Sitka community.

Charles Clement, SEARHC president and CEO of 14 years, said in his remarks, “This has been a real challenging project to pull together, beginning to end.”

“It has come to represent much more than a building for me,” said Clement, of Metlakatla. “It represents our commitment to our patients, our commitment to our communities, our commitment to our employees.”

SEARHC designed and constructed the medical services building. In 2020 SEARHC was selected by the U.S. Indian Health Service for the Indian Health Service Joint Venture Construction Program, which provides long-term funding for staffing and operation of the new hospital.

The hospital is about twice the size of the building it replaces but will have the same number of patient beds. That’s due to funding and license requirements, Clement told the Sitka Sentinel.

“To qualify as a critical-access hospital, it has to be 25 beds or less,” he said.

Services at the new building will start May 4, with departments making the transfer in May and June.

The new hospital comes 10 years after the city of Sitka entered talks with SEARHC about consolidating the services provided by SEARHC and city-owned Sitka Community Hospital. After long negotiations and voter approval in a city election, the Sitka Community Hospital’s buildings, grounds and business were sold to SEARHC in 2019, and SEARHC pledged to continue, and expand, the health and medical services available to the public.

Health care has become the largest sector of the Sitka economy, with total earnings at $67.3 million (782 jobs) in 2024, according to a Rain Coast Data presentation last year.

Growth in health care continues in Sitka. At the ribbon-cutting, the deputy director of the Indian Health Service, Benjamin Smith, announced that IHS will work with SEARHC in a joint venture to develop a new long-term care facility on the Sitka campus.

Clement told the Sentinel the project would “replace the long-term care facility over (at the Sitka Community Hospital building) with a newer, larger facility here on SEARHC campus.” Initial plans are for the facility to have 35 beds in the long-term care unit, up from the 19 beds SEARHC currently offers in a building at the former Sitka Community Hospital site.

In the interview, Clement also addressed SEARHC plans in other Southeast communities.

The tribal nonprofit plans to build “a small critical-access hospital” in Haines, he said, “based on the model that we developed in Wrangell.”

SEARHC opened its $30 million Wrangell hospital in 2021. It’s about one-fifth the size of the new Mt. Edgecumbe facility.

“We’re building a new medical office building (in Wrangell) to consolidate onto a single campus,” Clement said. “We have multiple facilities all over town, and we have enough land there to bring it all into a medical campus.”

The health care provider also plans to build eight rental units in Wrangell to house its traveler staff.

In Klawock, “we’re doing a lot of site work down there to get ready to do another clinic replacement, with a goal eventually developing, if we can make it work, long-term care and a critical-access hospital there,” Clement said.

Sitka will remain a hub for medical services in Southeast, and continues to be the only SEARHC location offering labor and delivery services, Chief Operating Officer Martin Benning told the Daily Sitka Sentinel.

“Everything that’s over at the current hospital is moving in here by the end of June,” Benning said.

As for the future of the old SEARHC hospital building and the Sitka Community Hospital building, Benning said, “We haven’t nailed anything down definitively, we’ve just been focused, ‘Let’s get this done,’ and then we’ll figure out, ‘What do we do?’”

Back at the old SEARHC hospital building on April 23, long-time employees and patients gathered around cafeteria lunch tables to reflect on the history of the building that began as a naval hospital in World War II.

The post SEARHC opens new $300 million Mt. Edgecumbe hospital appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Alaska utilities have warned of sharp price hikes when they start importing liquefied natural gas in the coming years to replace dwindling supplies of locally produced gas that’s traditionally been used for home heating and generating electricity.

The first LNG tankers aren’t expected to arrive for a few years.

But increases in the prices paid by consumers are starting to land now.

This month, Hilcorp, urban Alaska’s leading local gas producer, is hiking by 14% the price it charges the electric utility in the Matanuska-Susitna region north of Anchorage — to $9.00 per thousand cubic feet, from $7.89.

More increases scheduled over the next two years will bring the price to $11.75 by 2028 — a 49% jump from the rate in early 2026, before the effective date of a revised contract approved by the Mat-Su utility’s board in recent months.

The utility members’ electric bills will rise by more like 5% each year, since gas prices are only one part of the utility’s operating costs. But by 2028, that still will translate into a monthly hike  of more than $20 for typical consumers, according to utility correspondence with regulators.

Utility officials said the amended contract with Hilcorp gets them an extra year of guaranteed gas, when the alternative is a shortfall in supply that could force the utility to generate power with even more expensive diesel fuel.

But the officials also acknowledged that prices for consumers are likely only headed in one direction: up.

“We’re really seeing this as a gradual approach to the unfortunate increase in what Alaskans may see in fuel costs,” Kim Henkel, chief fiscal officer at Matanuska Electric Association, known as MEA, said in an interview earlier this year.

Officials with Hilcorp, urban Alaska’s dominant local gas supplier, said in a prepared statement that its amended contract with MEA reflects a “collaborative approach.”

The deal represents a “deliberate investment approach with our utility partners to bring forward existing production and provide a bridge while longer-term solutions are pursued,” the statement quoted Luke Saugier, Hilcorp’s top Alaska executive, as saying.

MEA isn’t the only utility whose ratepayers are facing imminent price hikes as a result of urban Alaska’s dwindling gas supplies.

In Fairbanks, the local electric utility has no natural gas plants of its own. Historically, as much as 30% of its power has been generated by other utilities’ gas plants farther south and shipped north along a transmission line.

Now, with no excess gas, those lower-priced power sources have dried up, and Fairbanks’ utility has been forced to boost its dependence on its own expensive diesel generation.

Residential prices there have risen nearly 50% since a low in 2020, to roughly double the national average.

Meanwhile, customers of urban Alaska’s main heating utility, Enstar, could also pay $12 a month more if the company moves forward with a proposed acquisition of a new storage reservoir. Enstar says it could fill the reservoir with both locally produced gas in the short-term, as well as imported LNG when cargoes start arriving.

With its own supplies tightening, Enstar says, the $240 million storage project would also add to its capacity to pipe gas out to home and commercial heating customers — as flows become increasingly difficult to sustain with less fuel produced by local companies at any one time.

Additional price increases are almost certain in the coming years when Enstar, and Anchorage and the Mat-Su’s electric utilities, begin replacing their locally supplied fuel with imported liquefied natural gas — expected to cost at least 50% more than what Enstar currently pays Hilcorp for local gas.

“I hate to be the one crying wolf,” John Sims, Enstar’s president, said in an interview. But such steep increases in the cost of energy, he added, are “the start of an economy that just doesn’t work any more.”

One problem, Sims said, is that local gas producers like Hilcorp have seen the prices that the utilities expect to pay for imported LNG, which have been revealed publicly in utility consultants’ reports. “Now I’ve got no leverage,” said Sims, whose company is investor-owned. “They know what the alternative cost is going to be.”

For now, it will be hard for the urban utilities to stem further price increases because of their deep dependence on fossil fuels — and decades of foregone decisions that could have been made to diversify and boost efficiencies, according to Phil Wight, an energy historian and utility expert at University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Urban Alaska’s four major electric utilities could have done more to cooperate on power plant construction and ongoing generation, so that only the most efficient plants were used, Wight said.

They also, added Wight, could have started construction on large-scale renewable projects when substantial federal tax credits were available. But no major projects are set to be built in the state before the credits phase out — and urban Alaska still runs on some 80% fossil power.

“We have these systemic structures that make it hard for us to really get out of this paradigm,” Wight said, adding: “We’re going to be in this pit for a while.”

Nathaniel Herz welcomes tips at natherz@gmail.com or (907) 793-0312. This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Herz. Subscribe at this link.

The post Alaska’s energy cliff isn’t coming. It’s already here appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Invasive northern pike have wreaked havoc in Southcentral Alaska rivers and lakes. Introduced illegally in the 1950s, they have been devouring juvenile salmon and other native species.

Now a University of Alaska Fairbanks study warns that matters could get even worse.

As temperatures rise in waterways, invasive pike eat more, said the study, published in the journal Biological Invasions. And as temperatures continue to rise, that trend will continue, the study said. Based on expected temperature trends, invasive northern pike will eat 6% to 12% more by the end of the century, the study said.

“We expect there will be significant warming in the future, and the amount of fish that pike consume is going to increase with it,” Benjamin Rich, who led the study while earning a master’s degree at UAF’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, said in a statement released by the university.

The UAF study found that over the past decade, northern pike of all age classes ate more as waters warmed. The increase was most dramatic in year-old pike, which upped their intake by about 63% over the period.

The study site was the Deshka River, a Matanuska-Susitna Borough waterway that is an important feeder to Cook Inlet and commercial fisheries there. The 44-mile river, a tributary of the Susitna River, is also a cherished destination for Southcentral Alaska sport anglers.

It is famous for its abundance of salmon — or it has been. Salmon in the Deshka is a lot less abundant now than in the past.

The decline is a decades-long problem that affects king salmon in particular. State and federal biologists have cited numerous reasons for  the decline.

The presence of invasive pike is one of them; pike have eaten a lot of juvenile king salmon, also known as Chinook, and coho salmon, also known as silver salmon.

Heat stress is also among the myriad causes of declines. The Deshka is particularly vulnerable to heat. It is in a flat area and not glacier-fed, and it is known to be one of the warmest river systems in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

It is the subject of ongoing temperature monitoring and studies by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the conservation group Cook Inletkeeper and others.

In 2019, a record-hot year in Alaska, waters in the Deshka were particularly warm — exceeding 81 degrees Fahrenheit that July, according to readings by Cook Inletkeeper.

Warmer temperatures, along with speeding pike metabolism and spurring more food consumption, appear to be sharpening the northern pikes’ predation skills, said Erik Schoen, a UAF fisheries biologist and a study co-author.

Fish, which are cold-blooded animals, have varying physiological responses to heat, Schoen said. Compared to salmon, which get sluggish in warm temperatures, northern pike thrive and become speedier swimmers, he said.

“If it keeps getting warmer, they get much better at catching salmon,” he said. “They’re amazing ambush predators.”

Deshka pike are actually eating less salmon than they did in past years, analysis of stomach content shows. But that is not because they are turning away from salmon; rather, it is evidence of salmon declines in the river.

The abundance of adult king salmon in the Deshka dropped by 42% over the past decade. At about the same time, the biomass of juvenile salmon eaten by northern pike decreased by 30% to 74%, depending on age class.

Do not expect the pike to go away if they deplete all the salmon, warned Schoen, who grew up in Anchorage and spent a lot of time fishing in the Deshka.

Rather, they will turn to other fish, as they appear to have done in the Deshka, such as whitefish and rainbow trout. If they can’t eat fish, they eat flies, he said. Northern pike are even known to eat birds, such as eagle chicks and ducklings, small mammals like voles and shrews — and, on occasion, each other.

“Once they wipe out the salmon, the pike don’t die off because they run out of food,” Schoen said.

Northern pike are native to the Interior and northern parts of Alaska, but they are not part of the natural ecosystem south of the Alaska Range. The first introduction was about seven decades ago, prior to statehood, and traced to the Bulchitna Lake, which is part of the Susitna River drainage. Through the following years, flooding and reproduction spread the fish to new places. And they have proved persistent, showing up not just around the Matanuska-Susitna Borough but also in Anchorage and, to biologists’ dismay, on the Kenai Peninsula.

As entrenched as the pike infestation is in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the salmon picture there is not beyond hope, Schoen said.

Pike prefer areas with slow-moving waters and lots of plants. That means areas with swift-flowing waters and gravelly banks are much less likely to be invaded by pike, and there are several such pike-resistant spots in the borough.

Even though it can’t get rid of all the pike, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has had some success suppressing the invaders in certain important Matanuska-Susitna spots, Schoen said.

One is Alexander Creek, a 40-mile waterway that was one of the most important Northern Cook Inlet freshwater sites for king and silver salmon.

A multiyear program launched by the department resulted in removal of more than 25,000 Northern pike from Alexander Creek by 2021, according to a department report. Salmon numbers have improved. But pike remain a persistent problem, and suppression should continue, the report concluded.

Through its activities as part of the Alaska Invasive Species Partnership, a multiagency organization, the department is pursuing a long-term plan to control northern pike.

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Alaska utilities have warned of sharp price hikes when they start importing liquefied natural gas in the coming years to replace dwindling supplies of locally produced gas that’s traditionally been used for home heating and generating electricity.

The first LNG tankers aren’t expected to arrive for a few years.

But increases in the prices paid by consumers are starting to land now.

This month, Hilcorp, urban Alaska’s leading local gas producer, is hiking by 14% the price it charges the electric utility in the Matanuska-Susitna region north of Anchorage — to $9.00 per thousand cubic feet, from $7.89.

More increases scheduled over the next two years will bring the price to $11.75 by 2028 — a 49% jump from the rate in early 2026, before the effective date of a revised contract approved by the Mat-Su utility’s board in recent months.

The utility members’ electric bills will rise by more like 5% each year, since gas prices are only one part of the utility’s operating costs. But by 2028, that still will translate into a monthly hike  of more than $20 for typical consumers, according to utility correspondence with regulators.

Utility officials said the amended contract with Hilcorp gets them an extra year of guaranteed gas, when the alternative is a shortfall in supply that could force the utility to generate power with even more expensive diesel fuel.

But the officials also acknowledged that prices for consumers are likely only headed in one direction: up.

“We’re really seeing this as a gradual approach to the unfortunate increase in what Alaskans may see in fuel costs,” Kim Henkel, chief fiscal officer at Matanuska Electric Association, known as MEA, said in an interview earlier this year.

Officials with Hilcorp, urban Alaska’s dominant local gas supplier, said in a prepared statement that its amended contract with MEA reflects a “collaborative approach.”

The deal represents a “deliberate investment approach with our utility partners to bring forward existing production and provide a bridge while longer-term solutions are pursued,” the statement quoted Luke Saugier, Hilcorp’s top Alaska executive, as saying.

MEA isn’t the only utility whose ratepayers are facing imminent price hikes as a result of urban Alaska’s dwindling gas supplies.

In Fairbanks, the local electric utility has no natural gas plants of its own. Historically, as much as 30% of its power has been generated by other utilities’ gas plants farther south and shipped north along a transmission line.

Now, with no excess gas, those lower-priced power sources have dried up, and Fairbanks’ utility has been forced to boost its dependence on its own expensive diesel generation.

Residential prices there have risen nearly 50% since a low in 2020, to roughly double the national average.

Meanwhile, customers of urban Alaska’s main heating utility, Enstar, could also pay $12 a month more if the company moves forward with a proposed acquisition of a new storage reservoir. Enstar says it could fill the reservoir with both locally produced gas in the short-term, as well as imported LNG when cargoes start arriving.

With its own supplies tightening, Enstar says, the $240 million storage project would also add to its capacity to pipe gas out to home and commercial heating customers — as flows become increasingly difficult to sustain with less fuel produced by local companies at any one time.

Additional price increases are almost certain in the coming years when Enstar, and Anchorage and the Mat-Su’s electric utilities, begin replacing their locally supplied fuel with imported liquefied natural gas — expected to cost at least 50% more than what Enstar currently pays Hilcorp for local gas.

“I hate to be the one crying wolf,” John Sims, Enstar’s president, said in an interview. But such steep increases in the cost of energy, he added, are “the start of an economy that just doesn’t work any more.”

One problem, Sims said, is that local gas producers like Hilcorp have seen the prices that the utilities expect to pay for imported LNG, which have been revealed publicly in utility consultants’ reports. “Now I’ve got no leverage,” said Sims, whose company is investor-owned. “They know what the alternative cost is going to be.”

For now, it will be hard for the urban utilities to stem further price increases because of their deep dependence on fossil fuels — and decades of foregone decisions that could have been made to diversify and boost efficiencies, according to Phil Wight, an energy historian and utility expert at University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Urban Alaska’s four major electric utilities could have done more to cooperate on power plant construction and ongoing generation, so that only the most efficient plants were used, Wight said.

They also, added Wight, could have started construction on large-scale renewable projects when substantial federal tax credits were available. But no major projects are set to be built in the state before the credits phase out — and urban Alaska still runs on some 80% fossil power.

“We have these systemic structures that make it hard for us to really get out of this paradigm,” Wight said, adding: “We’re going to be in this pit for a while.”

Nathaniel Herz welcomes tips at natherz@gmail.com or (907) 793-0312. This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Herz. Subscribe at this link.

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