APRN Alaska News

As the Memorial Day weekend approaches, Clam diggers on the Kenai Peninsula will have to keep in mind a new set of rules for harvesting razor clams. For the first time in a decade, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is reducing the bag limit for razor clams from 60 per day all the way down to 25.

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The conical drilling unit Kulluk sits aground on the southeast shore of Sitkalidak Island about 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Photo courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Wednesday, the man who was in charge of the Shell drilling rig Kulluk when it went aground New Year’s Eve testified at a Coast Guard hearing that he had never done a winter tow in Alaska, but he thought they were prepared for the weather ahead when they left Dutch Harbor to cross the Gulf of Alaska.

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Todd Case had worked for Noble Drilling for more than 20 years and can’t even remember how many tows he’s been involved with. He was aboard the Kulluk when it was towed through the Chukchi Sea in 2012, and he remembers weather bad enough to force the tugs pulling it to turn into the wind. He told investigators that the tug Aivik performed well during that trip. He arrived in Dutch Harbor a couple of days before the Kulluk was due to leave and he said he was confident they had a good tow plan and he and his tow master John Becker were looking at a window of good weather ahead.

“We talked about it in meetings. We didn’t none of us expect to have uh seas as rough as we had,” Case said.

And they did get rough. The Kulluk’s operations manual says if the waves start tipping the vessel more than six degrees, the tow should be slowed down. The vessel’s log book says on the 27th of December that pitching happened for hours, and Case said he couldn’t remember if Becker discussed slowing down with the master of the tug Aivik or not. At about mid-day, Case was on his way to a lunch break when he got word that the tow had broken. He told Coast Guard investigator Josh Mc Taggart what happened next.

Case: Out on deck to look at it. Everybody was informed at that time. Somewhere around 11:30 I believe the tow line…parted, and some time right after 14:00 we got it back on the emergency line.

McTaggart: To your recollection, what actually failed on that tow gear?

Case: Shackle

A shackle is a heavy metal loop that a chain or cable is fixed to. This shackle was never recovered. It wasn’t on the Kulluk’s gear and it wasn’t at the end of the line when the Aivik pulled it in.

This was the beginning of a series of problems that would see tows re-established several times, the failure of the Aivik’s engines, the arrival of more vessels, and a plan to try to get the rig to safe harbor somewhere around Kodiak Island.

Ultimately an emergency line to the tug Guardsman parted, the storm was intensifying, and the drift toward the shallows was accelerating. It was worse than any situation Todd Case had ever seen, and Barry Strauch of the National Transportation Safety Board asked the inevitable question.

Strauch: At any point in this did you believe that your life was in danger?

Case: Again, be hard to say but if you’re driftin’ toward the bank at three knots and its three hours away, yeah, you would wonder.

Strauch: Well, what did you do, you and the other crew members do when you realized that your life may be in jeopardy?

Case: Well, wasn’t much we could do but wait on other resources to get there. We didn’t start cryin’.

But they might have wanted to start crying, when the Coast Guard helicopter pilot told them the deck was pitching so badly that it was too dangerous to attempt to lower a basket to start evacuating the 18 crew members in the dark. They had to wait for first light. Then on Dec. 29 a couple of helicopter trips removed the crew and efforts went on to try to divert the drifting rig. It grounded on the 31st.

During this lengthy probe, each witness has brought another part of the story to light. Case was asked to speculate several times and declined. But when Strach asked him what hindsight had taught him he did not hesitate:

“Knowing what we know now, we know we should have had multiple tugs,” Case said.

He has never had to be rescued before, he said. When asked if he felt any pressure to leave Dutch Harbor quickly, Case said no, he did not.

House Bill 1964 would force the federal government to scrap its current management plan and environmental assessments for new ones. And it would require the federal government to hold annual lease sales in NPR-A

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Rep. Don Young cosponsored the bill, but was not there to explain his motives for it, because he’s big game hunting in Africa.

Jamie Connell, acting deputy director for the Bureau of Land Management, ticked off a list of reasons why the bureau opposes the bill, including:

“The timelines required by the bill, that my result in shortcuts to public involvement.” She added: “The suggestion that the Department pre-approve rights of ways on millions of ac res of land that industry may never seek to develop.”

Connell said the bill’s requirement of scrapping existing management plans for a new one undermines the work the agency has already done.

She told the subcommittee on mineral resources the BLM supports oil and gas drilling in NPR-A.

But that was met with disbelief from a troika of Alaskans who say the federal government is blocking development.

“Interior’s record of decision also made the ability to build a pipeline across NPR-A to pump station one of the Trans Alaska Pipeline more uncertain,” said Resources Commissioner Dan Sullivan.

North Slope Borough Mayor Charlotte Brower told the subcommittee she worries NPR-A will receive the same treatment as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“The concern that the North Slope Borough has is the record of decision that was made on the area that we felt would be better served for leasing and not made into a wilderness area,” she said.

And Richard Glenn, adding the corporate perspective, told the panel Interior did not involve tribes and Alaska Native corporations enough.

“Insufficient consultation with the Native landowners or municipalities in NPR-A,” he complained.

The future of the legislation is unclear. It needs to pass the House of Representatives – which is possible, then pass the Democratic controlled Senate, which is less certain.

As for the future of NPR-A, officials with BLM say it will hold another lease sale in November.

One last year drew bids from just two companies that totaled less than one million dollars.

An ice jam 12 miles upriver from Fort Yukon started to loosen Wednesday morning. Credit National Weather Service.

A massive ice jam 12 miles upriver from Fort Yukon partially let loose early this morning. National Weather Service Hydrologist Ed Plumb says the ice sheet hasn’t broken entirely, but water backed up behind it is starting to move downriver.

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“With the ice jam partially open and water being released, this is definitely a good situation because now we don’t have water being built up back behind the ice jam so this will lessen the threat of a sudden release of water coming down the Yukon River and water levels rising quickly in Fort Yukon,” Plumb said.

Low lying areas of Fort Yukon are still seeing some flooding. Ed Plumb says communities like Beaver and Steven’s Village further downriver still face a serious threat of high water.

“There is still the in place ice from the winter that has not moved yet, so until all the ice is out even below fort Yukon there is still the threat of more jamming,” Plumb said.

The National Weather Service and the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management flew over the river at Fort Yukon on Wednesday morning. They will continue to monitor the situation, but they haven’t scheduled an afternoon Riverwatch flight.

Another sign of this year’s slow arrival of spring: green up will likely be the latest in Fairbanks recorded history.

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Sgt. Daniel S. Alsdorf fires his M4 carbine from a kneeling position during the weapons qualification event as part of the Pacific Army Reserve Best Warrior Competition, May 18. Photo by Army Staff Sgt. Joseph Vine.

A Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson soldier is competing this week in the Pacific Army Reserve Best Warrior Competition in Hawaii. The week-long competition began Saturday and will end with the awards ceremony Thursday.

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Sgt. Daniel S. Alsdorf orients himself with his compass during the land navigation course as part of the Pacific Army Reserve Best Warrior Competition, May 19. Photo by Army Staff Sgt. Joseph Vine.

The past week has been exhausting for Sergeant Daniel Alsdorf.

From before the sun rises until after it sets, he and 10 other soldiers have been putting their entire military skill-set to the test….from land navigation, to hand-to-hand combat, to their overall fitness and more.

According to Alsdorf, the Hawaiian heat and humidity coupled with a simulated battlefield atmosphere haven’t made the tests any easier.

“It’s amazing when you get to a competition how some of the simple tasks become hard, you add a little sleep deprivation and a little fatigue to that, you know, a 6.5 hour road march in Hawaiian conditions can be pretty intense, especially coming from Alaska…these boys have a 30 degree temperature advantage on me,” Alsdorf said.

Despite the difference in climate between Hawaii and Alaska, he says he’s feeling pretty good about the competition so far.

Alsdorf is a combat medic, and he was able to put his life-saving skills to work during the combat casualty care exercise…where competitors had to take care of two injured soldiers and move them to a helicopter before time ran out…all while under simulated combat conditions.

Sgt. Daniel S. Alsdorf, completed 72 pushups for the Army Physical Fitness Test, May 18. Photo by Army Spc. David W. Harthcock.

“The sounds of battle are real, the sweat is in your eyes, you’re running through jungle, you can’t see 15-20 feet in front of you, you don’t really know what’s happening until you get around the next corner. All the while, you know that there’s someone in there bleeding, and it’s your job to get to them and save their lives before they lose all their blood,” Alsdorf said.

Even though the two “casualties” are mannequins, Alsdorf says it doesn’t stop the soldiers from doing all they can to save them.

“You have to sort of think on your feet…make sure you’re running through your fundamentals like: are they breathing? Can we stop the bright red stuff from coming out of their body? Can we get them to safety? All those things are a lot harder than it sounds whenever you’ve got 50 caliber rounds blasting over your head…it’s pretty exciting,” Alsdorf said.

Competitors won’t know where exactly they stand in the competition until Thursday at the awards ceremony.

The winners will go on to the U.S. Army Reserve Command’s Best Warrior Competition in Fort McCoy, Wisconsin later this year.

Heavy cloud cover over the Alaska Peninsula is making it tough for scientists to monitor Pavlof Volcano. The Alaska Volcano Observary hasn’t been able to get a clear picture of the peak by satellite for almost two days.

According to pilot reports today, the volcano is still erupting, but the ash plume has dropped from 20,000 feet to 10,000 feet or less and is blowing out to sea.

That’s good news for regional airlines, which canceled flights to southwest Alaska this week over concerns that the ash would damage their planes. PenAir President Danny Seybert says the airline restored all of its routes today and started adding some extra planes to work off a backlog of more than 300 passengers.

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The Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, or KABATA, wants an independent source to review findings of a state audit of revenue projections that almost swamped the Knik Arm Bridge project in the waning hours of this year’s legislative session.

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The Parnell administration says it will appeal the dismissal of its lawsuit over the roadless rule in the Tongass National Forest.

Meanwhile, faced with no participation by the state government, and limited participation by environmental groups, the Tongass Futures Roundtable group has decided to shut down. The organization was formed to resolve Southeast Alaska forest-issue conflicts.

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A factory trawler that frequently participates in the Bering Sea pollock fishery caught fire Monday afternoon.

The catcher-processor Arctic Storm was working off the coast of Grays Harbor, Washington, processing Pacific whiting, when a fire started in the engine room.

The Coast Guard sent helicopters and lifeboats to the scene to help evacuate crew. According to the vessel’s parent company, Arctic Storm Management Group, none of the 120 people on board were injured. The 334-foot ship is being towed back to port so the owners can assess the damage.

The cover page of Sealaska’s proxy statement and annual meeting notice. Fourteen candidates are running for for board of directors seats.

Ten Sealaska shareholders are challenging four incumbents for the regional Native corporation’s board of directors. That’s the largest number of independent candidates in five years, although some earlier ballots came close.

Proxy statements, which include ballots, were sent to Sealaska shareholders May 10th. Voting runs through June 20th, just before the corporation’s annual meeting, which is June 22th, in Hoonah.

They can be mailed, faxed or dropped off in person. Ballots can also be cast at the annual meeting.

Corporate Secretary Nicole Hallingstad said online voting has become increasingly popular.

“The first year of online voting, about 11 percent of our shareholders voted online. The second year that rose just a little bit to 13 percent,” she said. “We’re early in the proxy process, so it’s impossible at this point to say where that final percentage will fall. But higher levels than that have already come in through online voting for this year’s proxy season.”

This year’s online voting is done through a new shareholder-information system called “My Sealaska.” The secure site also includes stock information and dividend payment history.

No resolutions are on this year’s ballot. Prior years’ measures addressed term limits, discretionary voting and stock for shareholder descendants. (Hear a report on last year’s issues.)

Tribal members can vote a specific number of shares for up to four candidates they support. Or they can vote “discretionary,” turning their ballots over to the board, which supports its own members.

Most of this year’s 14 board candidates are in their 50s, 60s or 70s. But three are between 30 and 40.

Hallingstad, also vice president of communications, says that includes Ralph Wolfe. He was last year’s appointed youth representative on the Sealaska board.

“This year’s slate does include some of our younger shareholders and it’s great to see that successive generations of shareholders for Sealaska are seeing this as a mechanism to serve the Native community,” Hallingstad said.

Sealaska added several thousand younger shareholder descendants after a 2007 vote.

The regional Native corporation is headquartered in Juneau and has more than 21,000 shareholders. Most are of Tlingit, Haida or Tsimshian descent. Close to half live in Southeast.

Read the proxy and annual meeting notice, which includes candidate statements and biographical information starting on page 10.

This year’s independent candidates are:

• Mick Beasley, Myrna Gardner and Ernestine Hayes of Juneau.
• Frank Jack III of Angoon.
• Angela Michaud of Anchorage.
• Ralph Wolfe of Yakutat.
• Will Micklin of Alpine, California.
• Edward Sarabia Jr. of South Glastonbury, Connecticut.
• Richard “Jack” Strong of Bonney Lake, Washington.
• And Bonnie Jo Borchick of Tucson, Arizona.

This year’s board incumbents are:

• Patrick Anderson of Anchorage
• Jodi Mitchell of Juneau.
• Jackie Johnson Pata of Fairfax, Virginia.
• And Richard Rinehart Jr. of Bellevue, Washington.

Board members serve three-year terms.

Cruise ship passengers board a tendering vessel at Huna Totem’s Icy Strait Point. Lawmakers have funded a new berthing facility, which has not been built. Photo by Ed Schoenfeld, Coastalaska News.

Governor Sean Parnell left Southeast Alaska project funding intact when he signed the capital budget Tuesday.

But he blocked the transfer of money from one older project to another.

The Legislature’s capital budget called for taking $5 million out of $17 million set aside for a cruise-ship dock in Hoonah. Lawmakers transferred that money to a planned aquatic center in Sitka.

During an Anchorage press conference, Parnell said it was a bad idea.

“That dock is still needed. The growth in passenger traffic, travel-industry traffic, is creating jobs in Hoonah, right down to our high-school age level. That money needs to stay there so they can continue to build their economy there,” he said.

He said it’s unfair to let one town, quote, “rob” another of its capital-project funding.

Sitka’s aquatic center, which has other funding, will be part of the state-run Mount Edgecumbe boarding high school.

Money for Hoonah’s dock was in the 2011 capital budget. And Hoonah’s municipal government and the local Icy Strait Point tourist attraction have clashed over its location.

Parnell’s Budget Director Karen Rehfeld said the project is still on track.

“The mayor and others have been in touch with us to let us know that they are doing some of the geotechnical work now and that it is moving forward,” she said. “And clearly if the $5 million had been reapporiated from the project for another community’s project, they simply would not be able to move forward with it.

The governor did allow $2 million from the dock project to be transferred to the Hoonah Health Center. The Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium facility needs matching funds to begin construction of a new building.

Rehfeld said Hoonah leaders told her office they supported that change. And since it was in the same community, the governor kept it in the budget.

Sitka Democratic Rep. Jonathan Kriess-Tomkins said he was not involved in the reappropriation effort. Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman could not be reached for immediate comment. Both also represent Hoonah.

Photo by Daysha Eaton, KSKA – Anchorage.

Tuesday night, the Anchorage Assembly voted unanimously to postpone indefinitely an ordinance that would have changed the way that public hearings are conducted.

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The Assembly has made a habit of moving public testimony to the end of meetings. So it wasn’t a surprise that they did so with an ordinance meant overhaul the public hearing system. Richard Evans of Spenard protested and was allowed to testify earlier because he said he had to return to work. He said the ordinance was bad.

“This is retroactive justice. A gentleman in the audience told me about this earlier. Trying to justify the decisions made on AO37. What I see is an attempt by certain members of this assembly to silence descent. People who are dissenting against what appears to be a personal attack against the people of this city. When I heard about this I jetted over here just as fast as I could because this is very important to me,” Evans said.

Assembly Chair Ernie Hall crafted the ordinance with help from the ACLU of Alaska. It was a response to crowded public hearings on AO37, a law limiting unions, which was passed in March after weeks of packed public hearings that the body voted to closed before everyone had a chance to testify. The new ordinance would have required people to sign up on the first evening of a public hearing in order to testify, even if the hearing was continued. New Assembly member, Amy Demboski, said she thought the ordinance would create more order in a haphazard process. But Sheila Selkregg, a University professor and former Anchorage Assembly member, said the new ordinance was too limiting because it would not allow people to respond to laws as they are being crafted.

“I waited on AO37 because I wanted to know what the S version was. I didn’t want to speak at the beginning to something that really wasn’t full of content,” Selkregg said.

Some said requiring people to sign up on the first night of testimony would limit those with night work, family and community obligations from participating in city politics. Deborah Kelly, who wore a sweatshirt with a union logo on the back, said she works for the city, along with many who do 24 hour shift work and who might be kept from testifying if the ordinance passed.

“They’re not always able to come to Assembly meetings and I really think that they should have the opportunity too, to make their thoughts known. I mean, a person caring for an ailing family member — should they not have the same rights as other citizens. I realize that it’s a messy process sometimes but democracy’s supposed to be messy. I mean, it’s supposed to be messy, but it’s supposed to be fair. And I mean, it’s gotta look fair,” Kelly said.

After hearing from the public, the Assembly voted unanimously to postpone the issue indefinitely. Assembly Chair Hall said he was disappointed because the Assembly had not developed a protocol that addressed the issue of how to conduct public hearings involving large numbers of people … an issue that he said was sure to eventually come up again.

Music blared over loud speakers set up on the curb in Downtown Anchorage on Tuesday

 ”Ready for one more?” “Yeah!” ” Hey hey, ho ho, this giveaway has got to go ” “Hey hey, ho ho, this giveaway has got to go!”

Outside Anchorage’s Denaina Center, Senator Hollis French warmed up a small crowd protesting oil tax breaks for Alaska producers.

Former Alaska Senator Vic Fisher was one of them

  “Citizens of Alaska have gotten together. We’re getting signatures signed, we’re getting people to understand that we have got to get rid of the giveaway and we are working on getting a referendum so that people of Alaska can vote and vote for Alaska’s benefit, not for the three big producer’s benefit. “

 Jamie Duhamel [du HAM el] was a Democratic candidate for House District 6 during last year’s state election

  “We’re gathering signatures now until July 15 to get the repeal on the ballot, and then we will be working really hard over the next year to get enough Alaskans to vote for it in 2014.”

 About twenty people waved signs and chanted outside, while inside Governor Parnell prepared to sign HB 21, oil tax legislation passed during the waning days of this year’s legislative session.

An audience that filled to capacity Anchorage’s Denaina Center’s main ballroom stood cheering as Governor Sean Parnell signed his name to SB 21.

  “Senate bill 21, the More Alaska Production Act, is now the law of Alaksa…..  More Alaskan opportunity,”   the governor said to cheers from the audience.

 Parnell dubbed the bill The More Alaska Production Act, telling the audience that it is his intent that Alaskans who are now 35 or under will benefit from more oil production, now that state law allows producers tax benefits aimed at enticing more investment in Alaska. He asked the thirtyfives or younger to stand and addressed them directly

   “I think about the Alaska Constitutional provision that says that Alaska’s resources are for the people’s benefit. That’s not just prior generations, that’s not just my generation, that’s your generation and generations to come. But neither I nor anybody else sitting down believes that we should be satisfied with forty years lighter production from Prudhoe Bay. We think that there is at least another forty years for you to benefit from even when we are gone. This is your chance to claim Alaska’s promise. “

The governor says the bill spurs production by eliminating the changing monthly tax rate calculations under the old tax regime. Alaska’s oil tax system will from now on be built around a 35 percent base rate, with tax incentives tied directly to new oil production.    The governor was generous in his praise of the legislature, calling this year’s session the most productive one in decades.

  “Lawmakers deliberated and debated, offered improvements and ideas. And then, they acted in good faith and for our future. So I thank the members of the 28 Alaska legislature.”

Parnell alluded to three things the legislature accomplished.: getting the state’s fiscal house in order, approving oil tax reform and creating a corporate structure empowered to carry the state’s interest in a natural gas pipeline with the goal of getting Alaska gas to Alaskans first.

The other energy bill Parnell signed into law Tuesday is HB 4, which creates the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, an independent state corporation that will represent the state’s interest in an all -Alaska gasline with off takes for local communities.

The governor also outlined his fiscal plan for the next five years which includes cuts in state spending that reflects the possibility that the price of Alaska oil can drop.

  “Spending that is more the one billion dollars less than the current fiscal year. Legislators stepped up to the budget reductions with me, and we are on a more sustainable path than just a few months ago. Five years from now, we will have saved more than five billion dollars of the people’s money traversing this new, lower level band of spending.”

 Parnell also signed Tuesday two additional bills dealing with permitting. HB 129 streamlines the state’s permitting process, and SB27 sets in motion a process that would allow the state to assume primacy over and manage federal wetlands permitting.

Gov. Sean Parnell approved the state’s budget today, and he was light with his veto pen — he hardly used any red ink at all. Every veto made to the operating budget had to do with fixing calculation errors, and not a single dollar was trimmed from the capital budget. Only $2.5 million was vetoed from a $13.2 billion budget.

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At the bill signing, Parnell said that he didn’t need cut the legislature’s spending because lawmakers stayed within the limits he set out.

“Now given that legislators met my target of dropping spending by over a billion dollars, you will see only modest reductions in the budget,” said Parnell.

Vetoes can be used as a political weapon of sorts when a governor doesn’t like what a legislature is doing or how it’s spending the state’s money. When Parnell started his term in office, he cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget.

Anchorage Republican Kevin Meyer co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee, and he says he wasn’t expecting to see the capital budget make it through the governor’s office totally intact.

“I’m a little surprised because sometimes there are items that get by us that we didn’t realize were unconstitutional for one reason or another, and apparently, there wasn’t any items like that. So yeah, I think this is very unusual not to have at least something vetoed.”

Meyer adds that he wasn’t planning for any huge vetoes, though. That’s because the governor and the Republican majority in the legislature were pretty aligned in their priorities this year.

Democrats in the minority didn’t share that same agenda. Les Gara serves on the House Finance Committee, and he says there probably would have been a clash if his party had been in charge. He says Democrats are still disappointed that their push to get an increase to the education funding formula didn’t go anywhere.

“You know, if we had succeeded in getting enough funding in to reverse the fourth year of cuts in a row on education staff across the state — classroom funding across the state — the governor might have vetoed that. But his party joined him in not allowing any classroom funding increase.”

Instead of increasing the funding formula, the legislature approved $21 million for school security grants. The state will be spending $1.25 billion for K-12 education next year, which is a slight increase over last year.

The operating budget also includes $40 million for the Power Cost Equalization program and $5 million for new state troopers and village public safety officers. The overall operating budget went up by just 1 percent this year.

The capital budget was significantly smaller. Last year’s was about $3 billion, while this year’s was $2 billion. A good chunk of the money in it is going toward energy projects, like the Susitna-Watana hydroproject and the natural gas trucking plan for the Interior.

In total, the state will be $1 billion over last year’s $12 billion budget, even though the operating budget saw little growth and the capital budget shrunk. Most of that increase comes from federal spending and from parts of the budget the legislature can’t control. Spending from the state’s unrestricted general fund went down by a billion dollars, which was part of Parnell’s goal to stop the growth of the budget over the next five years.

The Senate Energy Committee is holding a series of so-called “forums on natural gas.” To the uninitiated, they sure look like typical Congressional hearings. For insiders, they look like Congressional hearings without the usual five minute speaking limits.

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Tuesday’s round table focused on the pros and cons of exporting LNG. Senator Lisa Murkowski said Alaska missed the window on selling LNG to American markets, and the window is closing on Asian ones as well.

“Some 63 different projects around the globe are up for consideration” she said. “In Alaska we like to think our gas, our oil is better than everyone else’s. But at the end of the day, we’re in a world market.”

Not all 63 projects up for consideration will snag the billions of dollars in financing – or pass government muster – to become liquefaction facilities and export terminals.

On Friday, the federal government granted conditional approval to a facility in Texas to export LNG to non-free-trade countries. That includes Asian powerhouse Japan – a would-be buyer of Alaska’s piped LNG.

In Washington Tuesday, industry executives, perhaps to pressure federal regulators sitting across the table, said they need the okay to export while conditions are ripe.

“Customers need reliability of supply,” said Sempra Energy executive Octávio Simões. He said foreign companies try to lock in as much LNG for a period of several years.

“If they feel that the U.S. government is not going to supply reliably, they will sign at a higher price, from Australia or Russia or somebody else, that is willing to give the assurance that the supply is there,” he said.

Sempra operates an LNG import terminal in Louisiana that it hopes to convert to an export facility. It’s waiting for approval.

Larry Persily, the federal coordinator for the Alaska North Slope natural gas pipeline, said Alaska is now competing with British Columbia, Eastern Africa and pending projects in the Lower 48.

“There’s a crowd trying to get through this window. The question is how much Alaska wants to work to see if they can get this through this window, or the next opening,” he said in a Tuesday phone interview.

Persily said this window is for the chance to sell gas to foreign companies in the 2020′s, but there will certainly be more windows in the future.

A massive sheet of winter ice is holding back hundreds of thousands of gallons of silty Yukon River ice roughly 12 miles upriver from Fort Yukon.

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“The sheet of ice is acting like dam,” says Plumb, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks. ”And it’s causing the Yukon River to flood over its banks and flood a large portion of the area upriver from the ice jam so reports are that the water has spread out over several miles on either side of the Yukon river out into the forest and into the flats.”

Plumb says high water along the river has already caused minor flooding in Fort Yukon. He says likely, flooding will get worse after the ice jam breaks.

“One other concern that we have too is that downriver from Fort Yukon, the ice is still in place and hasn’t moved out yet,” he explains. “And so after this jam releases, and ice and water start moving down river again, it could jam below Fort Yukon and if that happens, Fort Yukon could see major flooding if water starts to back up behind an ice jam that may form downriver.”

Plumb says it’s only a matter of time before the ice jam gives way.

Other villages in the middle Yukon River region are bracing for high water and breakup-related flooding as the weather starts to warm in interior Alaska.

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The hearings about the grounding of the drilling rig Kulluk continued today in Anchorage. In the morning, the investigators heard from the contractor who towed the rig up last summer without incident. In the afternoon, Shell emergency response executive Norman “buddy” Custard returned for more questioning.

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