Alaska News

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.

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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.

Family members have identified the person found dead in the Southeast community of Kake Tuesday night as a 13-year-old girl, Mackenzie H. Howard of Kake.

Alaska State Troopers say Howard was found by a member of the community inside the Memorial Presbyterian Church.

Troopers are expected to remain in the community Thursday interviewing residents and processing what they’re calling a crime scene. However troopers have not classified the death as anything other than a death investigation.

Howard’s body is being sent to Anchorage for an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of her death.

Since 2010, the Alaska state legislature has debated the passage of a “Stand Your Ground” law. Versions of the bill have made their way through committee, passed in the House, and then ultimately stalled in the Senate. Now, the bill is back.

Sponsor Mark Neuman, a Republican representative from Big Lake, introduced it to the House Judiciary committee on Wednesday, and explained that it expands what’s known as the “castle doctrine.” Right now, if a person is in their home or business, that person is justified in using deadly force in self-defense, even if he or she could theoretically retreat.

”HB24 clarifies that right exists not only in our home but also in other place we have a right to be,” Neuman said.

Basically, any place a person isn’t trespassing.

Stand Your Ground laws are on the books in two dozen states, and Florida’s version was the subject of national controversy after Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager, was fatally shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman.

That incident came up during the hearing of House Bill 24, when a member of the public expressed support for the law because he believed it would exonerate Alaskans in similar situations.

Brian Judy, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, testified that the Stand Your Ground law actually had limited applicability in the Martin case because either Zimmerman was the attacker or he couldn’t retreat, depending on which version of events was accurate. Even so, Judy suggested that the shooting caused Alaska legislators to think twice about passing a Stand Your Ground law.

”I think that quite frankly that incident had something to do with this bill failing last year, failing to pass the Senate,” Judy said.

Representatives from the Alaska State Troopers and the Alaska Public Defender Agency answered question about HB24, but did not speak in favor of the bill or against it. Previously, the Alaska Department of Law has registered concern over Stand Your Ground legislation, stating that it could “authorize vigilantism.” None of the testifiers registered opposition to the bill during the first hearing.

The Stand Your Ground bill is just one of many pieces of legislation concerning defense and gun policy. At the same hearing where HB24 was introduced, Rep. Charisse Millett, a Republican from Anchorage, introduced a resolution that encourages the president to rescind his recent executive orders on gun control.

With Republican majorities in both chambers, the current legislature is seen as being friendlier to such policies than the previous one.

The Anchorage School District and the Anchorage Education Association began bargaining today on a new contract for district teachers at the Anchorage Education Center.

Anchorage School Board President Jeannie Mackie. Photo from the Anchorage School Board.

Jeannie Mackie is President of the Anchorage School Board. She says she can’t discuss details of the negotiations. But she says the district is lobbying for more funding from the legislature.

“Our school board has been in contact with legislators. We will probably be sending a couple of our school board members down later this month. And we just work to stay in constant contact with them and help provide information and what the amount of money in the education formula really means to our district at this time,” Mackie said.

The teacher’s union negotiations come amid budget cuts. The district is trying to trim around $25 million by eliminating more than 200 educators that are not involved in direct classroom instruction, like guidance counselors, graduation coaches and others. Andy Holleman, the President of AEA, says that makes him unhappy, but he understands that the district is in a pinch.

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

“They’re dependent on the revenues from the state. The state’s making a choice to hold education funding flat. The state’s not out of money. Money’s always short, but we still see the revenue situation from the state as being something that the governor and the legislature are deciding rather than an actual fact of life,” Holleman said.

Holleman says the average classroom teacher in the district makes a salary of around $67,000 a year. The current three-year ASD agreement with the teacher’s union expires June 30. Contracts can be from 1-3 years. Pay increases, benefits and leave are among the items being negotiated.

AEA represents about 3,500 workers. Most of them are teachers, but they also represent librarians, counselors, school nurses and staff in the district.

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President Barack Obama nominated REI chief executive Sally Jewell to lead the Department of the Interior on Wednesday. It’s a Cabinet position with incredible influence over Alaska.

And by virtually every account, the pick surprised everyone.

APRN’s Peter Granitz has reactions to the unexpected nominee from Washington.

The Department of Interior oversees critical programs in Alaska, the Bureaus of Indian Affairs and Land Management, the National Park Service, and the offices that promote and regulate off-shore drilling.

In his announcement, Mr. Obama rattled off a long list of accomplishments outgoing Secretary Ken Salazar has achieved, including opening more land and water to energy production.

And now the president turns to another westerner, Sally Jewell, to continue on that path. She comes from the private sector and the Seattle region.

“I’m willing to bet she will be the first Secretary of the Interior who frequently hikes mailbox peak in her native Washington State, and who once spent a month climbing mountains in Antarctica, which is just not something I’d think of doing. It seems like it’d be cold, and I was born in Hawaii,” President Obama  said.

Jewell’s name had not been publicly floated. Most of the names circulating for the post came from within the Interior Department or other parts of government.

Senator Lisa Murkowski says Jewell’s private sector background would lend a healthy perspective to the department, but the transition to a massive government bureaucracy could be hard.

“When you’re coming from outside the government, dealing within the government confines can be very, very difficult. Secretary Chu is a perfect case in point: Brilliant man, great credentials, but not a lot of background when it came to operating a department like Energy. And I think he’s been subjected to a lot of criticism for that,” Murkowski said.

Senator Murkowski says she’s met Jewell before at a cocktail party.

“We talked about going hiking together. She strikes me as that kind of person, somebody that is very easy going, very unpretentious,” Murkowski said.

But that doesn’t mean a yes vote is guaranteed. She worries Jewell could be too sympathetic to the environmental community.

Before the full Senate can vote on the nomination, Jewell needs to pass a vote in the Energy Committee. If that happens, Senator Mark Begich does not know how he’d vote.

“I am not just going to blankly support her because the president wants someone in that position,” Begich said.

Begich, who was on a cell phone from the Democratic Senate retreat in Annapolis, says he’s withholding judgment until he gets to know where Jewell stands on key issues like Arctic drilling.

“The president has already said that is a policy they’re moving forward on, development of the Arctic. But if the Interior Secretary isn’t supportive or slows down the process, that would be very problematic,” Begich said.

Senator Begich also appreciates that Jewell has been in the private sector. Before REI, she worked in commercial banking, and out of college, in the oil fields of Oklahoma and Colorado for Mobil.

She’s been active in elections, giving money to many candidates. She’s mostly donated to Democrats, including a like $250 contribution to Senator Begich in his 2008 Senate run. She also gave $500 to Senator Murkowski in 2009.

Absent from her donor list is Congressman Don Young. He says he’s disappointed in the pick because he does not think she has an understanding of public lands issues.

“I do believe her interests lie in recreational purposes and not multiple use of the lands,” Young said.

The oil and gas industry is keeping relatively quiet. John Felmy is the chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute. He says he welcomes a fresh start at Interior.

“Well, we’ve had some differences with Secretary Salazar. We’ve had some onshore leases that have been pulled back. We’re disappointed in that because we think we have an enormous amount of oil and gas that we can develop. We’d like to move forward as fast as possible,” Felmy said.

Felmy would not say whether API would intervene in the confirmation process with an ad campaign or publicly oppose the nomination.

Some environmental groups are excited about the pick. Cindy Shogan directs the Alaska Wilderness League. She says Jewell’s hardest task will be fighting against strong support for Arctic drilling.

“If she wants to make her mark, she’s going to have to make sure she has the support of the delegation, or is willing to make decisions that will disappoint them,” Shogan said.

There is no date set for the confirmation hearings. It could be as early as next week, though that’s unlikely. After that, the Senate is on recess until the last week of February.

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A Cessna 172 owned by the Kuspuk School District crashed on the Kuskokwim River on Tuesday. The pilot and both passengers were injured in the crash.

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The EPA has taken their Bristol Bay watershed assessment back to the drawing board for revisions. When finished, the assessment could become a basis for the EPA to veto the proposed Pebble mine, but a final version of the controversial study now won’t likely be completed until the end of the year.

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Alaska State Troopers say a human skull was discovered on a beach near Toksook Bay this past September.

The skull has been examined by archaeologist, Steven Street, with the Association of Village Council Presidents.

Street determined it could be from one of the nearby ancient gravesites in the old village of Umkumiute .

Troopers say a Toksook Bay Priest buried the skull on Tuesday.

Toksook Bay is one of three villages on Nelson Island along the Bering Sea.

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