Category: Alaska News

Chilkat Valley News staff brought home several awards from Alaska Press Club last weekend, including Best Picture Story for the second year in a row. 

Here’s more about what led to each award-winning piece.

“A weekend restoring Eldred Rock”

First Place – Best Picture Story 

A lot of the time with news photos you have too much to photograph and too little time. Not so with this one: I had 72 hours on Eldred Rock which is, well, a rock, with no way to leave save for the boat that was anchored off shore and out of reach. And it just so happened to be the most beautiful 72 hours of summer. We spent the time lifting windows, eating applesauce, and watching the ferries and summer light drift past.

The biggest challenge for me was trying to capture the very different scales of being confined to such a small, stationary vantage point amid such a large landscape. On the one hand, you go up to the top of the lighthouse and you could spend a lifetime counting the peaks and little coves that stretch from the rock to the horizon. 

On the other hand, if you spend enough time out there you learn just how much history the lighthouse. And you can see it in the small details of the construction, assuming you have people like Dan Humphrey walking you through it all. 

So hopefully, in the photos, there’s a sense of both of those ways of looking around. 

“Haines’ landslide maps unused, what comes next?”

Second Place – Best Public Safety Reporting 

The question of planning for the future with landslides is complicated. It’s hard for a layperson like me to understand the complex science, and the science itself has plenty of uncertainty baked in — the nature of a weather phenomenon with so many different risk factors. There’s the issue of what a government as small and as busy as the Haines Borough can do with that science. 

But walking around neighborhoods and knocking on doors, I got a sense for some of the human factors too: the lives people have built in specific places, the own personal risk calculations everyone makes. That’s something you don’t necessarily get from just looking at government documents and statistics. 

So while a lot of the word count in the article is spent on the landslide maps in a more abstract sense,  I wanted to bookend it with stories from the people who actually live every day on the ground described by those maps. And I’m grateful to everyone who took the time to do just that, answering their doors on cold days and taking time to talk. 

“Haines man finds long lost father in Scotland”

First Place – Best Profile 

I forget exactly where this story came from, but at some point someone told us we needed to talk to Mike and get his story. Apparently, they said, he had met his long-lost father, who turned out to be a movie star. 

I reached out to Thompson, and after a couple hours talking to him, I had the story. 

If you ever get a chance to talk to him, you should: a guy that has seen and done a whole lot of different things — kind of incredible things — and knows how to tell a good story. 

Even so, it’s unusual that you’d write any story with only one source or one voice, especially as a journalist. We’re supposed to verify from multiple sources and get all the perspectives involved. With this one, I couldn’t talk to the other main characters: I wasn’t able to reach his brother, and just as I was reporting the story, Thompson’s  father died. 

I tried to work around that by talking about Thompson as a character himself, and not just the narrator: what he was like recounting the story, how he walked me through the evidence from various parts of his story — photos, text chains, and so on. I wanted to situate the story in his kitchen, interviewing him specifically in the aftermath of the events he was describing. That’s an interesting question to me: not just the crazy discovery, but how you think through what comes after.

The article benefitted hugely from former CVN reporter Francisco Martinezcuello’s editing, including his advice to flip the beginning and end of the story. Everyone should get themselves a narrative expert on speed dial who happens to be very generous with their time. 

“Stuck in traffic? Here’s what everyone else is doing”

Second Place – Best Travel Reporting

This story idea came from the paper’s Duly Noted columnist Chuck Jones, which I think you can tell if you read the article and know her. I try to be more like her as a reporter: she spends so much time outside, going where people actually are, and telling the story of what people are actually talking about. I’m pretty confident that’s her not-so-secret secret to getting such a good Duly Noted column every week.

So for this article, I just got to spend the entire afternoon out in the sun on the side of the highway. Pretty great work day. 

What I like about this article, and about what Jones does with Duly Noted, is giving a sort of simultaneous window into a whole bunch of different, small worlds. It’s not news to me on its own that the mailman eats tortilla chips or someone else is counting butterflies. But all together, it’s nice knowing that given the exact same same part of a traffic stop, all these different neighbors and community members find their own, unique ways to get to the other side. 

Steinfeld was also named the best solo journalist in the state and won an award for a photo he took of a competitor in the Southeast Alaska State Fair. While editor Rashah McChesney also won an outdoor writing award for her piece on Tom McGuire who drowned in Chilkoot Lake last year. 

For the second year, the Chilkat Valley News was edged out of the competition for the best weekly newspaper in the state. That honor went to the Petersburg Pilot first, then the Wrangell Sentinel, and finally the Nome Nugget. 

Every story the Chilkat Valley News produces is a collaboration between the community, the journalist and the audience. The paper relies on questions, insights, tips, letters to the editor, and feedback from people who live in the region. 

We’ve also featured stories from former reporter Francisco Martínezcuello this year, former owner Kyle Clayton, obituaries from Heather Lende, editorial intern Chisel Triezenberg and had graphic design help from intern Robin Oaks. 

Much of our success should be attributed to our long-running business manager Jane Pascoe, advertising and salesperson Chuck Jones, and an army of proof readers including Nancy Nash, Bonnie Hedrick, Tripp Course, Angie Pappas, and Liz Heywood who have made each story shine.

The post Chilkat Valley News lands seven journalism awards appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Members of the Senate Judiciary committee put questions to a governor’s nominee for the Alaska Police Standards Council about her social media posts during a confirmation hearing Wednesday. 

Veronica Lambertsen defended conspiracy theories around the Holocaust, blood-harvesting from children and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Lambertsen has been nominated by Gov. Mike Dunleavy to serve a three-year term representing one of four public seats on the 13-member Alaska Police Standards Council, which oversees law enforcement standards across the state.

Lambertsen has served on the council since being nominated in August, but her name was removed from the council’s website Thursday afternoon, following the hearing and media coverage of the posts.

Dunleavy’s office did not respond to a request for comment about her nomination, her social media posts and the removal of her name from the website on Thursday. 

Lambertsen is the owner and operator of a motel in Birch Creek, a small neighborhood in Turnagain Arm that is part of the municipality of Anchorage. She also serves as a voluntary member of the local Turnagain Arm Community Council, according to her resume.

Lawmakers in the House expressed skepticism in a hearing earlier this month and questioned Lambertsen’s experience, connections with law enforcement and eligibility for the seat.

In a second confirmation hearing on Wednesday, following questions about her background, chair Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage, asked about several social media posts going back many years. 

“One of the postings that I saw was a posting that you didn’t believe the Holocaust was real,” Claman said. “Do you believe the Holocaust occurred during World War II?”

Lambertsen said it was a tragedy, but that she has questions. “Do I believe something happened at the Holocaust, and a tragedy and a lot of people died?” she said. “Yes, I believe that actually happened. Are we being told the true story about it all? No, I don’t believe we’re being told the true story about it all.”

“What do you believe is the true story?” Claman asked.

“That I don’t know yet,” she replied. 

The Alaska Police Standards Council is charged with setting and enforcing standards for law enforcement, including police, probation, parole and correctional officers. They’re also tasked with reviewing regulation and investigating misconduct, like officer discipline and use of force. 

A zip drive of selected posts from Lambertsen’s public Facebook page compiled by legislative staff and reviewed by the Alaska Beacon includes posts going back to 2021 related to a variety of conspiracy theories — questioning the shape of the Earth, the moon landing, the 2020 election results and the Jan. 6 insurrection, as well as posts related to the far-right internet conspiracy theory movement QAnon.

Claman asked about a QAnon claim that children are being harvested for a chemical called adrenochrome from their blood. 

After a long pause, Lambertsen responded similarly that she had questions. “From information I have seen and documentation that was provided the question that should be asked,” she said.

Claman said in an interview Thursday that he found the hearing troubling. “For this position, which really means you’re providing some degree of supervision and regulation of our public safety officers, I just have a lot of concerns, given her perspective,” he said. 

Lambertsen did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. She told the Juneau Independent that what she posts on social media is separate from what’s involved in serving on the council.

Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, raised the issue that Lambertsen may not be eligible to serve on a seat reserved for a member of the public from a rural district. Two of the four public seats are reserved for members representing communities with a population of 2,500 people or less.

“I think this is unfortunately a situation of where Ms. Lambertsen has been put into a seat that she is not qualified to hold based on statute and practice,” she said. “I would encourage Ms. Lambertsen to consider withdrawing her own name, as she is, in my estimation and read of the statute, not legal to sit in the seat.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee forwarded Lambertsen’s nomination on Wednesday to a vote by a joint session of the Legislature. But whether she will be considered is uncertain, as her name is no longer listed on the state website describing the council. 

A joint session for state appointments to boards and commissions, including for Attorney General Stephen Cox, is scheduled for May 7. 

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A group of state and national civil rights groups has filed a lawsuit against the Alaska Division of Elections challenging the decision to share Alaska’s voter rolls with the U.S. Department of Justice as unconstitutional.

The lawsuit filed on Wednesday charges the division with violating the right to privacy enshrined in the Alaska Constitution when officials complied with a Department of Justice’s request and turned over a copy of Alaska’s voter rolls, as well as signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing to remove voters the federal government identifies as ineligible. 

The lawsuit names Lieutenant Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and Carol Beecher, director of the Division of Elections, in their official state capacities.

Alaska is one of 12 states that has complied or said it will comply with the DOJ demand issued last July. In August, Alaska shared a copy of voter rolls including previously confidential information — voters’ full names, dates of birth, residential addresses and drivers’ license numbers or partial social security numbers. 

The Alaska Beacon first reported on the state signing the agreement in February. The news prompted public alarm and debate around confidentiality of voter information, purpose of collecting voter data, and federal overreach in state elections. Lawmakers questioned state elections officials in legislative hearings. 

The lawsuit is filed in Anchorage Superior Court and brought by the League of Women Voters of Alaska, and the Alaska Black Caucus, non-profit membership voting and civil rights organizations. They are represented by the ACLU of Alaska, the ACLU national chapter, the Voting Rights Project and Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“The right to vote and our right to privacy are two core values held dear by Alaskans,” said Eric Glatt, legal director for the ACLU of Alaska, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Rather than fiercely defending the rights of Alaska’s voters, our Division of Elections acceded to federal overreach. Now, we are asking the court to step in and ensure that DOE upholds its constitutional and legal obligations to Alaskans.” 

The lawsuit highlights that the Department of Justice is sharing voter information with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to search for noncitizens and to compile a national database.The lawsuit alleges that is in order to “conduct criminal and immigration investigations.” 

Plaintiffs argue the state’s agreement to remove voters the federal government has found to be ineligible and resubmit an updated list to DOJ within 45 days violates constitutional due process rights. They argue that “by giving DOJ the power to select which Alaskans have the right to vote and by obligating Defendants to purge voters from the voter list without any stated basis in law or process to challenge such an action.”

A spokesperson with the Alaska Department of Law, Sam Curtis, said the department had not yet been served, and so he declined to comment on its specific claims on Wednesday. Curtis said the issue has been addressed in public hearings and the state’s cooperation with the federal government complies with federal and state laws, in particular those allowing the state to share confidential information “for authorized government purposes.” 

In a Mar. 19 letter to members of the Legislature by Alaska Attorney General Designee Stephen Cox defended the state’s decision, saying the disclosure was authorized under the National Voter Registration Act and other state elections laws to permit sharing otherwise confidential voter information.

“The memorandum of understanding (“MOU”) with DOJ limits the use of the information to federal voting-rights enforcement and voter-list maintenance and imposes strict confidentiality and data-security requirements,” he wrote. 

“The division’s actions also reflect Alaska’s longstanding practice of cooperating with DOJ’s Civil Rights Division across administrations,” he added. 

The Trump administration has sued thirty states and Washington D.C. for refusing to comply, according to a tracker by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, a critic of the Trump administration’s requests. 

In the Alaska lawsuit, plaintiffs are asking the court to void the state’s agreement with the federal government, and beyond the scope of the defendants’ authority. 

They’re also asking the court to grant permanent injunctive relief and require the state to make “reasonable efforts” to ensure the Department of Justice immediately destroys all copies of Alaska’s voter rolls previously shared.

Anchorage Democratic Sen. Bill Wielechowski has been working on elections issues for several years and was a main driver of elections legislation passed this year that’s now on Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s desk awaiting a final decision. The bill aims to streamline the state’s voting process and update voter rolls. He said the lawsuit was appropriate.

“I support it. I think it’s a good thing,” Wielechowski said Wednesday. “I think the department should have never sent that information. They probably did violate the law.”

Wielechowski said there is discussion among state lawmakers about filing an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit. 

“The big concern was that there were going to be Alaskans who were taken off the voter rolls. And the division is turning over control and running of state elections to the federal government. And state elections have always been in the purview of the states,” he said. “So I think there’s tremendous concern in Alaska.”

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No mining proposal in recent Alaska history has generated more concern for the state’s salmon runs than the Pebble project.

The huge copper and gold deposit extends into multiple salmon-bearing watersheds, and sits upstream from Alaska’s most lucrative salmon fishery.

But now, in a new court filing, Pebble’s developer says just a tiny number of salmon are blocking the mine’s construction — 27 fish, to be exact, and all one species.

Federal regulators, who halted the project in 2023, are “preserving” 27 coho salmon “at the cost of $800 billion” in minerals, lawyers for Pebble Limited Partnership wrote in a recent brief filed in Alaska’s federal district court.

The remarkably specific fish figure aligns with the number of spawning salmon counted years ago in a stream directly within the proposed mine site.

But Pebble’s opponents say it’s a gross mischaracterization: They’ve long worried that mining could harm the prolific Bristol Bay salmon runs downstream.

“I don’t think it’s a valid number,” said Daniel Cheyette, an executive at Bristol Bay’s Indigenous-owned regional corporation, which is opposed to the mine.

“It’s well documented in the administrative record that the mine is going to have very specific impacts to the mine site itself — and lots of impacts to the habitat below the mine site,” Cheyette added.

Pebble’s lawyers acknowledge that salmon at various life stages have been observed in streams near the mineral deposit. But they cite the specific number of spawning coho eight times across the 66 pages of their recent legal brief.

The figure has taken on a life of its own online, where it sparked outrage among Pebble advocates and stockholders who see those fish as an obstacle to huge profits.

“27 SALMON DUDE WTFFFFFFF,” one mine booster recently posted on X. She added, in a YouTube video: “Tell me where they are. I’ll kill them all right now, with my bare hands.”

The 27-fish-versus-800-billion-dollars narrative comes as part of the latest attempt by Pebble’s owner, Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty Minerals, to overturn a 2023 decision by the federal government that effectively quashed the development.

And it’s further evidence that Pebble is committed to a long-term effort to save the embattled project, which would tap into one of the world’s largest copper, gold and molybdenum deposits.

Pebble lacks key approvals, and its efforts to obtain them have been tied up in litigation and bureaucratic processes for years. But its owners continue to spend millions of dollars each year on legal fees and administrative expenses.

The project is still attracting investment because of its enormous size — and because global demand for copper is rising, according to David Hammond, a Colorado-based mineral economist with decades of industry experience.

“These investors, the ones that really provide the money, have to have a very long-term horizon on their investment strategy. And by long term, I don’t mean five years, I mean two decades,” Hammond said.

“Their feeling is, this is going to eventually go into production,” he added.

Pebble expects to spend some $14 million this fiscal year, primarily on litigation, according to a recent corporate disclosure with Canadian securities regulators.

Pebble has fueled debate across the Bristol Bay region and the state for years.

Supporters, including the Dunleavy administration and two local Indigenous-owned corporations, say building the mine would boost the rural region’s economy and create much-needed jobs.

But opponents, including a broad coalition of commercial fishermen, conservation groups and Alaska Native organizations, say the mine’s benefits are not worth the risk it poses to Bristol Bay’s salmon runs.

Pebble’s recent legal brief was filed by a Colorado-based lawyer at a high-powered international firm. It responds to a move by the Trump administration earlier this year to defend the Biden-era project veto.

In a statement shared with Northern Journal, Pebble’s chief executive, John Shively, said the company reiterates its view that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s actions against the project contradicted an earlier federal environmental review, “which clearly states that the project can be done without harm to the salmon fishery in Bristol Bay.”

Pebble’s boosters have long argued that the mine’s impacts would be minimal and that it could coexist with a fishery that generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They note that many Bristol Bay salmon spawn in watersheds other than those where the mine is located.

But mine skeptics note that the project is expected to result in the loss of more than eight miles of anadromous fish streams and 91 miles of streams that support anadromous fish habitat. Federal regulators also say mining could affect downstream ecosystems through changes in flow — and opponents fear a failure at Pebble’s proposed waste disposal site could cause an environmental disaster.

Pebble’s lawyers, in their recent filing, point to a federal finding six years ago that the mine likely would not have a measurable impact on the Bristol Bay fishery, and they say the streams at the mine site “are especially low in salmon.”

“Only 27 have been observed spawning, in only one reach, and from only one species,” the lawyers wrote. Those fish “naturally might disappear in any given year anyway,” the brief said.

A Pebble spokesperson could not immediately confirm the source of the 27-salmon figure, though it corresponds with data from Pebble’s fish counts conducted nearly two decades ago.

Those data were published in a 2020 federal environmental review of the proposed mine. The document also says that surveys found juvenile salmon in streams within the mine’s proposed footprint, and that those streams support rearing habitat not just for coho but also king salmon.

The Trump administration’s lawyers, in their court brief earlier this spring, said that Pebble’s fish surveys were limited, and likely undercounts.

Northern Journal contributor Max Graham can be reached at max@northernjournal.com. He’s interested in any and all mining related stories, as well as introductory meetings with people in and around the industry.

This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Nathaniel Herz. Subscribe at this link.

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All over the world, nations are grappling with the ripple effects of the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery for the global oil market. In the United States, however, President Donald Trump has emphasized that the country imports little oil through the strait, arguing that it “doesn’t need it.”

At a national level, that’s largely true. The United States consumes roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day and imports only a small fraction through that chokepoint. But for diesel-reliant communities in Western Alaska, the story looks very different. The supply chains that vendors rely on are often tied to refineries in Asia, and those routes are deeply exposed to disruptions in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

It may come as a surprise that much of the fuel consumed in rural Alaska is not from Alaska. This reflects both the state’s limited refining capacity and the constraints of global shipping routes and tanker availability. There are some exceptions. Yukon River communities, for example, receive fuel sourced from the Petro Star refinery and delivered by companies like Ruby Marine, providing a more stable and predictable supply. Much of Southeast Alaska, meanwhile, is supplied from refineries in Canada.

But in much of Western Alaska — including the Aleutians, Alaska Peninsula, and Bering Sea coast — nearly all fuel has, at least in the recent past, been refined in Asia and shipped thousands of miles to reach its final destination, often on voyages that can take more than 40 days. These deliveries must occur within a narrow summer window, when sea ice retreats just long enough to allow access.

And planning for those shipments is happening now.

At a recent community meeting in Kotzebue, fuel suppliers laid out a sobering reality due to the recent market turmoil. Voluntary export controls in Japan and South Korea have introduced significant uncertainty into the availability of fuel for Western Alaska — regardless of price. 

Vendors like Crowley are now pivoting to Canadian suppliers, but those markets are under strain as well. Tom Atkinson, the chief executive of Kotzebue Electric Association, said that fuel quotes for the cooperative are roughly double what they were last year. Fuel is by far the largest cost driver in rural electric systems, and when it rises, everything else follows.

Even so, Mr. Atkinson expects he will be able to secure supply for the cooperative. Prices will be high, but the fuel should arrive. He is far more concerned about smaller, upriver communities with fewer resources and even less flexibility. Their costs will almost certainly be much higher.

State programs like the Bulk Fuel Revolving Loan Fund can help communities finance fuel purchases, but they do little to shield them from the underlying volatility of global markets.

Even more concerning is the cost of heating oil. In Kotzebue, Atkinson said residents are already paying around $8 a gallon — a price that is quickly becoming untenable for many households.

In more remote areas, such as the Kusilvak Census Area further south along the coast, households spent on average about 16 percent of their income on electricity alone even before this impending crisis. When heating oil is included — essential in a region with few trees or other options for heating — that share can rise to as much as 45 percent. That is among the highest energy burdens anywhere in the United States. And that was last year.

At the same time that residents are bracing for a sharp increase in costs, the Trump administration has proposed, in its latest budget plan, eliminating funding for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which helps offset heating costs for low-income households. For many communities in Western Alaska, that support is not supplemental — it is essential. 

But the more troubling possibility is not just higher prices or the loss of assistance — it is supply itself. If deliveries are delayed or fall short, some communities could face shortages in the depths of winter, when a fuel shortage would become a true emergency. 

This is not the first time rural Alaska has been disproportionately exposed to global events.

Consider the war in Ukraine. For years, fuel deliveries to Western Alaska quietly depended on a surprising player: Russia.

Shipping routes serving Western Alaska often fall under the International Maritime Organization’s Polar Code, which establishes safety and environmental requirements for vessels operating in Arctic waters. Depending on the route and conditions, this can include ice-class design, specialized equipment and additional crew training. These requirements add cost to already expensive supply chains, particularly in remote regions with limited shipping options. Compounding the challenge, ice-strengthened tankers are relatively scarce worldwide, with Russia maintaining one of the largest fleets.

As a result, fuel bound for Western or northern Alaska communities was often carried on Russian-built or Russian-operated vessels, sometimes under foreign flags, traveling from Asian refineries to the Alaskan coast. The system was largely invisible, but it worked. In 2012, for example, the Russian ice-capable tanker Renda, escorted by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy, delivered an emergency winter fuel shipment to Nome after early sea ice and fall storms cut off the community — an event that made the national news.

That system began to unravel after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions sharply curtailed access to Russian-linked vessels, and almost overnight, the availability of Polar Code-compliant tankers tightened. Shipping costs rose dramatically. And that additional cost is not limited to transporting fuel to Western Alaska. These vessels are often stationed offshore for extended periods, effectively serving as floating tank farms while smaller barges shuttle fuel to individual communities along the coast and river systems. The expense is therefore not just delivery, but time — standby charges of many thousands of dollars a day that accumulate quickly and are ultimately passed on to customers. Those costs rose several-fold after the invasion and they have not come back down.

This is what energy insecurity looks like in America.

If there is a lesson here, it is not simply that global events matter. It is that Alaska is not insulated from them — especially in the places that can least afford it.

We have built an energy system in rural Alaska that depends on long, fragile supply chains stretching across oceans and geopolitical fault lines. For decades, this system has held together. But it is becoming more expensive, more uncertain and more exposed with each passing year.

This reality should shape how we think about energy policy in this state. Reducing fuel use, diversifying local energy systems and maintaining the programs that help households afford basic energy services are not abstract goals — they are essential to keeping communities viable in the long run.

In the short term, there are also practical steps the state can take: increasing the loan cap in the Bulk Fuel Revolving Loan Fund, ensuring adequate support for the Alaska Heating Assistance Program and preparing for potential shortfalls in the Power Cost Equalization program. 

These steps are not precautionary — they are necessary. When global systems falter, it is not the Lower 48 — or even more urban places in Alaska — that feels it first or most acutely. It is communities like Kotzebue, Emmonak, and Hooper Bay. 

The lesson is not simply that global events matter. It is that our energy system is far more interconnected — and far more unequal in how it distributes risk and cost — than we tend to acknowledge. 

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The Alaska House of Representatives advanced a bill Wednesday that aims to address a lack of oversight for minors treated at psychiatric facilities in Alaska. The bill would mandate an annual report on conditions and treatment at such facilities from the state’s Health Department, as well as unannounced biannual inspections.

Rep. Maxine Dibert, D-Fairbanks and the bill’s sponsor, said the measure is a necessary step to increase accountability around the treatment of minors in psychiatric hospitals in the state, amid constituent concerns. 

“These are not sweeping mandates, they are basic expectations of transparency, of communication and accountability of our youth here in Alaska,” she said on Wednesday.

The bill passed the House of Representatives with 37 yes votes. Three legislators were absent. It has been transmitted to the Senate for consideration.

The bill would also guarantee patients confidential telephone or video communication with a parent or guardian for two hours per week and require the Department of Health to notify a patient’s parent or legal guardian when seclusion or restraint is used within 72 hours. 

The annual report would include information about the total uses of seclusion or restraint, findings of facility inspections and data on the number of minors who received residential care at psychiatric hospitals.

Dibert cited a 2004 investigation by the Disability Law Center of Alaska that found 261 episodes of seclusion and restraint over three months in psychiatric institutions, which the organization called “quite high.”

The United States Department of Justice issued a report in December 2022 that found that Alaskan youth are institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric residential treatment facilities at higher rates and for longer periods than minors in other states as a result of a lack of available and accessible community-based mental health services, violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

Rep. Genevieve Mina, D-Anchorage and Chair of the House Health and Social Services Committee, voiced her support for the bill and drew attention to a finding by the DOJ that identified gaps in community-based services in Alaska.

Community-based services include home-based family treatment for early intervention services, intensive case management and crisis services, according to the DOJ.

“We have to face the reality that many of these kids are in these institutionalized settings because we have underinvested in our home and community based services in this broader continuum of care,” Mina said. 

“The dearth of community-based services in Alaska is so pronounced and widespread that institutional placement has become, for many behavioral health service providers in the state, the default option to which they refer children with long-term behavioral health need,” DOJ investigators wrote in 2022.

According to the DOJ, more than 800 Alaskan children received behavioral health services in a psychiatric institution in 2020. Approximately a third of the patients were Alaska Native and parents reported to the DOJ concerns about separating their children from their culture while in residential treatment. In addition to four psychiatric residential treatment facilities in Alaska, the state sends children to 17 out of state psychiatric residential treatment facilities. 

Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna, told legislators that the bill provides oversight and accountability that legislators are expected to institute.

The bill received support from the Alaska Federation of Natives, Lives in the Balance, a nonprofit that advocates for the fair treatment of children, Dot Lake Village, Citizens Commission on Human Rights, an organization that aims to eradicate abuse in mental health settings, and Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association.

The Department of Health estimated in a fiscal note that it would cost approximately $222,800 annually for a full-time nurse consultant to perform inspections, conduct interviews with patients and conduct investigations and for two nurse consultants to attend trauma informed care and cultural awareness training.

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Capital budget proposals from both the governor and state legislature propose redirecting cruise ship inspection money toward electrical hookups at cruise ship docks in Juneau and Ketchikan.

It’s been two decades since Alaska voters approved the Ocean Ranger program, placing state environmental observers on large cruise ships and creating a tax to fund the program. The tax charges a $4 per-passenger berth fee on all large-commercial passenger vessels in state waters.

The program, however, has been dead for the past five years

The ingredients are still there: the program remains written into state law, and the fee continues to bring in revenue each year — between $7 million and $9 million. But since 2019, the money hasn’t paid for any Ocean Ranger staff.

Under Alaska statute, funding sources like the per-berth fee can’t be restricted to a specific use, outside of a few exceptions. So while voters approved an intention to use funds for cruise-ship environmental regulatory compliance, the state’s budget process requires legislators to make the spending decision each time they write their annual plan.

That gives the governor, who holds the power to veto any item in the legislature’s budget, a significant lever of control. In 2019, governor Mike Dunleavy used his veto to block the legislature’s Ocean Ranger appropriation, eliminating the program’s roughly $3 million operating budget, if not its statutory authority.

That shifted oversight duties away from the 22 marine engineers contracted by the program to a smaller number of Department of Environmental Conservation employees.

In materials submitted to the legislature in 2020, the governor’s office called the program “costly for its outcomes” and said it subjected the cruise industry to a uniquely burdensome level of oversight.

At the time, the Haines Borough Assembly passed a resolution opposing the governor’s veto and expressing support for the Ocean Ranger program.

But still the berth-tax revenue continues to flow in, and redirecting it elsewhere poses a challenge. Federal regulations on taxing interstate transportation mean the funds can only be used to “offset costs of compliance programs and to provide facilities associated with handling vessels and passengers,” the legislature’s finance division says.

With the per-berth fee still charged on each cruise ship, money in the account has accumulated, up to a projected $26 million at the end of the fiscal year in June.

Now, the governor and the legislature appear to have agreed on a new destination for the funds.

Last year’s state capital budget directed just over $6 million in Ocean Ranger funds to port electrification in Whittier, allowing large ships there to draw from shore power while docked rather than running their engines for electricity, thereby reducing air emissions.

Both a Senate Finance Committee budget draft last week and the governor’s draft from December would continue down that path, spending down the fund’s balance on additional port electrification projects.

Senate Finance’s capital budget draft, released last week, would put a total of $18.3 million toward port electrification at the Juneau and Ketchikan cruise ship terminals. An earlier Governor’s draft for the capital budget proposed $15.3 million to port electrification, without specifying which ports would receive the funding.

It’s unlikely Haines will see any benefit from state spending on port electrification — at least for the foreseeable future. Adding a cruise ship to Haines’ existing power demand would exceed the area’s maximum electricity output, said borough harbormaster Henry Pollan.

The proposed spending on Juneau and Ketchikan’s terminals would empty most, but not all, of the account balance. Some of the Ocean Ranger revenue will likely go to the state’s current compliance program, the replacement for the Ocean Ranger observers.

Both the governor and the House proposed operating budgets that pull a little over $2 million in Ocean Ranger revenue for that purpose, mirroring spending from last year.
The roughly $2.2 million budget for the compliance program is a drop-off from the Ocean Ranger-era compliance funding, even as the number of cruise ship passengers in the state has risen significantly, over 30% since 2018, according to industry data.

Decreased funding has translated to fewer total compliance checks, state records show. Last season, DEC staff conducted 76 total inspections on large cruise ships, the majority of which came while cruise ships were in port.

Meanwhile, in 2018, the last year of the Ocean Ranger program, the program’s marine engineers filed 1,580 daily reports.

The changes have resulted in a greater reliance on cruise-ship industry self-reporting, and at times, cruise ship companies have denied state inspectors access to wastewater data, claiming they don’t have the same statutory authority as Ocean Ranger observers, KHNS’ Avery Ellfeldt reported earlier this month.

Last year, the department recorded 21 instances of cruise ships failing to meet wastewater regulations. In 2018, Ocean Ranger observers reported 56 wastewater violations, as well as a range of other violations, including 40 reports of oil pollution.

Former commissioner Jason Brune, however, in the 2020 hearing, said that 264 reported wastewater violations in 12 years of the Ocean Ranger program only resulted in six official notices of violation. Many of the observers’ reports of violation “had insufficient info to make the determination or were under other jurisdictions, like federal jurisdiction,” Brune told legislators at the time, adding that many of the reports “were quickly resolved” before an official notice of violation was issued.

Though the shape of the compliance program has changed in practice, Dunleavy’s attempts in recent years to officially take the Ocean Ranger program and per-berth tax out of state statute have failed to advance through the legislature, suggesting some amount of legislative support for keeping the program on life support.

Because of that, particularly given the end of Dunleavy’s term this fall, the program will remain an open possibility for future governors and legislators — or just a source for more port infrastructure improvements.

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An injured snowmachiner caught in an avalanche near the border was picked up by a Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventure helicopter Wednesday evening and brought into Haines for medical treatment.

SEABA founder Nick Trimble said a group with the injured person contacted SEABA directly for help, which is not unusual, but rarely happens.

“We’ve done a number of rescues over the years, bear maulings, cliff falls. When we’re here, we’re a resource,” he said. “It’s rare, thank goodness. I’d say maybe five calls in 12 years.”

Trimble said the extraction happened right on the border between the U.S. and Canada.

“Right on the boundary. We’ll have to review that, and just in case, we called state troopers and the RCMP,” he said. “It’ll get sorted.”

He didn’t know when the call came in and said everything unfolded quickly when they received the call.

“It was getting pretty dark, so it was a real fast thing. It’s really hard for the helicopter pilot to see when the light gets flat,” he said.

“It was probably like 5-5:30, something like that.”

An ambulance crew from the volunteer fire department was waiting when the helicopter arrived in Haines.

Haines fire chief Zak Overmyer said first responders took the person to the SEARHC clinic, where they are being treated for a leg injury.

Overmyer said responders followed procedures for treating injured skiers that were developed with each heliski operator at the beginning of the season.

Trimble said the ambulance crew who showed up to pick up the injured person were “incredible.” “Those guys are serious.”

Snowmachine traffic in the upper Chilkat Valley has increased this year, according to Trimble.

He said the snow conditions have drawn many visitors from other parts of the state. Many have moved into the pass.

As the weather warms up, the snow conditions at lower elevations are changing rapidly.

“Even though I think those guys were pretty good at what they do, they got snuck on,” he said. “Be careful out there.”

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