Photo of the Month E-COMMENT ON KETCHIKAN CITY COUNCIL AGENDA ITEMS Ketchikan: Public Meetings Ketchikan: Upcoming Events Historical Ketchikan June Allen Dave Kiffer Louise B. Harrington Ketchikan Weather Ketchikan's Forecast FEB 2019 History Ketchikan's High/Low Records Jan 2019: Precip Stats:  Jan Total Precip: 10.12 in Jan Avg Precip: 13.17 in Nat Weather Service KTN Ketchikan Tides & Currents Sunrise - Sunset Ketchikan Search the News Ketchikan Alaska

Fish Factor: Alaska Symphony of Seafoods Awards Announced By LAINE WELCH - Push that pasta aside. Noodles made from Alaska pollock are poised to become a center of the plate favorite.  

Alaska Pollock Protein Noodles from Trident Seafoods swept the awards at the 26th annual Alaska Symphony of Seafood new products competition in Juneau. The low carb, “flavor neutral” noodles contain 1O grams of protein per serving and can be swapped with any pasta favorites.

The ready to eat item drew raves from judges and samplers from Seattle to Southeast who gave the noodles quadruple awards at the Feb. 20 bash.

“That’s never happened before,” said Julie Decker, executive director of the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation,” host of the Symphony event. “It really blew everything out of the water.”

The new products played to a packed house as part of United Fishermen of Alaska’s annual legislative reception where everyone gets to sample and vote on the goods. 

“It’s a great chance for policy makers to mix with people in Alaska’s statewide seafood industry,” Decker said.“Sen. Murkowski gave away the grand prize. Lots of legislators were there and a number of them presented awards. A number of people from the governor’s office also attended.”

The annual competition kicks off at Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle in November where the new products are judged and first place winners in three categories are announced. All other winners are kept under wraps until the Juneau event.

Trident’s protein noodles took top honors in the retail category, People's Choice awards in Seattle and Juneau and the overall grand prize.

Second at retail was Wild Alaskan& Salmon Jerkyby Fishpeople Seafood of Portland, Oregon; Smoked Sockeye Salmon Chowder by Heather Choice of Anchorage took home third place.

First place in the Food Service category was awarded to Alaska Cod Dumplings by Tai Foong USA, followed by Trident’s Entrée Redi pollock fillet portions.   

Winner in the Beyond the Plate category, which features items made from seafood byproducts, was Wild Alaska Pollock Oil by Alaska Naturals Pet Products.  Second place went to Tidal Vision’s crab shell based Tidal-Tex Odor Preventer that ‘de-funks’ footwear, camp gear and pet beds.

Top winners are automatically entered into the Seafood Excellence competition at the Seafood Expo North America March 17-19 in Boston.  - More...
Tuesday PM - March 05, 2019

Alaska: Corps, BLM issue federal approval for natural gas pipeline in Alaska - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Land Management signed a joint record of decision (JROD) for the Alaska Stand Alone Pipeline Final (ASAP) Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) today. The record of decision is the last regulatory milestone before the Corps and BLM can exercise their federal authorities.

The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC), an independent corporation of the State of Alaska, is proposing the ASAP project which will construct and operate a 733-mile long natural gas pipeline system from Prudhoe Bay to the ENSTAR Distribution System near Big Lake, and a 30-mile long lateral line to Fairbanks, in an effort to provide Alaskans an affordable and reliable source of natural gas from the North Slope. It is designed to bring gas to the major population centers of Fairbanks and Anchorage as well as other communities along the route.

"This is another example of the Corps collaborating with its federal, state and tribal stakeholders to ensure we are delivering for the country and allowing appropriate development that will contribute to energy independence for the nation," said R.D. James, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works. - More...
Tuesday PM - March 05, 2019

Community Connections Announces Sustainability Fund with The Alaska Community Foundation
Bess Clark (Current & the second CC Executive Director), and Joanna Desanto (Founder of Community Connections and first Executive Director)
Photo courtesy Heidi Ekstrand

Community Connections is a nonprofit human service organization that assists individuals from birth through their senior years. The endowment is expected to generate $40,000 to $50,000 annually to support Community Connections’ services.

“We’re proud to be a part of this, as members of the Board,” said Alonso Escalante, Community Connections Board President. “This fund is here because we’ve been strong and conservative stewards of our money over the years.”

He said a lot of that is due to the hard work of program managers, current and past, and the Executive Director Bess Clark.

“They have been able to carefully save funds, while at the same time, deliver amazing programs,” Escalante said. “By establishing this endowment, Community Connections will have sustainable revenue to ensure that our clients receive the care they need for years to come.”

Community Connections has partnered with The Alaska Community Foundation (ACF) to protect and grow its initial contribution. Only the interest earning from the fund will be distributed annually to the organization, leaving the principal of the endowment intact.

Community Connections serves individuals with developmental disabilities, adults with physical disabilities, elders, very young children who experience or are at risk for developmental delays, and children with mental health and behavioral health needs. The organization serves roughly 600 people annually in Ketchikan, Metlakatla, and Prince of Wales Island. - More...
Tuesday PM - March 05, 2019

Alaska: Board of Regents directs UA administration to conduct an expedited program review - The University of Alaska Board of Regents directed President Jim Johnsen and the university administration to conduct an expedited review of UAA’s education programs and report the findings to the board at a special meeting on April 8, 2019.

Regents discussed at length the impacts of the options presented by UA President Jim Johnsen. Most notably, regents focused on their commitment to students who deserve a certain path to licensure as teachers from an accredited and approved program in Anchorage.

“We are trying to figure out the most secure way to provide students the education that we promised them. That requires sitting down and thinking out of the box about the best options moving forward,” said Regent Karen Perdue. “We owe that to these students.” - More...
Tuesday PM - March 05, 2019

Alaska: Latest TRI Data Shows Drop in Chemical Releases to Air and Water in Alaska - Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its 2017 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) National Analysis. According to the EPA, results of this publicly available database show that since 2007, releases of TRI chemicals in the U.S. manufacturing sector have declined while the economy has grown. Industrial facilities have reduced releases of TRI chemicals by taking action to prevent pollution.

The release of TRI chemicals to air and water in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska are declining, both year to year and over a decade according to the report. Releases to air have declined by 4 percent since 2016 and by 30 percent since 2007, while water releases are down 2 percent since 2016 and 12 percent since 2007.

Overall, according to the EPA, total reported releases have risen in Region 10 (Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and 271 Native Tribes) for 2017, mostly due to on-site land disposal at metal mining facilities. Over the past 11 years, releases of TRI chemicals by metal mining facilities have fluctuated. Notably, total releases reported by the Red Dog Mine, in remote Northwestern Alaska, increased by 43 percent from 2016 to 2017, and the mine is responsible for 86 percent of all release quantities of TRI chemicals reported from Region 10 for 2017. Red Dog Mine’s on-site land disposal, including disposal of TRI chemicals in waste rock, accounted for 99.979 percent of its total TRI releases for 2017. The Red Dog mine maintains multiple permits with controls designed to minimize exposure to TRI chemicals following on-site land disposal. 

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conversation commented on today’s release of the annual Toxics Release Inventory saying it provides an inaccurate picture of the chemical releases into Alaska’s environment. - More...
Tuesday PM - March 05, 2019

Alaska: Man Sentenced to Prison for Misapplying over $300,000 from Organization Receiving Federal Funds - U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder announced Friday that a Fairbanks man has been sentenced to federal prison for willfully misapplying over $300,000 from an organization receiving federal funds, among other offenses. 

David Michael McGraw, 39, of Fairbanks, was sentenced March 1st by U.S. District Judge Ralph R. Beistline, to serve 18 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release.  In October 2018, McGraw pleaded guilty to one count of misapplication from an organization receiving federal funds, and one count of making and subscribing a false return.  McGraw paid restitution in full to the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council prior to sentencing, and was also ordered to pay $40,604 in restitution to the IRS.

According to court documents, from 2010 to 2014, McGraw was the Finance Director for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council (“Watershed Council”), a nonprofit corporation formed to improve and preserve the water quality of the Yukon River and its watershed.  During McGraw’s employment as the Financial Director, the organization received over $3.5 million in federal grant funds to address health, environmental and safety issues.  The investigation revealed that McGraw intentionally misapplied approximately $315,000 from the Watershed Council for his personal benefit including, among other things, the purchase of an airplane, maintenance on the airplane, flight school for himself, the purchase of real estate, more than a dozen firearms, and online pornography fees. - More...
Tuesday PM - March 05, 2019

Alaska: Researchers delve into unexamined world of Alaska seaweed By LAUREN FRISCH - Growing up near the beach, Brian Ulaski often overlooked wrack, the seaweed that washes up on coastlines.

Later, as an undergraduate in California, Ulaski learned that wrack holds information about a coastline. It can tell us about the organisms that rely on this link between land and sea. Ulaski became interested in learning more about how wrack, and seaweed in general, can be integral to coastal ecosystems.

In Alaska, few research projects have explored seaweed, even though there is growing interest in harvesting it for food and fertilizer. Now a graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Ulaski is part of a team taking some important first steps to determine whether seaweed and wrack can be harvested more broadly in Southcentral Alaska.

Ulaski and UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences researcher Brenda Konar are looking at components that influence where and how seaweeds grow. They want to understand where seaweeds in Southcentral Alaska thrive and whether more areas could support harvests, including take by commercial operations.

“Right now, most coastlines in Southcentral Alaska have nonsubsistence regulations that make it illegal to harvest live and growing seaweed — whether attached, dislodged or even washed up on the beach,” Ulaski said. “We don’t know if the regulations need to be so black and white. There are a lot of details that could determine whether certain species or areas of the coast could be sustainably harvested.”

Seaweed clusters provide a safe habitat for small fish and animals, and seaweed’s abundant nutrients benefit both coastal and intertidal environments. Current harvesting regulations are in place because of this important role seaweed plays in the broader ecosystem.

Seaweed reproduction hasn’t been studied much in Alaska. More information would be useful so managers can ensure seaweed harvests do not harm the wild population. With funding from Alaska Sea Grant, the Robert and Kathleen Byrd Award and the Northern Gulf of Alaska Applied Research Award, Ulaski and Konar are seeking to answer long-standing questions about seaweed harvesting and reproduction. - More...
Tuesday PM - March 05, 2019

Alaska: Researchers study Alaska forest fires over past 450 years - In a recent study, researchers explored the ways forest succession and climate variability interacted and influenced fires in Alaska's boreal forests over the past four centuries - from 1550 to 2015.

"We reconstructed fire activity over the last 450 years using lake-sediment records," said Tyler Hoecker, the study's lead author.

As part of his master's thesis work in the University of Montana's Systems Ecology program in the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, Hoecker collected lake-sediment cores near the Nowitna National Wildlife Refuge in central Alaska, a fire-prone area that also has many lakes."Charcoal produced by fires is blown into lakes and settles to the bottom, forming a stable record of the fire history in the layers of sediment, much like fire scars on tree rings," Hoecker said. "By carefully measuring changes in charcoal through time, we deduced changes in fire activity. We paired fire history records from seven lakes with records of tree ages and a record of climate. Then, we compared these records, looking for patterns in how the processes interacted." - More...
Tuesday PM - March 05, 2019

RICH MANIERI: The Politics of Infanticide - The U.S. Senate failed to pass a bill that would require health care professionals to provide life-saving medical care to babies born alive after a failed abortion. 

It's difficult to write such a sentence without recoiling. 

Yet, all but three Senate Democrats - Bob Casey Jr., Joe Manchin and Doug Jones - voted against the bill.

The Senate voted down the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act by a count of 53-44.

All of the Democrats running for president in 2020 voted against it: Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Kamala Harris, Cory "I am Spartacus" Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. 

You have to give Casey, Manchin and Jones credit I suppose, though I'm not sure how we got to the point in this country where not supporting infanticide makes you an outlier. 

It occurs to me that Democrats often chide Republicans and the National Rifle Association for viewing every attempt at firearms regulation, no matter how sensible or tangential, as a slippery slope toward full-blown repeal of the Second Amendment. It seems the ultimate irony that these same Democrats, who support gun control as a way to save lives, have no problem casting a vote for infanticide.  - More...
Tuesday PM - March 05, 2019

JASE GRAVES: A Tale of Tunes, a Ticket, and Traffic Law - After several years of driving with a clean record, most of it while I was awake, the unthinkable happened.On a recent drive, after turning up the radio while singing along with the high parts of Boston's "More than a Feeling," I looked into my rearview mirror and saw something we all dread.

No, it wasn't one of my daughters and her boyfriend in the back seat fondling each other's iPhones, but the ominous flashing of lights.Yes, I was being pulled over by the po-po.

Like most drivers in this situation, my heart started pounding, and I broke out in a cold sweat - as if my wife had just asked me to take my three daughters to shop for swimwear.As I pulled to the shoulder, anxious and somewhat irrational thoughts raced through my mind: "Is my driver's license expired?Has the Nyquil worn off? Am I currently wearing pants?"

When the officer came to my window, dressed and equipped like he was about to take down an entire drug cartel, he asked for my license and registration, and informed me that I had been speeding in a twenty-mile-per-hour school zone.Although I wasn't sure that my vehicle could actually travel that slowly unless I was pushing it, I thought it best not to argue (or mention the Boston).Instead, I simply told him I didn't realize that I was in a school zone - and that my water just broke.No, really, I just admitted that I wasn't paying attention and the next time one of those police officer foundations called, I would donate my children's entire college savings. - More...
Tuesday PM - March 05, 2019

Political Cartoon: Hickenlooper Maneuver
By Rick McKee ©2019, The Augusta Chronicle, GA
Distributed to paid subscribers for publication by Cagle Cartoons, Inc.